My Best Assessment: Transforming Residence Life Training with Mentimeter and Canva

Kyra DeLoach

Hanging Up Flyer Image from WIX

As a Residence Hall Manager, I don’t do many of the things traditionally done by educators. I supervise resident assistants, and work on giving them the tools and resources they need to better assist and mentor residents, all while being academically successful.

One thing I am also in charge of is training and professional development. Each academic year, we have a two-week training with many different subjects and activities. Throughout the year my students put what they learned into practice with real-life situations with students.

A lot can happen between September and even October in residence life, so often we do additional training. I wanted to give a refresher on creating marketing or fliers for our events on campus because I had seen some struggle with it throughout the semester.

I decided to use one of our staff meetings and used Mentimeter, a presentation tool and an assessment instrument, to create an interactive presentation Flyer Fusion: A Canva Workshop for Resident Assistants. Using technology to help engage my staff is important to me, as is design so using the TPACK framework to teach my students was vital. This was the best form of assessment I have done so far at my institution.

Active Learning

The presentation gave examples of design and elements they needed to know to be successful in creating the flyers we wanted to make. I had different ways to learn the information and a video presentation. The staff were given a prompt and 10 minutes to use Canva to create a flyer.

Live Feedback

After the 10 minutes were up, my staff put their flyers in a PowerPoint where I was able to give live feedback– pointing out what elements they included and what could make the design stronger.

Assessment from Me

I was able to assess what information the staff had taken and shown their skills with. I was able to see directly the way each student interacted with and interpreted the information and the project. There were also several questions and opportunities for my staff to share what they already knew in the presentation so that I knew how in-depth to go and what I needed to spend time on in my presentation.

Self Assessment

There were opportunities for my staff to assess their learning by using an anonymous sliding scale. This was a good opportunity for them to practice self-assessment and for me to see how they felt after the presentation. Self-assessment is important to me because as Sheperd says in The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture, ‘student self-assessments would be a central part of the social processes that mediate the development of intellectual abilities, construction of knowledge, and formation of students' identities.’ (Sheperd, 2000.)

Overall, Mentimeter is my best assessment instrument. As an educator who doesn’t give grades, being able to teach my staff something and see direct outcomes is super helpful when assessing what my students know, what they need more help with, and even how effective I am at giving them information in a way they can understand and put to use.

References

Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.