Improving

Retention of Content with

Differentiated Instruction and Assessments For Learning
The analysis and recommendations in this paper take cue from the experience and
lessons learned in the public education system that are driving policy and philosophical
changes in assessments. However, it can apply to anyone involved in the delivery of
education from public schools, to corporate training and skills development.
After an overview on how assessments policies have evolved, we describe the facets of
a new cohesive learning and assessment system to help educators implement
differentiated instruction with assessments for learning, not just for grading, ultimately to
achieve the goal of making sure learners actually learn what is being taught.

Introduction
For many years in the past, teaching and learning have been regarded as two different
processes. It is the trainer’s or teacher’s job to teach and it’s the student’s job to learn,
and accordingly assessments are used only
to grade students. Whether as final tests or
assessments done throughout a term, they
are all counted toward the final grade of a
student.
The theory behind this had been that all
learners learn the same way: if they pay
attention in the training room or class they will
learn, and they will learn at same pace. So,
the assessments are to measure their comprehension of the material taught and a
measure of their willingness to learn and apply themselves.
Even the best teachers and lecturers may teach well for some students, in the sense
that some students ‘get it’, but for others students it is a different story.
Pedagogical experts advocate that these differences in learning retention or
comprehension may not be because of the varying IQs of students but because of the
enormous differences in student’s backgrounds, baselines, and predisposition to
learning. So, if teaching quality were a function of learning, many schools and
instructors would be and are failing. To put it simply, it is the lack of reality checks that is
causing the gap between teaching and learning.

Presented at the Assessment Tomorrow 2016 Conference in London City (March 2016)
https://www.slideshare.net/libercloud/differentiated-instruction-with-assessments-for-learning-59347906
 Improve retention of learning content with Differentiated Instruction and Assessments for Learning

The recommendations that follow provide a methodology for using Assessments in a

more strategic way to incorporate reality checks that give immediate feedback on the
process and achieve a more symbiotic relationship between teaching and learning, and
ultimately the ability to differentiate instruction for different group of students.

The way we were…

Those who went to school or college in the 80’s and 90’s must have experienced
varying degree of ‘disconnect’ with the docents body. In the country I grew up, we had
the dreadful ‘interrogations’ that consisted in verbal tests when teachers would grill you
and quiz you and give you a ‘score’ that ended up in the grade book with dark
undeletable ink. In general they would happen once or twice a month, seldom more
often, but it was not unusual for a teacher to surprise the class on a given day and
interrogate instead of lecture. Interrogations were only on material covered during the
previous month or so and a student would therefore be tested only on part of the course
material covered.
Lectures would usually be a one-way delivery of information with teachers rarely
checking in on students in class to see if they ‘got it’ and assuming if the students just
listened they did.

“Swiss cheese” learning

This methodology almost encouraged students to focus on learning just before they
were supposed to be called up, and if you were called up in one of those surprise days,
bad luck. Most students learned how to work the system by taking their chances and
succeeded, but their learning suffered in loosing the opportunity to learn better, and lots
of material was just memorized for the moment. This was Swiss cheese learning for the
obvious holes in learning that the system encouraged.

Teaching to the test and learning how to test

What has happened in more recent years is that students had to learn to work the
system in a different way when multiple-choice tests started to gain ground and were
used in place of or as a complementary assessment to the time consuming interrogation
method. Teaching and learning were still two different distinct processes and many
students learned how to pass the tests even if they understood little but remembered a
lot. Primary use of multiple-choice tests was still on measuring and doing assessments
after the supposed learning has occurred but not while learning occurred.
The multiple-choice tests became the cornerstone of standardize testing, certifications,

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 Improve retention of learning content with Differentiated Instruction and Assessments for Learning

and end of term summative assessments which are still being used today. The major
change that occurred through the years with the advent of computers, computer
networks, and the internet was to move the tests to a digital form that made it easier to
check results, monitor usage, and prevent some but not all cheating in the process.
Furthermore, the advent of the standardized multiple choice tests caused ripples in the
education system because schools everywhere were afraid of loosing funds if they
didn’t meet the standard. So the pressure was high to make sure students rated well on
these tests and teaching focused on how to pass the tests, disregarding the fact that
students still might not be learning to their fullest potential.
One of the cornerstones of this policy in the United States was the
No Child Left Behind education bill in 2001 whose admirable goals
were to give children in all corners, including handicapped children,
the opportunity to gain a degree.
“NCLB supported standards-based education reform based on
the premise that setting high standards and establishing
measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in
education….” (Wikipedia)
While teachers started teaching to the tests, students also were
learning how to test by honing memorization skills that allowed
them to pass tests even without fully understanding the concepts
and therefore the ability to apply them
Clip from the San Jose Mercury
Mile-wide-one-inch deep education News (December 2015).

In fact, critics had been arguing that standardized multiple choice tests encouraged
teachers to teach a narrow subset of skills that the school believed increased test
performance, rather than achieving in-depth understanding of the overall curriculum.
Eventually the No Child Left Behind guidelines are being superseded with new ones, the
Common Core, that place more emphasis on measuring critical thinking and shift the
focus of success or failure of students from schools to teachers. Still, the flaw and wrong
message these bills send is that they put less emphasis or none at all on the learning
process itself and formative assessments that must go with it.
There is no disagreement on the necessity to use assessments to measure knowledge
and skills. However, assessments should be a normal part of the learning process to
help teachers gauge assimilation of knowledge and skills and make sure that every
student succeeds.

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Assessments should be a tool for both teachers and students. Instead of being
intimidating and fear provoking, assessments should be a playful way to help both
teachers and students identify strengths and weaknesses and what areas to focus on to
achieve subject proficiency. This is referred as Formative Assessment.

Diagnostic, Formative and Summative Assessments

Much has been written in the past two decades about the learning process and how
each student learns differently and at a different pace. Didactic methods like the flipped
classroom, blended learning, and differentiated instruction all came from this basic
notion that all students in schools and in the workplace learn differently.
Luminaries and forward-thinking educators have been adamant that the assessment
“policies”, and the continuous testing to show students are meeting standards, has done
little to improve education or skills because of their disregard to these basic notions, and
to the different backgrounds, social and economic status.
Diagnostic and formative assessments are the new methods advocated to ensure that
learning and assessments processes have a more symbiotic relationship where reality
checks are part of the process and learning content becomes part of the assessment
process. Confronting the reality that teaching was not just a delivery of concepts or facts
that students had to understand and remember in a rote manner, but instead a process
of helping students acquire critical skills to help them relate and apply what they
learned. Using learning content during assessment, not hide it, because what you’re
measuring is not what you taught but rather how that information is applied.
Formative and summative assessments are both needed in the learning process and
one cannot be emphasized at the expense of the other.
Summative assessments are typically graded activities and are conducted at the end of
predefined learning paths. These are “assessments of learning”, learning that has
already occurred. Summative assessments are what learners have been accustomed
for decades and serve as an evaluation of students’ learning at the end of a period, i.e.
the mid-term, the final, or a certification test. The SAT and ACT are summative
assessments.
Formative assessments on the other hand are used to monitor progress toward
achieving the goal of mastering a topic and serve students and teachers as a
continuous feedback loop to achieve that goal. These are “assessments for learning”.
Formative assessments are low risk activities in the sense that they have no
repercussion on a student’s final grade or certification. They inform the educator how to

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modify the instruction and tell the students the areas they need to improve, without fear
of losing points on the final grade. They become practice for students to get better at a
given subject or skill, and they provide rapid and continuous feedback to teachers and
instructors on students’ assimilation of materials to guide them on future instruction. If
students have no fear of being graded on formative assessments, they have all the
inclination to try their best instead of cheating or trying to work the system.
But how does an educator know what each student’s learning path should be. This is
what the diagnostic assessments are for. Before learning starts, teachers have to
diagnose what each student understands and does not understand on a given topic,
and what their strengths and weaknesses are. This data helps the educator create the
appropriate learning paths for each student or group of students. Each learning path is
created based on existing learning content, new material created or assembled for the
purpose, or impromptu material with and by the students, with each learning path setting
the goal of achieving mastery on a particular topic or subject.
By putting more emphasis on critical thinking skills in learning rather than memorizing
facts in rote fashion, with students having to recognize similarity of objects or situations,
derive conclusions from a set of facts, solve problems based on what they know, not
what they don’t know, then these assessments can become moments of learning
themselves (assessments as learning). Moments of learning that can help improve the
next round of learning, with the same class or with a different class.

Leveraging learning content in assessments

A student’s ability to learn more is strictly depending on what the student already knows.
In the case of diagnostic assessments, the material may represent what is going to be
learned in the next period, or if not available, what was used in a similar period in the
past. Knowing what students already know will determine their learning path. It’s not just
a matter of efficiency in creating assessments but also getting accurate assessment
results, and using past learning content is the best method to achieve that.
For formative assessments the ability to leverage learning content is also important. If
what the student knows and has learned must be applied and needed to derive answers
to prove critical thinking growth, relying on existing learning content allows students to
focus on reasoning and problem solving, rather memorizing. Basically, if students must
be able to connect the dots, assessments must show them the dots.
While this is very much relevant for both diagnostic and formative assessments, even
summative assessments can leverage on past learning content if the purpose of the test
is in measuring students’ ability to think critically.

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The Blended Learning and Assessment Platform

To properly implement this new
assessment strategy, as it relates to
creating personalized learning paths
and be able to measure progress in
order to achieve maximum success in
summative assessments, an educator
must rely on a system that assembles
the set of features and capabilities to
easily create personalized learning
paths with interactive multi-media
content, and be able to create any type
of assessment.
Relying on such a cohesive and holistic system not only makes it easier but it reduces
the amount of effort required to implement the new learning and assessment policies. A
system that seamlessly integrates content workflows, assessment workflows, and real-
time collaboration and communication to maximize educator’s effectiveness and
efficiency as well as increasing student’s engagement.

A system specifically designed for teaching and measuring learning that…

• Provides the ability to create content that can be leveraged during the learning
process and that can be shared with other teachers or students.
• Allows the creation of impromptu content, e.g. the demonstration of a concept or
situation, using a tablet or a whiteboard, by teachers or students, and that can be re-
used in subsequent learning.
• Allows creation of practice tests, non-graded tests, and grading tests.
• Supports both closed and open questions based on multiple criteria and supports
freeform open questions to stimulate creative thinking.
• Gives immediate feedback to teachers and students during tests and allows rapid
polls and surveys for real-time assessments using devices which teachers and
students already have.
• Provides teachers the ability to comment and provide individualized feedback in real-
time.
• Allows working on group assignments as well as individual assignments.
• Allows collaboration amongst students in real-time, e.g. on writing essays as well as
brainstorming concepts on a virtual whiteboard.
• Allows repeating of tests and flexibility to easily modify test scores to account for

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external factors.
• Allows the incorporation of assessments in learning content and the reuse of
learning content in assessments.
• Last and not least, the ability to create learning paths organically by simple drag-
and-drop of content and be able to personalized them just as easily.

In the absence of such system, the educators would be left to assemble disparate
systems on their own, or none at all, and may end up focusing on certain aspects rather
than on the complete learning process for lack of time and risk falling back on the easier
and unsuccessful paths of the past.

Bring Your Own Device … to school

In regards to increasing student’s engagement in the
learning process, one particular feature of the platform has
shown to increase student’s engament: allowing students
to use their smartphones in learning and assessments.
A recent article on the Wall Street Journal analyzed the Clip from the Wall Street Journal (February 2016).
positive outcome in schools in the United States when
students where allowed to use their smartphones in the classroom.
The article points to some revealing and important realities that can undoubtedly
increase their engagement in the learning process:
• 90% of students (at least in the USA) have a smartphone.
• Students are always logged on, allowing them for example to take an assessment
while on the bus to or from the school. It’s an incredible time saver for students too.
• Many students can type as fast or even faster on a smartphone than on a laptop and
can even take on research projects on their small device.

For those who don’t own one, schools are making available loaners or shared devices,
or use a loaner laptop. Provided that there must be some specific ground rules to
prevent abuse of messaging and other non-learning specific apps in the classroom, and
requiring self-control, the benefit of engagement far outweigh the risk of distractions or
consequences if the ground rules are violated.

LiberCloud
LiberCloud was designed with all of the above aspects in mind and make it easier to
create symbiotic teaching and learning processes that meet the needs of both teachers
and students, and ultimately increase assimilation of learning content. Its Assessments

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and Virtual Whiteboard collaboration platform helps educators easily personalize

teaching and learning, make educators more effective and efficient, while students feel
more engaged and empowered for their own learning.

References and Bibliography

There are many bloggers online and books that have written on the subject of formative assessments.
Here is a list of recent books with examples and techniques to start using formative assessments (we
have no relation with the authors or editors of the books):
• Rethinking Grading by Cathy Vatterott (2015)
nd
• Science Formative Assessments by Page Keeley – 2 edition (2015)
• Learning Assessment Techniques by Elizabeth F. Barkley and Claire Howell Major (2016)

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