Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Joseph Scogin
Introduction
Being fresh out of college with a degree in elementary education, I am always looking for
ways and ideas for my future classroom to run efficiently. Efficient in not only instruction but
also assessing whether the instruction was valuable or lacking. As of writing this report, I do not
have a formal teaching job lined up for the future but aspire to one day run an elementary
classroom that fosters my student’s passion for learning. Not having a classroom of my own as
of writing this did initially provide a challenge when the time came to start collecting data and
completing my research. Fortunately, one of my close friends and former peer in the Spadoni
College of Education at Coastal Carolina was open to working with me to complete this exciting
endeavor. Mrs. Grace Batten is a 2nd Grade teacher at Pee Dee Elementary School in Horry
County. Due to my lack of formal education setting with learners, she was willing to facilitate
my research and assist me in collecting and administering the assessments and activities
As unfortunate and devastating the Coronavirus Pandemic has been on the world, it has
inadvertently caused every branch of education to take a closer look at how they do things.
College professors posted lectures online, high schools gave students their own Chromebook to
attend classes online, and elementary students stayed sat in one spot in their house attending
video chats with their class to complete their school instruction and work. Now, the days of
distance learning may be behind us, but the impact of it is still being felt and a paradigm is
shifting in the world of education. During the times of distance learning, teachers were not able
to collect paper assignments from students and this posed a problem for many educators when
the time came for them to assess student progress and understanding. These issues made me
wonder if the teachers that were facing these dilemmas changed or evolved their methods of
ACTION RESEARCH REPORT 3
assessing their students. My thinking shifted into the realm of which medium worked best for
student assessment, paper and pencil quizzes/tests or digital assessments taken on some form of
multimedia device. My curiosity was an excellent place to start with this project and I began
working with Mrs. Batten. Mrs. Batten allowed me to work alongside her in a unit of Math
instruction. This unit was about fractions and parts of a whole. In order to assist her in the best
way, I asked if she already used a form of digital assessment; to which she told me that she does
weekly assignments that the students submit by filling out their own personal Google Slides
presentation and if I could continue this way of assessment then there would be less
complications on her on of administering any tests/ assessments that we gave them. So, my
question shifted into the final research topic that we worked on this semester: Does using Google
Slides as a medium for assessing students yield better results than paper and pencil assessments.
Review of Literature
Since my original line of questions pertained to the general differences between concrete
and digital assessments, the beginning of my delve into the realm of academic articles goes along
with that.
Paleczek, Seifert, and Schöfl (2021) designed a study for a group of 85 Austrian
was designed to look at whether digital assessments meet the same level of quality as the paper
one, as well as the preference in the students’ and instructors’ opinion on digital assessment
versus paper assessments. The study found that the digital assessment held up to the quality of
the paper assessment as well as being preferred by both the students and the instructors. For the
students, they claimed that the digital test was easier, and the instructors preferred it for its
convenience of administering.
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Klein (2019), along with assistance from master’s-level and doctoral-level graduate
students in the School Psychology program at St. John’s University, administered the Wechsler
Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-V) in order to examine possible scoring errors made by
administration method. They created a digital version of the WISC-V to go alongside the paper
and pencil version so that they could draw the comparison. Since this study was about the
scoring of the assessments, they gave both of the WISC-V test to a research assistant to fill out
form a script. The conclusion of this study found that the digital scoring system had a lower
Garofalo and Farenga (2021) compared digital and physical models of DNA molecules in
order to gauge which one enhances spatial ability. In order to gauge this, they used a sample of
132 students in a tenth-grade science class at an all-male school. Using both models to design a
course of study reliant on the different models of DNA, they gave two identical sets of
instruction to two groups. The results from the assessments from both of the groups indicate that
the greater 3-D representational and conceptual understanding when the student’s construction
OneNote Class Notebook (MONCN), could be used to promote sustainable development and
make students into leaders. They used this resource and conducted this experiment in
throughout the courses and running classes incorporating it, they concluded that their hypothesis
of it being a positive influence was correct and it promoted efficient learning in said courses.
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Based on the research done and the articles that were consulted, it is my hypothesis that
the students will score better on the online variants of the assessment. Meaning that the online
Methodology
In order to complete this Action Research project, as I said, I had to rely on my friend
Mrs. Batten at Pee Dee Elementary in Horry County where Mrs. Batten is a first-year teacher of
a 2nd grade. After discussing with her, we decided that the best course of action was to find a
suitable academic subject to form this project around. At Mrs. Battens request, we chose to use a
unit in mathematics; this unit that we chose was on fractions and parts of a whole.
When designing the layout for how we would complete this report, we chose to complete
2 separate pre-tests, have the students complete the unit, and then have them complete two
separate post-tests. Mrs. Batten had they pre-tests already made, so she sent them to me to
transfer over to a Google Slide. Once the Google Slides were created, Mrs. Batten administered
both the versions of the pre-test, taught the unit over the course of two and a half weeks, and then
The digital version of the pre-test and post-test were derived from the same document as
its paper copy. This was by design so that we could negate any type of disparities and keep the
content that we are assessing as similar as possible. We wanted to create a valuable digital
version of each test that assessed the student of the same information while giving the student the
different medium.
Qualitative data was collected by the teacher in the form of gauging questions while the
students were taking each version of the assessment. Mrs. Batten asked questions along the line
Analysis
After collecting all of the data from the test scores, the information was analyzed by
looking at the average score of each specific test. Figure 1.1 shows the comparison of the
averages across the board for each assessment from the sample of eighteen 2nd grade students.
Figure 1.1 is created in the order the tests were given by Mrs. Batten. It can be seen that initially,
the paper test scored better, marginally. After going through the unit of instruction with Mrs.
On top of the quantitative data collected, Mrs. Batten also kept tabs on which form of
assessment the student preferred. Below, Figure 1.2 shows the class’s preference on which
assessment medium they preferred to take. Again, this was taken from Mrs. Batten asking the
Findings
The results of the research that was conducted beforehand somewhat conflicts to what
was seen from the data collected from completing the assessments. It can be seen that the
students performed better on both the paper pre-test and post-test. However, from the qualitative
data collected, it can be observed that the students would rather take the digital variation of the
fractions test. Also, Mrs. Batten also brought up that it was more convenient for her to administer
the Google Slide; she could assign each student their own copy and she did not have to keep
Looking back at the results and wondering where the discrepancy could come through
raises numerous questions. Where the students merely clicking through the questions online so
they could complete it faster? Is math a subject better suited for paper and pencil forms of
assessment? These questions sit alongside many more that could possibly answer for the
ACTION RESEARCH REPORT 8
different in opinion. My hypothesis of the Google Slides outperforming the paper variant was not
supported. The class preferred the Google Slides, but when they had to actually take the
This study allowed me to test out many different aspects of digital assessments that I was
curious about. It also showed me that it could possible be a melding of both mediums that would
be best for students. Allowing them the option of choice is a solution that could yield even
References
Garofalo, S. G., & Farenga, S. J. (2021). Cognition and Spatial Concept Formation: Comparing
Paleczek, L., Seifert, S., & Schöfl, M. (2021). Comparing Digital to Print Assessment of