Weston Students Complete First Project Challenge Assessment

The first step in was completed as school ended, with results indicating that the initiative is essential to bring Weston students in line with other nations’ students’ critical thinking skills.

Teachers, administrators and Columbia University staff reviewed the results over a period of two days. Over 90 eleventh graders took the test, which lasted almost three hours.

The assessment, which was developed in the spring with Columbia’s researchers over a period of several weeks, asked students to take provided artifacts and existing knowledge and apply it to a popular social networking company.

Specifically, the task asked students to take global socioeconomic and technological needs into consideration and apply the issues to the "digital divide," according to Assistant Superintendent Thomas Scarice.

Patch attended a May meeting where the assessment was being developed. The Columbia and Weston staff agreed that the assessment needed to have a “hook” to capture the students’ interest.

They also agreed that the assessment questions must “address something deeper than facts,” and should include values, ethics and morals considerations in addition to factual recall and applied knowledge.

The students were divided into 3 groups, each of which had access to a variety of tools. The first group required students to work individually; the second group allowed students to collaborate with each other; the third was allowed to collaborate and use online resources.

The use of the artifacts and resources that were provided to the students would determine their use in the future and how the teachers should change their approach.

While the students were told in advance that the assessment was an experiment, they were not given any additional information about it.

“Had we rehearsed this project in advance, they would have scored much higher,” Scarice said.

“The entire project was predicated upon knowledge transfer,” Scarice added.  In the future, “they won’t just learn information, they will learn the capacity to think creatively, and they can apply those capacities to innovate.”

In addition to getting a first glimpse into how well Weston’s students could apply learned facts to a new situation, the results are being used to “establish a learning criteria,” according to Scarice.

“The rubric will analyze critical thinking and creative thinking capacities,” he added.

The students were a mix of all achievement levels. Scarice indicated that while some students performed as expected,  “many students” didn’t do well. However, there were surprise results in each group.

“We interviewed the students afterward and were surprised at how many comments showed a deep understanding of the assignment,” he said.

The team has not decided how to share the results with the students who took the assessment, and will meet at the end of the summer to analyze the results.

Nevertheless, the team observed an essential need for students to learn to use their knowledge base in a more “agile” way, so their learned facts can be applied to a non-standard situation, as occurs in the “real world,” Scarice noted.

“They need more work,” Scarice said firmly. “The results justified the entire project.”

The teachers were very excited about the project, according to Scarice. Three science teachers and one English teacher administered the assessment.

“They think we’re onto something really cool,” he said. “Everyone involved with the project said that they won’t ever teach the same way again.”