Assessment for Learning: The Uber Analogy

The Idea: An Uber trip serves as a great analogy to understand Assessing for learning or Formative Assessment: Set Destination (Goals), Track movement (Student progress), Alter path (Teaching approach) if you are not moving towards your destination as planned. Central to learning and improvement is a system for tracking progress and feedback.

This Uber Analogy is one of my favourite analogies to use while doing workshops on Assessment and its key role in improving practice. But first, let me clarify what kind of Assessment I am talking about. In Education we talk about two types of Assessment - Summative (of Learning) and Formative (for Learning). As the names suggest - Summative Assessment is typically evaluative, after the learning process and Formative assessments are typically during the learning process, to support learning and improve the process. 

Here we are talking about Formative Assessments i.e. Assessment FOR learning. Traditionally Schools have focused mainly on evaluative assessment only. Formative Assessment is basically Improvement Science applied to a classroom.

So how does an Uber analogy help us understand Assessment for learning better? 

(Just for good measure I threw in an extension for ‘life’)



Uber: Set your Destination
Classroom: Set your student goals
Life: Set your goal

Uber: Plan your trip and start 
Classroom: Plan your lessons and start teaching
Life: Plan your approach and take action

Uber: Track your journey to make sure you are moving towards your destination
Classroom: Track your students’ progress to make sure they are moving towards their goals
Life: Track your progress to make sure you are making progress towards your goal

Uber: If there is traffic or a diversion, change your route. If you have an unexpected need for something along the way, add a stop.
Classroom: If your lessons are not going as planned, change your plan. If a few students need a little extra scaffolding, give it to them.
Life: If your approach to getting to your goal is not effective, change it. Try another way.

Uber: Keep moving and tracking, eventually you reach your destination.
Classroom: Keep teaching and monitoring progress, eventually your students will achieve their goals!
Life: Keep working and reflecting on your progress, eventually you will meet your goal!

Remember, central to all of this is having a system in place for tracking progress. Assessment in the classroom should be a feedback system for tracking progress, for learning and improvement. Assessment is not just for evaluation, or worse, labeling students as good or bad. On a related note, the ‘trip summary’ at the end of a trip, is a good parallel for a summative i.e. evaluative assessment, after the learning process has ended.

More on how we can leverage technology to improve our 'Assessment for learning' in another blog post!


Please note: When complex ideas are simplified into basic models to aid thinking, we lose some nuance. It is important to remember this limitation :)

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