Towards Partnerships for Student Success

This case study project demonstrated the power of teachers partnering with one another in a collaborative manner in an effort to increase student reading readiness. These collaborative partnerships created a new way of thinking about analyzing student reading data. One of the important outcomes was the creation of a common formative assessment system that was used throughout the school. A second outcome was the significant increase in student reading scores. A third outcome was the significant improvement in school culture during the implementation of this change project. All outcomes exemplified how schools can embrace change and make positive strides towards increasing student success and successfully strengthen collaborative cultures and learning partnerships through data use.

Characterizing Student Perceptions of and Buy-In toward Common Formative Assessment Techniques

Formative assessments (FAs) can occur as preclass assignments, in-class activities, or postclass homework. FAs aim to promote student learning by accomplishing key objectives, including clarifying learning expectations, revealing student thinking to the instructor, providing feedback to the student that promotes learning, facilitating peer interactions, and activating student ownership of learning. While FAs have gained prominence within the education community, we have limited knowledge regarding student perceptions of these activities. We used a mixed-methods approach to determine whether students recognize and value the role of FAs in their learning and how students perceive course activities to align with five key FA objectives. To address these questions, we administered a midsemester survey in seven introductory biology course sections that were using multiple FA techniques. Overall, responses to both open-ended and closed-ended questions revealed that the majority of students held positive perceptions of FAs and perceived FAs to facilitate their learning in a variety of ways. Students consistently considered FA activities to have accomplished particular objectives, but there was greater variation among FAs in how students perceived the achievement of other objectives. We further discuss potential sources of student resistance and implications of these results for instructor practice.