Deeper Learning 2019

We know that the most common forms of assessment today — the unit test, midterm, final exam — are not necessarily the best way to determine what a student has learned deeply. We also know that visuals can bring clarity, support thinking, and make the abstract more concrete. Using a visual approach, this session will highlight recent research in assessment and allow participants to see beyond the test to more effective and equitable ways to measure student understanding.

The session will be facilitated by Dr. Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Co-Founder of Challenge Success, and Kawai Lai, Co-Founder and Executive Director of VizLit and former VP of Innovation for National Association of Independent Schools. Dr. Pope and Ms. Lai are frequent speakers at education conferences and lead interactive, high energy sessions that offer research-based content with a visual lens towards practical applications in the classroom for all learners.

As a way to relate the research to practice, we start by asking participants to visualize the challenges and successes related to assessment that they’ve faced in their own classrooms. We will discuss and conceptualize the differences between traditional assessment and performance assessment, and review a backwards design process that can help participants better align enduring understandings, essential questions, and multiple forms of assessments. We will provide models of innovative approaches to make assessment more authentic and accurate, and we will ask participants to work together to practice assessment skills that can be incorporated into their current curricula.

Participants will leave with a deeper understanding about the role of assessment and a visual toolkit of practical strategies and innovative approaches to re-think how they might more equitably engage and evaluate students to support deep learning for all learners.