Progress Evaluation: How to Help Students Track Their Learning?

Sometimes, students come to the classroom without an idea of what is happening. This is a common situation for most learners: they don’t know where they are and what to expect. Some of them are unsure that they understand the task requirements, the others don’t know if they do everything correctly. This is a heavy feeling for learners, and we believe that educators need to swap it out!

How to encourage and help students to track their learning and evaluate their progress? One of the most efficient ways to do that is by using an assessment-capable strategy. This strategy encourages learners to ask themselves the following questions:

• Where am I now?
• Where do I want to be?
• How to get there?

To answer these questions, one should have information at hand. Gladly, in the modern digitalized world, writing essay services have a plenty of tools and apps to record, store, and share data. For instance, Google Forms and Sheets can help educators gather information from learners and use it to answer the questions stated above in your essay.

Google Forms for efficient real-time evaluation

We focus on Google Forms because this is a widely-used and extremely simple tool. Most teachers already use it to gather such data as contact details, health problems, and other information about their learners. However, this tool can be used for more purposes, including learning evaluation.

There is a technique some educators may want to try:

• Create a Google Form as a project pre-assessment. State 2-4 questions for every learning goal you are going to focus on. Provide four response variants – three should be based on the content, and one should sound like “I don’t know.”
• To have a clear idea of students’ current understanding of the subject, encourage them to use the last answer honestly. Instead of guessing the correct answer, they should acknowledge that they don’t know something at this moment. Tell them that it is absolutely fine to be a beginner and have a lack of knowledge. Students might think that picking the “Don’t know” answer will make them look silly, but if they try to guess, they will have a chance to choose the correct answer. Explain that the primary purpose of this practice is to focus on the learning process rather than marks.
• After the project is done, create the same Google Form and state the same questions. Students will see how they grow in their knowledge, which is extremely motivating for both of you.

How to track learning with Google Sheets?

Google Sheets can become an excellent Learning Chart, where students can answer the questions from the first paragraph of this article. After completing a project or two, they will answer the question “Where am I?” easier. With the help of Google Classroom, you can help students access both Google Sheets and Google Forms. With their help, educators and learners will track the progress and understanding, connecting and evaluating data from both apps. Doing so, you will see where students are concerning the current project or unit, what are the difficulties they face, and how to get through them.

To complete Google Sheets, students should reflect on the information from Google Chart and answer the questions, entering new data. This will include a mixture of pre- and post-project information. Seeing their own progress is extremely motivating and encouraging for learners (as well as for their teachers).

Today, there are many digital apps and tools to use in a classroom. Not only can they improve the learning process itself, but also they help to reflect on learning as a process. We have chosen Google Sheets and Google Forms because they include most instruments needed to implement these strategies in the classroom. While these two are pretty efficient, you are welcome to try some other tools and expand your digital arsenal.