Skills-Based
Assessment & Reporting

Confidential Evidence Tracking System with Full Transparency

Traditional percent-based scoring obfuscates mastery of individual learning objectives. Alternative skills-based grading practices allow for more granular analysis of student progress, but are notoriously complicated to report out for students and parents

I built this proof-of-concept system of individualized views to ensure learners had full private access to meaningful performance data without reporting delays.

Using a system adapted from Peter Liljedahl's research in Building a Thinking Classroom, I divided all the learning objectives for the course into discrete competencies and proficiency levels. Learners received a syllabus with clear descriptions of each learning objective and the levels of proficiency.

I recorded my observations in a mostly traditional chronological assignment grid, tagging assignments to applicable objectives. Additional views allowed sorting and separating data by category so I can view all of a learners' relative performances across multiple tasks.

This prototype leveraged the ability to link Google Sheets with the Google Classroom feature that duplicates files for individual course members, so each learner would have their own private view of their portion of my performance records in real time.

It wasn't the most elegant of solutions, but thanks to the granularity of cell permissions and some of the quirks of Google Classroom groups, learner privacy was preserved.

I shared the graphic to the right in a Twitter conversation with the researcher where others were contemplating how to improve the timeliness of their communication with students.

Architectural overview of the prototype