Transcript: Hi, everyone. I'm Janee Blake, and welcome to my discussion of the benefits of multimodal assessments in the 21st Century high school English classroom. So, as I detailed on my website, I essentially took a journey where I was studying the effects and the benefits of incorporating multimodal learning as well as multimodal assessments via project into my classroom. So throughout this journey, I learned so many things that I wanted to reflect on and discuss.
During this podcast, the first thing I want to address is my thoughts on the results of my study I did. So, just to clarify, when I did my study, all I was doing was looking at students' results after taking a Unit One assessment, which consisted of six multiple-choice questions that were all standards-based and one constructive response question. All of the questions were based on or about passages that were what we call cold reads, which are passages that students have never seen before. This is, also just FYI, this assessment was not an assessment that I created on my own. It was an assessment that was created by our district office and passed down or passed along to teachers. And it was something that they pretty much wanted us to give the students to assess their knowledge of the standards, the anchor standards for Unit 1. After that, I then gave them a multimodal based project which I created and it was called the Purple Hibiscus Culture Project. Which is the novel that we read for the unit. And essentially the project because it was pretty much tied directly to one of the standards, but it was asking students to pretty much examine the cultural experience of the characters in Purple Hibiscus. Being that Purple Hibiscus is set in Nigeria, which is a very different culture belief system that traditionally have been involved, while there's also a large Muslim and Christian population there. But, when you look at the traditional Ibo religion, the language there, and some of the other cultural aspects, some of it was very different for my students, since I am in the United States, in the state of Georgia. So, the project required them to analyze the aspects of culture that I identified and pretty much outlined for them in the assignment sheet. And they had to analyze those aspects of culture based on what happened in the novel, looking at the characters, their lives, and of course, using quotes to support their opinion. But, then they also had to analyze those aspects of culture in their own life and kind of like, make a comparison between what their belief system, their culture, their rituals, their routines, their values. They had to compare that to the values, the culture, cultural beliefs that they saw in Purple Hibiscus. And personally, I felt like that was a very useful and powerful way for students to analyze the text, looking for cultural elements and how culture can affect a person's perspective while also examining how their own culture has affected them.
So, the idea was that the assignment would get them to think a little bit more deeply, not only about the character. But about themselves. So going back now, I do want to talk first about the results. After analyzing the data, I did come up with or notice a few things that I want to mention. The first thing I noticed was that despite students being taught lessons connected to the standards and this is pertaining to the unit exam, the majority of students still did not, as they say, meet expectations. And all of the charts, especially here in the school systems I've been in here in Georgia, did not meet expectations essentially means that a student scored a 70 or below. I did find that to be telling because we had lessons, like the theme lesson, specific to the standards. We had a lot of discussion about culture, cultural perspectives, pointing out different aspects of culture as we read. But despite that, some students still struggled on that exam. And remember, the exam technically, is supposed to be my tool, the tool that I use to assess student success or progress on the standards that I taught. I did find that problematic, just in general. I also noticed that the African American population of my students, as well as my special education students, suffered greatly on that Unit One Exam. Both groups averaged 56% or less or on the Unit One Exam. So this kind of just caused me to really pay attention to the disparity that can sometimes be in place when students are being asked to take these subjective multiple-choice tests on these cold reads, meaning they haven't been taught anything about the text. It's essentially them looking at their reading comprehension and their ability to read context clues to help them figure out what the answer is, and those students that did not, or do not, have those skills suffered. And of course we could also get into the researched bias or biases included in or associated with giving students these kinds of subjective multiple-choice tests. So, I did find that problematic as well.
I also noticed that more students excelled on the Purple Hibiscus Culture project and more students were able to display their knowledge in a variety of ways, while still incorporating their out-of-school modes. So there are different semiotic modes that students can use, or that they do use in their every day life. This project did give them the opportunity to bring some of that in, and especially students who enjoy social media, who like memes, who like to express themselves via image, to make meaning, using images, using video. So it just gave them an opportunity to bring in some of the skills that they have and that they utilize when they're outside of school, which I thought was very important, of course, is one of the staples of multimodal learning. So, all I did was apply that to the assessing or the assessment part of the class as well. So while I did, of course, think that the project was really valuable, and even when I get to the self-reflection part of it, when students self-reflected, many of them mentioned that. But,I still had some students who didn't buy in to the process and they didn't buy into doing this kind of project. And so I did have some students that just opted out, essentially, and that adversely affected their grades. So, that part I did find to be an issue too. And then just thinking about how can I balance that. So that's something that is kind of a question that's ongoing.
Some of the positives of doing this study are as follows. Number one, I did notice that many of the students expressed more of a connection to the project. They were more enthusiastic and because they bought in, they enjoyed the process more and they were a little bit more excited about doing the assignment. I did allow them to present for extra credit, and I did have many students that have volunteered to do that. And they were happy. And they told me this as well. In some of their self-reflections, they were pleased by being able to share a little bit of their culture with the class. So, I thought that that was very valuable. Another positive is that students were able to share their out-of-school life with me and with the class. Okay? And so that helps to create, number one, a better classroom environment, a better classroom, just better classroom expectations. And it also helps all of us to understand each other better. When you understand certain things about a student and their religious beliefs, or you understand what some of their rituals and routines are, what some of their values are, you are able to relate to them better. So, I felt that that was really important, them sharing that about themselves and their family because it's just going to create a warmer, more inviting classroom environment, which also then would lend to their learning. I also thought it was a positive that at least some students did see value in the project, and they expressed that in their self-reflection. Many times, I've heard students say things like, why are we doing this? I don't want to do this. I don't see why this is important. So, to see students actually say that it's valuable and take it seriously, I thought that was very important as well. And it kind of lent to students being able to produce a quality product because they were so invested. As far as the self-reflections go, I was able to see the students' perceptions of themselves, what they perceived, especially when it comes to assessment, what they perceive as their strengths. and what they perceive as their weaknesses. And I think that's something that every teacher needs to know. If the teacher can get the student to tell you because that allows the teacher to pay a little bit more attention to the places where a student feels weak, but also have an awareness of where they are strong so that you have a healthy balance there. And if you are going to do something that you know a student is weak in, because they told you, now you can address it much better and much easier than you would have if the student had not shared that information.
Also with the project, students were able to give in-depth responses that really demonstrated their depth of knowledge and also the fact that they did include multimedia to add to that meaning. So, making meaning with images and practicing that skill was important because I still don't think my students were comfortable with it. I will say that they did become comfortable with creating meaning or making meaning with the images. I don't think they got quite far enough to really become comfortable, with using outside video to supplement and add to their meaning. So, that is something that I would want to address and examine. But even so, I do think that the work that we did was valuable because they really were starting to be able to integrate images that really helped to amplify the meaning that they were creating and also being able to show me, as the classroom teacher, what they've learned using that additional mode.
Now, let's talk a little bit about some of the negatives. 21% of my students did not complete the project, which I think is a high number and it's something that was concerning. I will say that in my experience, by the end of the semester, about 15% of that 21% will end up doing the project for late credit. But, I also feel like that won't have the same impact because they will have been so far removed from the unit that at that point they're just doing a project. But, I think that the learning piece of it being that we're talking about a novel alongside of their own lives in that moment, going through that process with no gap between them reading the novel and doing the project, it would have been better for those students to complete it on time to get that full experience. I did also notice that, and some students said this in their self-reflection. So students who felt intimidated by the project may not have made an attempt at all to do it because they just assumed that they wouldn't be able to. Students who are better at testing, but not as good with translating their multimodal skills, could also be at a disadvantage in this kind of project, kind of going back to what I was talking about previously, the idea that they don't feel like they're creative enough, even if creativity was not necessarily what I was looking for. The perception of doing a project in an English class for many of my students was, I have to be creative to do well, which was not necessarily the case. Also, there could be students at a disadvantage regardless of which assessment is given. So you have students who are better test takers, and then you have students that excel with more project-based learning, and project= based assignments. But how do you balance that to make sure that everyone is being given a fair opportunity to be able to be successful? Also, some students had a fear of fully going outside of the box. This is something I kind of noticed after the fact because they were unfamiliar with doing this kind of assignment in an English class. I did have students say they had never done anything like this. They weren't sure and they were confused about the process because it was different from what they had been asked to do in the past. So, while the students that completed the project definitely tried to do what I asked them to do, I do also feel like maybe they held back a little bit because they weren't quite comfortable enough to totally go outside of the box and really start to bring in those semiotic modes that are not written because they're used to doing so much writing in their English class.
Next, I wanted to talk about some of my AHA moments as I progressed through my project. I did notice that some students were uncomfortable being fully creative with the non-textual components of the project. I had more than one student kind of express it was because they had never been asked to do this kind of project in the way that I was asking them to do it in the past, especially not in an English class. So because I was bringing in different elements, allowing them to use some of their other modes, encouraging them not to just use only text and to incorporate images, videos, memes, whatever clips they felt were relevant, to help them kind of convey their meaning. I feel like some of them still kind of were a little gun-shy and a little hesitant because it wasn't something that they were used to. So, something in the future I would do to address that would be to try, which is continuing to work on these skills, and continuing to do more assignments like this. And I do see that students are getting more and more comfortable with the idea of making meaning in an English class with other modes, instead of solely using text. I also realized that because I did bring in their own lives, their own cultures into the project, some students went out on their own without me telling them to and interviewed relatives so that they could find out more about their own culture and their own life. I didn't consider the idea that when I was asking them about their own culture and their values, rituals, religion, some of the students may not have felt comfortable answering those questions and would need to kind of go outside of their own frame of reference or outside of their own knowledge to be able to find these answers. So, I found that really interesting.
I also saw some hesitance not just because of the semiotic modes, but also because of the requirement to connect their own life. So, some students were uncomfortable with that and I did have to reassure them that they would not be required to share if they didn't want to, which is why I made the presentations optional. I did not want students to feel like they had to share if they weren't comfortable doing that. And some of my students were only comfortable with me reading through their presentation. They didn't want to share with the rest of the class, which I found to be perfectly okay because them sharing it with other people was a bonus, but as long as they were willing to share with me that that was a step in the right direction. I also realized that students who test well, but don't view themselves as creative either didn't want to do the project initially or they were intimidated by it. So,it kind of made me think about how could I make something like this seem less intimidating. And I also, once again, feel like we would be working on these skills even more so than I did this unit beforehand and make students more comfortable bringing in even more assignments than I did. Maybe even doing it more like multiple assignments a week where it's not just written, it's a little bit more creative as far as using various modes, out-of-school modes to bring meaning into the class.
Also, this is something that I kind of knew, but I also didn't really think about too much consciously. But there are students who are aware that they are a good test taker, so as a result, they just prefer them because they know that they'll do well and that it's kind of easy for them. It comes naturally. That was something else that I didn't really think about. It was kind of like an AHA moment when in the self-reflections, students were saying that they preferred to test it because they knew that they would do well because they always have done well. So some of them just being aware of what their natural skills are and what their skill set is that could benefit them the most was interesting to hear it from their perspective. So on the flip side, some of my students really bought into this project because not only were they able to use their multimodal skills, but also to me, most importantly, they were eager to share aspects of their culture with their classmates. So being that they apparently don't often get these opportunities to share who they are and where they come from with their classmates, they were especially excited to be able to do this and then get in front of the class and share it. So I found that to be very encouraging that students were so excited and bought in and so invested in the project because they really, really felt that it related to them, which is what my intention was. So to see that that translated was extremely vindicating and pleasing for me.
Another AHA moment that I had somewhat before I gave the assessments to the students, but I think even more so after was how this multimodal project and multimodal learning in general really does intersect with culturally relevant pedagogy. The idea that in an English class, by finding ways to connect students learning with their life and to have students kind of tie those two things together really can help in making whatever you're reading culturally relevant. So that's something I definitely want to explore more in the future because by the time I finish grading all the projects, I really, really could see that connection when initially when I had the idea, I don't think it was quite as clear.
So as far as my concluding thoughts go, number one, I do feel like I would like to include multimodal learning in general, and more multimodal projects, in my classroom, without eliminating essay writing altogether. Now, as far as the multiple-choice tests, I am not the biggest fan. Still, I would minimize them for sure because I'm not sure that I could just totally eliminate them being what the curriculum is in my current district. But, I do feel like I would have students that are in general level, especially do smaller essays, one pagers, something that's kind of very concrete and direct to the point, even if it's three or four paragraphs, just to help them understand the structure that's needed when writing a persuasive essay. Because that's pretty much what they will have to do when they do take these standardized tests in 11th grade. Because in here in Georgia for this class, we do not have an end-of-course test for World Literature. So I think that does give me some leeway because these students are not being tested at the end of the school year. That would allow me to add more multimodal learning and more projects, even if they're many projects not always summative and of course, as assessments, I would still like to continue to use the multimodal projects as I did for this particular unit. So I just want there to be more of a balance as far as the multimodal aspects of my classroom, I want that to be more incorporated daily and then culminate with the assessment. I also noticed some progression with the second unit because Purple Hibiscus, which was included in the first unit, and that's what the culture project was over. I feel like I got the best results I could get with the amount of time because it was our very first unit. I think students were getting comfortable with this idea of using various modes to make meaning outside of just text. I think I saw more improvement when we moved to our second unit, which is over Asia, and the anchor text is American Born Chinese, which is a graphic novel. And so, of course, that's a multimodal text in itself. Students were, I think, more comfortable with the idea of actually looking at images, making meaning while looking at the images, using images themselves to make meaning, bringing in things like media, bringing in memes, bringing in paintings, bringing in all these outside sources that could relate to what we were reading. Students were much more comfortable for Unit Two than they were for Unit One. And I do credit that to the work that we did in Unit One. I also saw that students were more open to risk and more willing to collaborate with each other and engage when reading and kind of be more relatable to each other. And I do also credit our work in Unit One for that too.
I also have some lingering questions. Number one, how can I balance the use of multimodal learning in my classroom with the expectations of of the county? So of course, them wanting these students to take these multiple-choice tests to prove that they've mastered standards, the expectations that students are writing, whether that be a constructive response, or whether that be more formalized essays, how do I balance that to ensure student needs are being met? That's something I'm going to continue to look at and explore. Also, how do you catch the 20% like I had in my class, of students that are not going to engage or may not engage in the multimodal learning process? As far as when it comes to assessment, students that are intimidated, or they're overwhelmed, or they feel like it's too much work, what are some things I can do to get those students to buy in, to get those students more engaged? And then finally, how do I gain support from my administration? How can I get them to buy into this idea of multimodal learning? I do feel like the results that I got could help in getting that support and getting them to buy into this idea that this is a valid way of assessing student knowledge of the standards, like writing can be and like taking a test could be. This is a valid way to assess student learning. And projects are multimodal. Projects specifically are a way that students can legitimately demonstrate their mastery of the standards. So that's something else that I'm definitely going to be looking at.
In the future, I want to continue this work. I want to continue to bring in multimodal learning. I want to add more multimodal processes to my teaching, which I've been doing by bringing in video clips and trying to make things more relatable, showing them clips like anchoring, as they say, video into my learning, letting students kind of not just read, but listen and watch. Material that's relative to what we're learning using audiobooks as well, more allowing students to have more freedom of choice when it comes to how they create, what kind of product they create. That's another thing. I don't want to just totally discourage the use of text, but I want to give students the option because some students do want to use text more than images, but I want them to have the option and just learn how to blend so that it's not all text, all written. And there's a way for them to learn how to be comfortable using the other modes that they comfortably use at home, in school. Because I think that's how you get the best possible results that you can get from students when you approach it in that way. Thank you for listening. I hope that maybe you got something from the discussion of my results, and hopefully you're motivated to bring multimodal assessments into your classroom if you haven't already done so. This is Janee Blake, and I'm signing out.