As we’re changing our focus in education from “teaching” to “learning”, getting a fuller understanding of learners’ view of self is becoming more important than ever before. Some learners may think highly of their learned skills and knowledge and some feel the opposite, thinking of themselves much less than they should.
As a part of educating students, we educators do need to understand what learners think of themselves, and may have to help them re-adjust it. Being able to help them “self-assess” their skills is a great way to go about it.
There are multiple other benefits of student self assessment. If students are forced to self-assess, they are more likely to take a deeper look into themselves and as a result, a deeper dive into the subject, learning more to give themselves a higher evaluation.
Additionally, but doing self-assessment, we’re helping them bring their subconscious skills to the conscious-level, being able to articulate their deep knowledge and learning. There are many other methods in doing so, reflective assignments are perfect examples. Self-assessments do play a role in understanding self as well.
Finally, self assessments open a window to understanding our students better, and may give us a chance to direct them in their course of study. Most learners, actually most people, are not good at understanding their strengths as well as their weaknesses, and put their efforts in strengthening their strengths and ignoring their weaknesses. Learning outcomes will suffer at the end, and employers are left unhappy, and the vicious cycle continues.
How to enable self-assessments in iRubric:
Self assessments with iRubric are available in both courses and ePortfolios/competency matrices and can be enabled at the same time a rubric is assigned.
Let the students know that you value their self-assessments and have to be truthful as best they can, that their self-assessments will not impact their actual evaluation by you and is only to give you a better understanding of them, and that their self-assessments are confidential. And practice this, i.e., don’t look at their self-assessment until after you have evaluated them, don’t change your evaluation based on their self assessment, give them constructive advice as you always have without being judgmental, and of course, keep it confidential. If a student thinks highly of themselves in a certain area, but you don’t, let them know why their skills are not at the level they think, and what they can do to improve them. And if they are skillful and don’t think so highly of themselves, find ways to give them the confidence they need to succeed in life. This goes for all levels of education, from K-12 to PhD. Our job as educators is to teach them skills they need for their careers, and also life skills that can go with it. Being about to self-assess, reflect on learning, and analyze criticism is all a part of it.
We would love to hear your opinions. Feel free to post your thoughts, give us feedback on our “self-assessment” features, and let us know how you use it and how you use it to improve the learning of your students.
Happy teaching.
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