We have provided specific assessments for activities we designed that are related to the challenges in those activities. But all assessments are the same in structure if not in specifics. Here is the basic framework, which you can use to assess students and target your instruction.
Level 0: No Effort
No serious attempt made.
Level 1: Reactive
Student reacts to the prompt but uses only material in the prompt or from their own experience, opinions, or knowledge to analyze it.
Level 2: Inquisitive
Student asks (or answers) appropriate questions about where content came from, whether it paints a full picture, is from a trustworthy source, whether there are reliable fact checks on it, and what others "in the know" say about it but either provides no evidence (via links) and makes no serious investigative effort to answer these questions.
Level 3: Investigative
Student meets the inquisitive outcomes, but also provides links demonstrating basic web-based attempts to answer those questions -- checking for trusted coverage, tracing information to the source, investigating the agenda, and expertise of the source.
However, student fails to discover one or more crucial pieces of information, or draws incorrect conclusions from information gathered.
Level 4: Investigative Competence
Student meets investigative and inquisitive outcomes but discovers selected crucial pieces of information and draws correct conclusions from the information gathered.
Individual assessments we designed may have more specific language depending on the nature of the task. For instance, on a particular task it may be considered crucial that the student determine and report certain details to demonstrate investigative competence. As an example, consider a student evaluating the photo below trying to respond to the question “Is this photo good evidence of how tough times were in the Great Depression?”
A competent student would have to be able to give a rough date when the photo was taken (1948) and some basic facts to show it was real (either the name of the mother here, or the name of the photographer who took it). Ideally they’d also provide a link, but, if they respond with information that could only be gained by tracing the source of the photo they have demonstrated competence.
If we use the same photo and ask something like “This is shared to you with a note that orphanages used to sell babies. Is this good evidence of that?” then it is maybe not necessary the student track down the date, but they should discover that this is the children’s mother that put up the sign, not an orphanage.
In other words, what we consider the crucial discoveries might shift, but the general pattern is the same.
Where they go from there is up to them. In this case, if you track this photo’s context down you could make a case that it is really about weak child welfare laws in the 1940s, or make the case that it is about economic desperation. Or that it’s just about a horrible mother and father. But a competent person answering the first question about the Depression is going to have to find the date of the photo, and a competent person answering the second question is going to have to demonstrate that this was a mother on her porch, not an orphanage. In both cases the person is going to have to use the circumstances surrounding the photo to show that it was not a joke photo or a still photo from a fictional movie.
You’ll notice on the rubric the difference between the Inquisitive level and the Investigative level is mostly whether the student chooses to merely ponder them in the abstract, or to take a further step and use the web to answer questions they have about the artifact or document.
Because one of the things we are testing is how students go about solving problems it is important that the summative assessments do not prompt the student to “gather links from the web to show whether this is true” or use other similar language. Giving the student such a prompt is equivalent to asking a student to solve a physics problem and then telling them the specific sequence of steps they should use to solve it. Prompts should be vague about methods, asking very general questions about trust, reliability, and relevance of evidence. The prompts are chosen and designed so that if the student knows how to address the question the web will be a first stop.
When students ask if they can use the web to solve it, the answer should be “You can do anything you’d normally do, short of asking another student.” If they ask if they “should” use the web, the answer should be “If you think that’s the best way to answer this, yes.”
That said, it’s fine in formative assessments to ask students to supply links, document a search strategy, or use specific tools. These formative assessments can allow students to focus on the skills while they build the habit, and also give teachers more visibility into where students are succeeding and struggling.
Occassionally students may have enough prior knowledge to answer a question without a web search. If the student is able to supply the information from memory -- if, for example, a student asked to investigate MinimumWage.com already knows that it is a front group for lobbyist Michael Berman and says as much in a response -- that student should be marked as showing investigative competence. Our prompts are structured in such a way that no student will be able to answer a substantial number based on prior knowledge, because (as in life) the amount of information one would need to instantly vet all the material is vast. Additionally, one of the side-effects of our habits is that students will slowly build up a helpful universe of knowledge.
It should go without saying, but being presented with something that has a 50% likelihood of being true and asked if it is true or false gives you a good chance of guessing correctly. And we're not interested in guessing.
As with any other academic endeavor we are interested in the conclusions students draw, but more interested in the evidence they bring to their defense of those conclusions. In grading, you will be scanning to see if the student discovered relevant context and applied it skillfully to analysis. Students who have investigative competence should reach good conclusions, but you may have students that guess right on Level One (Reactive) and students who come to wrong conclusions on level three (Investigative). What we are looking for in these answers is whether the student seeks out and discovers relevant context and that is what we grade.