You may have noticed that SLM is spending quite a bit of time on assessment lately, especially on the “Nudging” pages. With the twin reforms of accountability and, for most states, Common Core Standards, librarians are no longer exempt from measuring the impact of their learning.

The scenario below may be familiar to many librarians. How do librarians fit into the end-of-project ecosystem? What should they be assessing when they look at student work? In what balance?

Should students know in advance how they will be graded? Should rubrics and checklists be used to guide students into understanding teacher expectations, or does that backfire, accidentally setting minimum expectations? Should feedback be quantitative or qualitative? Measured in the project itself or reflected in students’ scores on standardized test questions regarding library skills or information literacy?

Today is the last day to submit your ideas to the “Nudging Toward Inquiry” column on Formative Assessment. Poor fictional Julie below could use your help!

Thanks!

The assessment heat has been turned up in schools, and many school librarians are being asked to assess students. Yet our time with students is limited. Many librarians are already using Google Forms (a feature of Google Docs) with the Flubaroo extension to quickly create and then have Flubaroo auto-grade the results.

How could this be used as an end-of-class formative assessment tool?

(And by the way, how are you using formative assessment? We’re dying to know!)

Here’s a three-minute demo:

via @rachelthereader who reminded me of this tool that @libraryraya pointed me to last year