St. Albert students and teachers sat down this week to take part in a grand experiment in how the province tests for learning.
Local Grade 3 students and teachers joined thousands of others across Alberta this week to test-drive the province's first Student Learning Assessments.
The tests, which replace the decades-old Provincial Achievement Tests, are being piloted in about 95 per cent of Alberta's schools this fall, said Sean Wells, director of achievement testing for Alberta Education and lead on the SLA project. If they work, they'll replace the PATs by next fall.
The old PATs were subject-based written tests that students in grades three, six and nine took at the end of the school year, Wells explained.
The SLAs are written and computer-based tests that look at literacy and numeracy – skills necessary for learning – rather than a specific subject, Wells said.
"There are no time limits for any of the (test) components," Wells said, and teachers can break up the test to fit their schedules.
Cherie Brown, a Grade 3 teacher at Neil M. Ross School, likened the old PATs to an autopsy: they told you what a student knew after it was too late for the teacher to do anything about it.
"Looking at the SLAs, we're looking more at a diagnostic and where to go for the year," she said – since they're at the start of the year, you can use the rest of it to address any gaps in knowledge you spot.
Whole different animal
The new tests are radically different from the old ones, sample questions provided by the province suggest.
The first half of the test is done on computer, which lets questions incorporate video clips and interactive elements such as drag-and-drop words and virtual scales.
Renée DeWitt, also a teacher at Neil M. Ross School, said she was skeptical of the computer test at first, but was shocked by how well the kids took to it.
"As soon as it started, it was dead silent."
The digital tests engage all the visual, audio, and tactile learners in a class, Brown said. All but one of her students said afterward that they would rather do this digital test than a pencil-and-paper one.
The digital tests can be marked within a day for fast feedback, Wells said.
Instead of getting an overall score, parents and teachers will get to see exactly what questions a student got right or wrong, the difficulty level of those questions, and what concepts those questions tested, said David Quick, assistant superintendent of learning services for the Catholic district. Parents and teachers can then put plans in place to address a student's weaknesses.
The second half of the test is known as the performance task, Quick said. Instead of the old "read this passage and write an essay on it" sort of challenge, the performance task presents students with information, puts them in a scenario and asks them to figure out an answer.
"It's very open ended," he said.
"There is not necessarily one right answer."
One sample task provided by the province asked students to figure out how to sell cupcakes at a farmers' market. Students had to create a plan to sell the cupcakes using certain sizes of boxes, explain why the cakes would fit in the boxes, and create a story question for another student based on this scenario.
This sort of self-reflection and analysis was never required on the old tests, Quick said. Instead of asking "do you know this fact," these questions challenge students to think, reason and solve real-world problems.
Companies want these sorts of creative and analytical skills, DeWitt said.
"If you can teach it to somebody else and explain why you did it that way, you really understand the concept in depth."
Big time commitment
The new tests take a lot longer to mark than the old ones, Quick explains – about 45 minutes per student for the performance task alone, he estimates, or more than double what it took to mark the written response portion of the old tests.
"It is a significant amount of time."
The tests also take longer to write. Although the province said students should need just 50 minutes to finish the performance task, DeWitt said some of hers students needed all day.
The time commitment these tests required was probably their biggest drawback, DeWitt said. Still, the lack of a time limit was a huge boon to students who struggled under time pressure – some of hers scored in the 90 per cent range on the digital test. The information teachers get from the tests could also help them streamline their lessons to make up time later, she added.
The question now is whether the information teachers get from these tests is worth the time it takes to do them, Quick said.
Teachers will have from Sept. 29 to Oct. 24 to administer the tests, with final results expected by Nov. 26, Wells said.
The tests can definitely be improved, but DeWitt said she'd give them a B grade at this point.
"There were way more positives than negatives."
Visit education.alberta.ca for more on the SLAs.
