The EU has become a large economy thanks to its unification and has the power to impact worldwide policies, such as the recent general data protection regulations. It also ensured easy travel, telecommunication, trade, and citizen rights based on the ideals of freedom and democracy. These are important facts for kids to learn and discuss in a fact-based manner starting from a young age. 

Furthermore, pupils can learn about the benefits of a shared identity and solidarity. The Dutch curriculum also highlights the importance of students learning about European cooperation and the EU. 

For the students in the class of teacher Fanja Hubers, this topic is part of their exam and these goals are assessed at the end of the period/trimester. For this reason, teacher Fanja invited a guest speaker for her lesson, who explained how the EU works and the advantages and disadvantages of being in a union, including some of its history. Students learn a contemporary image of their own environment, the Netherlands, Europe and the world and become able to place phenomena and developments in this context.

Fanja uses a digital dashboard to lead and monitor the class activities. LessonUp is a tool that helps to scaffold the specific learning needs of students. LessonUp can be replaced by any other Learning Management System as what really matters is the use of a digital dashboard that can help with monitoring student work and giving feedback.

The LessonUp tool requires both students and teachers to create an account on the platform. The tool allows teachers to create their own lessons, as well as share lessons with others or browse content created by other teachers. Similar to a LMS, the teacher can create slides and quiz questions to build up a learning sequence for students.

The tool is free to use for students and all Lessons can be used for school purposes. Extra features however must be paid for (like quizzes, assessment and monitoring) and has a 30-day free trial. It also has a few example lesson plans offered on their website (example), which is available in English and Dutch, with tutorials in English (“LessonUp in a nutshell” and “Create your first lesson”). LessonUp also has a smartphone/tablet app. 

The teacher can: 

1. Explain students the learning goals, the criteria according to which they will be assessed and the desired outcomes (e.g. being able to explain multiple reasons why the EU is important)
2. Present tasks and tools
3. With the help of a dashboard, the teacher can monitor the achievements, progress and individual results. This goes two-ways; the teacher sees how she is doing and how the students are doing. 

Figure 1 The overview of a lesson plan on LessonUp. The lesson plan has instructions and information presented on slides, reflective questions and a quiz

Below are the steps for the whole lesson:

• Step 1. The class begins with a reflection on the learning goals. 
  • Share goals
  • Activate prior knowledge by a simple test (quiz). The results of the quiz feed into the digital dashboard.
  • Instructions by the teacher and the guest speaker’s presentation
  • Learn and work independently by doing the activities in LessonUp
  • Check student answers and give feedback
  • Follow Up

Figure 2 A quiz for activation of prior knowledge and reflection.

• Step 2. The teacher then starts a brief class discussion about the EU and the guest speaker’s presentation. This aims to activate prior knowledge and short-term memory.
• Step 3. Students fill in the test that will be used for formative assessment purposes.
• Step 4. The teacher then discusses the outcomes and defines next steps and personalised activities. 

The teacher monitored the results from students and identified the students that need support. For instance, the teacher is exchanging with a student. The student’s answer is “(the EU) makes trade easier and is about the money”. The teacher asks the student to elaborate: “What do you mean by money? Not every member uses the Euro currency”. To another student, she asks for two reasons explaining easier trade (Figure 3).

Figure 3 The teacher can monitor the overall score and answers of students (left image). The teacher can then send personal messages to support students.

The challenge is to use the information in the best way possible for a formative approach. Some classic summative tests can be replaced by feedback that gives students learning suggestions and tips on the next steps, based on the criteria set by the teacher. 

The tool can have a better impact if used by multiple teachers in the school. Teachers would then be able to exchange experiences more easily, while students would have a consistent way to compare their performance across different subjects. However, it is always a challenge to motivate colleagues to participate in using a single tool, because each teacher tends to prefer different digital tools. This activity in any case can also be implemented with other learning management systems that are preferred in the school, such as Edmodo, Google Classroom, Moodle, Schoology.

Teachers are also not always enthusiastic about replacing the traditional methods of testing. It is therefore important to clarify that formative and summative assessment are not mutually exclusive; they are just two different ways of using assessment information. However, if the information collected for a formative assessment is going to be used for grading, then students might be reluctant to reveal what they do not understand.