MANAGING ICT Mobile assessment


Teacher Jamie Freeman has won a Fellowship award to help


him develop his innovative use of mobile devices for real-time assessment


L


ike all teachers, I have stock phrases I use in each and every lesson I teach. Last year I must have said “pens down, looking this way” more than a thousand times. A radical change in my teaching this year has meant that “pens down, mobiles down,


looking this way” has become the norm. I have been using students’ own mobile devices as a real-time assessment tool, be they SmartPhones, iPods or tablets such as iPads. My school’s 6th form opened its doors to our first


cohort of A level students in September 2012. My experience of teaching A level mathematics in the past has been that misconceptions carried through from GCSE are a key barrier in students making the successful transition to higher level mathematics. To challenge this, we planned to tackle


misconceptions head on through mobile-based assessment. The mobile application (app) we have developed implements a number of Assessment for Learning techniques, ensuring that teachers and students have greater awareness of their learning and can adapt their approach accordingly. Basically, the key idea behind our app is to get


every student in a class to be actively involved in the lesson. During whole-class teaching, rather than always


directing questions to the class and inviting responses from particular students, we assign every student in the room a set of questions to answer on their mobile devices. Each student’s device, connected to the internet


through a wi-fi connection, shows the question on their individual screens and students are invited to respond. If we ask a series of questions, each student can work through them at their own pace. These questions can include the display of images,


mathematical formulae and even play sound. Student responses can take a number of forms and either involve the touch screen (for example, selecting a multiple- choice answer or indicating agreement along a rating scale) or typing in a response using an on-screen keyboard. My students type quicker than they can talk, and in


30 seconds we can quickly gather detailed thoughts on a concept that can then be projected, anonymously if necessary. These responses might then drive 10 minutes of class discussion and I have been impressed by how much better quiet students are at defending their idea if they can see others have responded similarly. My classes, too, seem more comfortable at scrutinising the opinions of others, possibly due to the anonymity offered. Using this app has also made me address what I


was not comfortable with: I have quickly overcome my reservations about using multiple-choice questions, having initially been concerned about students guessing and not truly thinking through a question. My experience in class is that having possible answers gives students a “safety net” to work towards. Most interesting has been when they end up with an answer that does not appear on screen, my students are very willing to ask for help in unpicking their mistakes. When writing multiple-choice questions the


“distractor” responses I write are designed to match up to a particular misconception that students tend to hold. Students who consistently show evidence of particular misconceptions are very receptive to spending time with me or their peers to gain an understanding of their difficulties.


As each question is correctly or incorrectly


answered, students get immediate feedback on screen so they can monitor and take responsibility for their own progress. Teachers have an overview screen of all students’ progress and can target those who are finding the work challenging. At the other end of the spectrum, they can assign harder questions to students who could be pushed further. A further advantage to the app is that another


screen gives the class a visual representation of class performance on each question or topic. I frequently use this in whole-class discussions to talk through those questions that proved problematic. In my classes, we spend a great deal of time working through these problems together. If a number of students demonstrated poor understanding on a question, I aim to use the scrutiny of the whole class to unravel the misconceptions that resulted in their mistake. Since September, data on each student has been


building up and students can now see an overview of the evidence of understanding of each topic making up the A level course. This will allow us to target revision for each student in the run up to their exams this summer. Besides targeting misconceptions, in my statistics


classes, we have realised that this technology offers a very quick and effective method of collecting data from students’ experiments in class. The data can be automatically imported into a spreadsheet, making drawing graphs and further analysis very straightforward. This has meant that we can use statistical techniques on sets of data that the class have a personal investment in, rather than some distant set of numbers collected by someone else. Over the summer term, a number of other schools


will start using the app and I am looking forward to working with colleagues to drive forward the app’s development. We aim to create a reusable library of questions across subjects and age groups. In practical terms, our app is accessed through the


website imvoto.com. Initially this has been run as a small-scale research project and has been supported by my Fellowship of the 21st Century Learning Alliance.


We are far enough into this project now for me to be convinced that the novelty factor of using phones has worn off and I strongly believe that students gain enormously from the feedback the app gives them in lessons. My practice has changed enormously and I feel my teaching is more responsive to the evidence of student learning that the continual assessment affords me.


SecEd


• Jamie Freeman is head of key stage 4 maths at Comberton Village College in Cambridge and a Fellow of the 21st Century Learning Alliance.


Further information


The 21st Century Learning Alliance is a forum of educationalists which debates issues in education to stimulate change. Its Fellowship programme supports teachers to carry


out developmental or action research projects relating to teaching and learning for the 21st century. Visit www.21stcenturylearningalliance.org


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SecEd • April 19 2012


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