Reassessing learning and assessment

In her talk on ‘Reimagine assignments – Mind the gaps the edTech way’, Poonam Singh Jamwal, CEO and Director Extramarks began by asking educators whether they had defined a purpose behind assessing a child. As opposed to merely making a child proficient in a particular subject, the real aim of the learning ought to be making the child a problem-solver in the future. “Often we carry forward whatever is given to us but we don’t really sit back to ask why we are doing what we are doing and what is the purpose of it. What are we trying to fulfill – is it 100 percent results or are we actually trying to create contributing empathetic individuals?” With this question, she emphasised that before going into rethink assessments, we should think how to rethink learning.

Speaking about technology, and people’s fears that we are not connecting with each other, she pointed out that technology has permeated our lives and enabled us to reach out to our friends from 20 years ago. “Aren’t we connecting better today thanks to technology? The same way in the learning environment, for understanding particular topics, what we usually do is give the teacher five days to actually explain a concept. However, by using technology and actually enabling a child to walk into the scene rather than just read and imagine the scene, you allow them deep immersive learning.” This, she added, helped fill all the learning gaps of a child and strengthened his foundation, post which the child can be tested for application of that knowledge.

Poonam shared an important point about the real bonus of technology via the statement of a 9-year-old who had revealed at a conference, ‘We can play, pause and rewind. I cannot do that with my teacher. I can actually take it back home and do it privately in my space without being humiliated in the class for not knowing it.’ She pointed out that if educators do not leverage the power of technology, they will be left behind because if we do not answer that raised hand in the class today, he is going to go to Wikipedia and  Google and get his answers. “So, we need to be up to speed,” she maintained, adding that Extramarks' biggest contribution in the learning space is its use of Maslow’s law. “We have created a layered learning and in our ability to give deep incisive learning tools, not only have the students improved their learning and comprehension but the teachers too. Often teachers do not know the concepts they are teaching in the class as deeply as the studied understanding using the learning tools.”

She maintained that using technology allowed one day to teach the topic and four days for teacher-student engagement. “Do you know why we don’t have creativity? We do not give teachers and students time to engage and ponder. You have to leave the child to immerse in that knowledge… ‘How is it relevant to my life? How am I going to create something new out of this knowledge?’” Technology offers deep experiences through augmented reality or VR/AR with the pedagogical practice of taking things from simple to complex and leaving a child hungry and curious.

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Poonam Singh Jamwal reiterated, “Not only do we explain the concepts, but we also challenge the way we think about the concept. That is actually lifelong learning! We will create empathetic, problem-solving children. If our premise of learning is right, automatically our premise of assessment will be right.”

She alluded to the need to look at assessment not as a testing tool that judges whether the child is bright or not but as a diagnostic tool for a teacher to know how much the child has learned, what are the gaps and how they may be filled. It is about using adaptive testing to assess a child’s learning.