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| Image by Hatice EROL from Pixabay |
How do we assess students’ digital literacies? Simply possessing the hardware (i.e., having a district-provided Chromebook) does not indicate whether a student can get around in software programs, databases, the library catalog, or any of the many technology tools schools rolled out hastily during COVID times. In some discussions, people perceive that technology is a panacea for increasing equity (Rich-Kern). However, it’s a snare for school districts to make the assumption that simply because students are issued chromebooks, they automatically have the tools needed to learn and achieve academic success. Are school districts taking this notion into account or are they merely checking a box that indicates they provided students with the ability to be digitally literate? There is a big difference between handing a student a laptop and having that student understand how to navigate online platforms in order to learn or evince competence utilizing digital modalities. How can teachers and districts inform their instruction when they cannot accurately and genuinely assess students’ knowledge when kids don’t possess the skills to demonstrate adequately what they know? Here, we focus on three assumptions that color our ability to appropriately assess students’ digital literacy skills.
Assumption 1: More hardware translates to digital literacy and increased equity
Prior to COVID, people assumed that providing more hardware would increase digital literacy. After all, students are supposed to be savvy on social media (despite the debunking of students as “digital natives”). This misguided idea was debunked by recent events. In March 2020, when everyone was banished from school buildings due to the novel COVID-19 virus, many districts sped up the process of providing electronic devices to students, thereby catapulting many schools into a 1:1 program overnight. This jump came with no technology-flavored pedagogy training for teachers or assurances that students would be able to use the devices efficiently or appropriately. Technology-flavored pedagogies involve making use of technological affordances for teaching, as when a teacher gathers student thinking via a backchannel for a technology-rich think-pair-share. In addition, the amount of technology that happens in print can be inaccessible to many students (think about all those kindergarteners, first-graders, and EL students…). And, in many cases where language wasn’t a barrier, a lack of access to online internet service at their homes was.
Those marginalized students who require one-on-one instruction from educators were especially thrown into a tailspin when they began online, at home remote learning. These students relied heavily on in-person instruction and without it became a large group of students who lost focus and shut down. Overnight they were cut off from their support systems upon whom they depended to comprehend and navigate their academic work. Many students lacked the confidence needed to try to tackle an assignment on their own as they were accustomed to relying on their Special Education teacher, EL teacher, or their reading and math essential coaches. With many of our struggling students, their academic success and ability to tackle and conquer their grade level curricula depended on their working relationship with the particular specialist who helped them through the day. Much of this support was social and emotional support as much as it was academic. School districts often did not take into consideration the importance of a student’s support system, the team of professionals who provide the bridge that socially emotionally challenged students need to access academic achievement. As meaningful remote learning depends heavily upon students’ ability to read, interpret, and write, students language-based learning difficulties of any kind are at a distinct disadvantage - especially when a steady support system has been kicked out from under them.
Assumption 2: Digital literacy skills are easily transferable
Since students know how to navigate social media, they will automatically know how to engage in appropriate search behaviors, attach emails, etc., right? The truth is students compartmentalize their learning: e.g., things learned in English class stay in English class. The school bell schedule and discrete curricula condition them (Dyson, 1999). On top of that, students cultivate and maintain separate but distinct personas at school and in their personal lives (Delpit, 2008). Suddenly being thrust into school-at-home was very likely a culture shock for many, especially when nearly all the communication they had with their teacher(s) had to be written.
During the pandemic lockdown it was common for teachers (including the authors) to receive email or other messages from students that read like texts, as in, “Um I can’t find the link”. Their assignments also exhibited that students had to be taught academic formatting and language usage in digital environments. Frequently essays and writing assignments students turned in included lowercase i’s instead of uppercase I’s when they were referring to themselves. They used other texting and social media shorthand such as “cuz” instead of “because” and the letter Y instead of the word “why” in their academic writings as well. When corrected, they asked why they couldn’t continue to use lowercase i’s - that’s how they write on social media platforms, and their friends understand them, after all. If students already know how to use academic grammar and punctuation, there’s no problem with taking short cuts when communicating with peers in the social media world; such license denotes competent literacy and, even greater, audience awareness. However, in academic settings, many teachers have an expectation that students consistently demonstrate Standard English writing etiquette when interacting and communicating. And, when everything has to be written, it adds a whole new burden on students.
The pandemic also exposed students’ lack of knowledge of more logistical aspects of digital literacy. Students found things like uploading and downloading documents, attaching assignments to email, turning in work through Google Classroom, completing assignments on new platforms like NearPod or EdPuzzle, and toggling between articles/screens online challenging and daunting. (Don’t even want to think about what criteria students applied to evaluating sources or locating information… Ack!! [nods to Cathy Guisewite.]) Somehow, all that time spent on SnapChat didn’t prepare them for these tasks or inform them that their behaviors needed to be adapted to different venues.
Assumption 3: Traditional assessments can serve as accurate and appropriate measurements of functional, real-world skills
There is often an assumption made that traditional assessments (e.g. tests and quizzes) given to students are a true reflection of their knowledge and skills. This assumption is an important one to wrestle with as the assessments that get adopted in classrooms and school districts influence teachers’ own evaluations as well their pedagogical objectives. If these assessments are intended to influence teaching and practice, it is paramount that they reflect the true skills that are needed in society.
Blanketing students with technology might have felt proactive in a difficult time, but, as any student of teacher education can attest, applying theories in a vacuum that doesn’t attend to context seldom translates to excellent practice. Instruction must be assessed to determine its value. And so, many questions arise such as:
Moving away from the pandemic, will educators have to change the way they assess academic success/competencies? And….include computer competencies?
What is success and how do educators define it?
What is the functional role of this assessment?
Are the assessment tools fair to all?
What comes of the results?
Does data science have a place in the assessment of students (think baseball metrics à la Moneyball)?
Who decides which assessments are adopted (should students have a say)?
Should there be a distinction between assessment and evaluation?
Contemplating these questions is daunting enough, but the task gets even more overwhelming when one considers that assessment of students’ performance is but one cog in a vast machine. Teachers are assessed formally by administrators, who measure excellence by performance standards and state standards, but they are also assessed by students (who, let’s face it, know a well-executed lesson when they receive one) and parents, (who, let’s face it, judge by how satisfied their children are with their grades). Each level of assessment impacts and influences the other. For example, if teachers are measured by how well they integrate the state curriculum standards into lessons, then they will strive to provide evidence of that measurement by specifically testing students on those standards. But what if students can’t access the material because it’s on an unfamiliar online platform? How can teachers be sure that they are accurately measuring outcomes fairly and equitably for all stakeholders? Are educators really measuring what they need to best serve their students?
The assessments that get adopted influence outcomes and measurements and may serve to fulfill someone’s agenda rather than serve the best interest of students. For example, teachers may value anecdotal assessments such as listening to student group discussions, but as these are hard to measure, they aren’t as viable to administrators, so they aren’t used to gauge student performance even though they may be the best indicator of understanding.
If global pandemics and mandated online digital learning is a trend of the future in education, educators need to determine if traditional forms of assessment will transfer effectively. Both current curricular content and instructional delivery will have to be aligned with future assessment. Will assessments look the same or become drastically different in order to be equitable and accurate? How will educators know if the assessments implemented will provide the hard and precise data needed as feedback to determine if authentic and comprehensive data that conforms to fact and standards is actually being collected? Will time be the best indicator of how educators can and should move forward? Years of research are needed to answer these questions!
Cathy Fraser is a Library Media Specialist at Prospect Mountain High School in Alton, NH.
Anne McQuade is an English language learner teacher in the Manchester, NH School District & Adjunct Faculty at the University of New Hampshire
Laura Allen is a researcher who studies the higher-level cognitive skills that are required for successful text comprehension and production, as well as the ways in which performance in these domains can be enhanced through strategy instruction and training.
References
Dyson, A. H. (1999). Transforming transfer: Unruly children, contrary texts, and the persistence of the
pedagogical order. Review of Research in Education, 24(1), 141-171.
Delpit, Lisa. (2013). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. New
York: The New Press.
Rich-Kern, S. (2015). A Tablet for Every Child? Business NH Magazine, 32(8), 27–29.
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