No Examinations, Now What?

So here we are, in the midst of a pandemic.  I know that I should be slowing down and taking a breath, but from my surveys - the majority of MY students are bored and are worried about next year.  I have phoned home and talked with the parents who are undergoing crisis. I have adjusted the course for those students.

For the rest of the students - we are trying to think of a final summative to replace the exam.  Here were some characteristics of the ideal assessment:

• fair 
• representative of students' ability 
• self reflective 
• help students make connections between big ideas of the course (especially quadratics)

Enter the portfolio.

I played with it last year because of @mrcedward's amazing guidance for me.  Here is the result of one student's portfolio last year, which only a few students decided to take on.

The students' work blew me away.  It showed that some of my students demonstrate knowledge better in this format than testing - which can create anxiety and muddles the accuracy of the assessment.

We decided (click here for a working draft) that the audience of the students' portfolio was their future teacher and their future selves.  They are to create a display portfolio that demonstrates their fulfillment of the expectations with a self reflection piece on what their strengths and weaknesses are.

I know the students technically could work with each other, but the annotation required should help reduce the copying that is done.

Now it's time to build in some early checkpoints for our students, as portfolios for mathematics might be a little different for our students.  I'll let you know how those go!