Before your PD program really got started, you gave some sort of assessment to your participants to determine each individual's starting point. Then, your participants began to develop new 21st century skills. However, you have a few loose ends to tie up when it comes to monitoring your participants.
You need to decide:
- How often will you assess your participants' progression? - You have already given them an initial assessment, will you assess them again after a set amount of weeks, months or class periods?
- How will you assess your participants? - Will you give them electronic assessments? Or will you opt to personally review their projects or even spontaneously observe their classroom to see how they are integrating the new 21st century skills?
When making these decisions, think about your time, budget and priorities. What will work best for your program? Ideally, it would be nice to be able to witness the various approaches that your teachers will employ in their classrooms. However, that takes a lot of time--time that you may not have.
Online assessments tend to be more convenient for your participants because, as this PD program is an additional responsibility for them, they can do it on their own time. These online assessments also report immediately to both the participant and whoever is running the PD program. They pinpoint exactly where the teacher is meeting or exceeding the benchmarks set by the initial assessment as well as pointing out exactly where improvement is still needed.
Assessments are important to your PD program because they keep all of your participants on track. Assessments also show how your teachers are transferring their new 21st century skills into their classrooms.
Another key part of a successful PD program is to employ a good support system. Next week, we will be addressing how you can provide support to your teachers, and students.
P.D. Tips courtesy of Atomic Learning
