Mini-Whiteboards: The “So What” of it all

SHORT ON TIME?

“If students learned what they were taught, then assessment would be unnecessary; we could simply document the educational experiences of each student secure in the knowledge that this would describe their capabilities accurately.”
Black & Wiliam, 2018

The idea of assessment for learning has been at the heart of the educational lexicon since Black and William’s “Inside the black box…” in 1998, although references to formative assessment/assessment for learning cane be traced back to around the 1960’s and Benjamin Bloom. Formative assessment has become the status quo of general classroom practice and is the heart of the current adaptive teaching push – using feedback and assessment to inform future delivery, activity and support for learners. Key to this is the idea of ‘full class participation’ – as realistically how can you provide appropriate feedback to drive learning of individuals? How do you know when and what to adapt and for who, without the appropriate data?

I have observed peers and know of other colleagues who are able to do this solely without ‘props’ or equipment, using exceptional questioning and discussion techniques to interrogate student knowledge from around the room and make real-time judgements from responses. However a variety of strategies such as exit tickets/post-its, response cards, ‘show of fingers’, poster-paper brainstorming and high tech solutions such as Diagnostic Questions, Kahoot, wooClap, Mentimeter have sprung up as strategies to provide quick-time full class pictures for educators. Of all strategies, the mini-whiteboard has arguably won out as the star – the reimagining of the Victorian slate tablet is low-tech and easier to routine, provides immediate responses and potential for immediate feedback, they are more flexible than pre-printed response cards and allow for individual responses as opposed to group work tasks.

Ultimately however, mini-whiteboards (and the rest) are simply a mechanism – they are a way of sourcing appropriate ‘data’ for yourself and students within the assessment for learning protocol. There needs to be an element of ‘So What?’ that follows from this. Why do you want this information? What is it telling you? How is it supporting student learning? Will it re-direct energy and focus to the most appropriate area? Is the assessment/data appropriate for what you are trying to develop?

Unfortunately I have experienced situations where this and the other mechanisms of assessment for learning have become the identifier and measure of ‘successful implementation’ and not the ‘mechanism’ that gets you towards ‘successful’ implementation. I’m sure the majority of you will have experienced this at some point as well, think to observation feedback you may have received in your career, or discussions with colleagues/peers in the profession and how you may have heard “Students used mini whiteboards, that’s great” or “The Kahoot was a great formative assessment” etc. No Kahoot is a great formative assessment, just as using mini whiteboards is not great in isolation – they can form a mechanism of high quality classroom practice, but alone they are nothing. They are the ‘means’ and not the ‘ends’ – you need the “so what?” that follows to make it worthwhile.

WHAT DOES RESEARCH & LITERATURE SAY?

Viewing mini-whiteboards as a mechanism of whole class response in order to facilitate high quality formative assessment we should drop back into the work of Dylan Wiliam and what he promotes as the five strategies of formative assessment, which make the chapters of ‘Embedded Formative Assessment’ (Wiliam, 2011);

1) Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions and success criteria

2) Engineering effective discussions, tasks, and activities that elicit evidence of learning

3) Providing feedback that moves learners forward

4) Activating students as learning resources for one another

5) Activating students as owners of their own learning.

Published in 2018, the Education Endowment Foundation undertook an effectiveness trial on ‘Embedding Formative Assessment’ which was to evaluate a professional development programme and implementation resources from the Schools, Students and Teachers network – developed from the ideas of Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy. Given that ‘assessment for learning’ is so embedded within the classroom the effectiveness study was based on the programme itself and not formative assessment – so it cannot infer the effectiveness of ‘assessment for learning’ in of itself. Given that it is a paid for programme it essentially means you get an 80 page document that provides very little with regards specifics and strategies that can be taken and implemented without purchasing the programme – although anecdotally whole class response and feedback provided a key component, and mini-whiteboards were the lede in the Schoolsweek article on the study.

The study found minor progress in learners from the SSaT formative assessment programme in comparison to the control group, with anecdotal responses to the targeted focus on formative assessment through the programme in comparison to those who did not have the CPD and resources, although this was only to a 10% significant level (in simple terms, there is a 10% chance that if there was no difference between the experimental and control group, this result could still happen due to randomness).

Discussing formative assessment, it would be amiss not to discuss the work of Kingston & Nash (2011). They raised criticisms of Black & Wiliam’s “Inside the black box…”, stating that it lacked the quantitative rigour to be the type of meta-analysis claimed. They went further to look at 300 studies since 1988 that investigated ‘formative assessment’ (with the phrasing at the time registering over 17,000 hits on Google Scholar) and found merely 13 of these studies held the rigour to reach the standards of inclusion into their meta-analysis – including appropriately calculated effect sizes. The meta-analysis did show evidence of effect, however not to the level that Black and Wiliam had concluded. Beyond quantitative issues within published studies, Kingston and Nash finished with a call to action regarding research into formative assessment – the first of which a drive for specificity that “Research on formative assessment should include clear descriptions of the form and key features of the formative assessment.” The aforementioned EEF/SSaT study falls foul of this – yes there are effect size discussions, but the methods, form and features are basically nonexistent within the report, as previously discussed.

With a specific focus on whiteboards and response cards, Marsh et.al (2023) produced a meta-analysis, updating an earlier analysis from 2007. The meta-analysis combined 29 studies which met a selection of criteria – and used this to analyse effects on participation, low-stakes quiz performance, summative test achievement and on-task/off-task behavioural measures. They also made note of effects within mainstream schooling environments, and those relating to intervention within SEN environments.

Using a ‘traditional raised hand’ approach to classroom response as the control/baseline, the analysis found improvements in low-stakes quizzes, summative assessment, class participation and behaviour when write on response cards were used. The short term quiz vs long term assessment improvements weren’t sustained to the same level. The study found the highest level of improvement with regards these response systems was on classroom participation and on a significant reduction in off-task behaviours within mainstream schooling environments, whereas it was short-term gains in performance within SEN environments. All of this can be seen as evidence of ‘means’ and not ‘end’ of mini-whiteboards, using the whiteboards alone aren’t a ‘silver bullet’ to success.

Going into smaller studies there are predominantly 4 categories of research/article that can be found; 1) A focus on high-tech digital response systems (e.g Fies & Marshall, 2006), 2) doctoral thesis related research into mini-whiteboards (e.g Gimbutas, 2019), 3) snapshots, anecdotes and observations of mini-whiteboard use from larger studies presented for conferences (e.g Eidissen, 2023; Wake & Pampaka, 2008) and 4) formative assessment related studies, focussing on form and features of the formative assessment in line with the first recommendation of Kingston & Nash (e.g Andersson & Palm, 2017; Staberg et.al, 2023) that link to Wiliam’s strategies.

Gimbutas (2019) uses an ABAB (baseline-intervention with same cohort-return to baseline-reintroduce intervention) method within an English classroom, their study shows some similar improvements than the Marsh et.al (2023) meta-analysis, although improvements weren’t always sustained to a similar level once intervention was removed and reintroduced – or consistent across all participants. Within the study how the whiteboards informed future instruction was not particularly explored.

Studies from Andersson & Palm (2017) and Staberg et.al (2023) investigate the ‘so what’ aspect more. Whilst focussed on the bevy of formative assessment, mini-whiteboards appear significantly within both studies – the former illustrating 18 of 21 teachers used mini-whiteboards to facilitate engagement, highlighting key observations of where teachers adjusted delivery based off whiteboard tasks, improved feedback beyond correcting answers and mere praise, and how students were encouraged to cross analyse responses – developing further formative assessment strategies from Wiliam.

The second study focussed on Science learning, and illustrates frequent high quality whiteboard usage, how routines are used with the boards to identify pre-knowledge, which was then used to drive future investigation tasks. Observations showed additional use mid-class to gain feedback during the learning process, and also to facilitate in discussions where students gave peer-to-peer feedback. Again the study emphasises usage that develops Wiliam’s strategies 4 and 5, and notes that mini-whiteboards are part of the normal way of working within the observed classes due to flexibility, ease of use, it allows for reflection for all students in the class – they are a practical and scalable resource.

Wake and Pampaka (2008) features the observation of a singular maths lesson in a further education environment, narrating and evaluating a student centred lesson and how the teacher delivery is centred around mini-whiteboard usage. Given the timeframe it doesn’t link to Wiliam’s strategies, however the core elements of the session relate to formative assessment and can be mapped to strategies 3, 4 and 5. There are lots of investigative problems, learners discuss, compare and audit each others and their own working. The session focuses on the students building knowledge through episodic elements, with the teacher orchestrating problem solving activities, but allowing students the freedom and control of their own learning.

As the article sums up: “central to Sally’s teaching are episodes when she takes control of the key elements of the emerging mathematical narrative, when her students’ misconceptions are addressed. Sally interweaves this narrative with the students’ own mathematical productions as they emerge from their ‘sociable’ activity: however, she subtly ensures that priority is given in such episodes to the ‘correct’, or more advanced mathematics that she wants them to understand, and of which she is pretty much the arbiter/judge.” (Wade and Pampaka, 2008, pg.394). The observation shows a major benefit of mini-whiteboards, in that they provide scope for full-class participation in world building, but also provide the teacher and other students the opportunity for instantaneous feedback to pivot and develop into other avenues – using the whiteboards as a ‘means’ to conduct this type of activity not an ‘end’.

Whilst based around SEND teaching environment, and a very small sample size, Callinan et.al (2017) study shows an interesting potential benefit of whiteboards within the science classroom. The researchers found that in comparison to paper resources, students tended to include further information on mini-whiteboards, and also returned to them multiple times to adjust what has been written or drawn. This is an interesting finding, as lack of opportunity to include depth/accuracy in responses are often viewed as a limitation of whiteboards. However, this suggests there is potential that with diagrams in particular, students may be more inclined to return and develop ideas in comparison to traditional note taking methods.

Use of mini-whiteboards can also influence how teachers structure tasks and ask questions, which is investigated in Eidissen (2023). The study looked at encouraging an educator to raise communication during plenary activities, diverting away from uni-directional communication by making use of mini-whiteboard tasks – whilst not in the study, this could be codified into strategies 4 and 5 of Wiliam. The findings were disappointing with regards the hypothesis, the whiteboards in of themselves did not encourage reflection and deeper investigation among the students, however the study did find that there were some changes in the question types the teacher asked – with more open questioning being used. This emphasises the key point that simply using whiteboards is not the ‘silver bullet’, tasks need to be designed and adapted with purpose to get the most out of the format – contrasting this observation with that from Wake and Pampaka (2008) you can see how an educator who appropriately plans and prepares for the medium is vastly more successful in getting the most out of its implementation.

Yes, there are limitations within the research around formative assessment and mini-whiteboard use that can be associated with it, however these are just a selection of studies that are easy to find online that provide both quantitative and qualitative analysis of high quality use within the classroom, identifying the resource as a ‘means’ and not the ‘end’.

APPLICATION IN THE CLASSROOM

As discussed in the literature mini-whiteboards can act as an incentive for engagement and aid in reduction of behavioural issues – so yes there is at least some justification of using them as simply a behavioural management technique – but for myself, in a post-16 academic environment there is significantly more potential to their implementation, and I think across discipline areas we are doing a disservice not to look for ‘marginal gains’ and improvement in our teaching and learning beyond mere classroom management.

As concluded within the area discussing research, the planning and preparing for implementation is of vital importance – the focus on the quality of the assessment or activity is the driving force, but there are numerous other practical tips that can help as well.

Supporting Planning and Preparation

Think about the layout of your room and how whiteboards are going to be shared with students. Our rooms are set up in groups/’island form’, I’ve moved tables for better sightlines (for myself and students) and have ‘cleaning caddies’ with boards and resources perpetually at the centre of the tables. This saves time on passing out resources but also provides an ‘out of reach’ position for the boards when not in use.

Instructions need to be incredibly clear. I’ve seen people discuss strategies of showing a photo of a correctly held up board etc, in order to assist with this. Are you doing a countdown and single show, do you want an answer on one side and working out on the other, do you want multiple questions on one board? These are things that should be clear to students, and you should aim for developing consistent routines – even verbalising ‘pens down’ etc.

In a recent episode of the ‘They Behave for Me’ podcast (Episode 17, 2024) Adam Boxer mentioned how he formulates a seating plan based on eyelines, such that students that can act as key indicators of cohort understanding are placed within direct eyesight. This is a great example of ‘data’ at use in the classroom, using built up student profiles to identify these students within a cohort, and then how their future responses can be used to adapt delivery beyond.

Plan the assessment and/or activities carefully. Are they of appropriate standard? Are they providing evidence levels you require to inform judgement? Is it the right time? Is it able to encourage and develop student discussion and ownership? Much like the discussion of ‘learning styles’ (use the learning style appropriate for the task or knowledge – not a ‘preference’) this rings true for whiteboards as well, are they the most appropriate medium in order to conduct this activity?

This appropriateness links back to what I said during the introduction, there are colleagues who don’t use whiteboards and have the activities, tasks and questioning that allow them to deliver fantastic formative assessment and adaptive teaching. This isn’t a post to say “you must use whiteboards” to these people – it’s, “If you use them, aim to use them in the best possible way”, as they can be an exceptional resource.

What activities can be used?

With that appropriates in mind, these are a few activities. I would recommend delving into the Craig Barton links at the end of this post, as he provides a greater level of depth to a number of these within his ‘Tips for Teachers’ blog. These are scope for implementation, again weight up appropriateness and the actual quality of assessment is the most important thing.

Retrieval/prerequisite knowledge/diagnostic questions – mini whiteboards are great to assess prior knowledge that sessions will build upon, identifying any gaps that need addressed before going any further.
Hinge-point, plenaries and mid-learning questions – a class of responses are better than a handful. Is everyone ready to move on? Where are weaknesses appearing? This is vital for adaptive teaching approaches.
Probing for Reasoning – this is particularly useful in my KS5 maths teaching – where full scale problem solving is not always possible on a mini-whiteboard for the scope of the questions. However whiteboards can be a great way to delve into the thought process of students, activating further discussion. Craig Barton suggests asking students to note their level of ‘confidence’ on a response as well – this is not something I have done personally, but the justification of ‘hypercorrection’ does sound interesting to investigate.
Have students compare/contrast/discuss responses – this can be done during as either specific group style activities or during interrogation aspects of feedback. Tying back to the literature this is building into strategies 4 and 5 of Wiliam’s formative assessment model.
Active participation during assessment feedback and ‘walking-talking mocks’ – use questioning and whiteboard responses to keep learners active and assess what they are taking on board – it also supports in building data for the teacher as to why questions may have been incorrect (was it an exam question issue or a content issue?).
Diagrams and procedure – whiteboards can be helpful for building diagrams to support with problems within science as research has suggested. Wiithin my mathematics classroom, for procedural heavy problems I will often encourage students to note/adapt methods and process on whiteboards as a scaffold, allowing them to take elements away as they develop in confidence – taking ownership of their own learning.
Building a structured investigation – much like the observation in Wake and Pampaka (2008) – the teacher orchestrates an investigation activity, but the whiteboards allow a clear focus on the students ideas. Can be adapted to a ‘high intensity’ revision session – based around shared diagrams, equations and concepts – leading to the class to develop, discuss and investigate among themselves.
Support, scaffolding and extension – one of the ways I make use of the whiteboards in the centre of tables in my classroom is to provide ad-hoc scaffolds, explanations and support for students when required. I can add notes and diagrams to assist when needed, but also provide extension problems for learners as well, again personalised to needs during circulation of the class.

Further Tips

Remember the activities are a starting point. Interrogate for greater depth, push for discussion, encourage development of ideas and feedback between members of the cohort.
Be observant – identify issues when on task – who is at risk of copying? Modify seating plans, push expectations and in the moment target interrogation towards these students to activate thinking.
Don’t let observations disappear into the ether. Note recurring issues, use feedback to adapt immediate delivery and future plans, and even future assessment based on what is observed. Branch and pivot where appropriate.
A further point was raised on the same ‘The Behave for Me podcast’ (Episode 17, 2024) that was mentioned earlier – Doug Lemov had pushed about circulating with a clipboard to make notes when circulating the room – I do similar but with a mini-whiteboard, where I will often make codified notes and annotations on a mini-whiteboard I keep at the front during a class to add to future reflections and planning.

The corruption to avoid!

Throughout this post I have aimed to emphasise the use of mini-whiteboards as a mechanism of formative assessment, a ‘means’ and not an ‘end’. There is one frequent corruption that sits on a simplification and misrepresentation of Wiliam’s 2nd strategy of formative assessment, specifically the element regarding ‘activities that elicit evidence of learning’ that I feel is vital to address as it is a barrier that some teachers have to move past in order to facilitate high quality implementation.

‘Evidence of learning’ is often corrupted to ‘evidencing to a third party observer that learning has happened’. In some ways this corruption was exacerbated by interpretation of the old Ofsted Common Inspection Framework, and the emphasis on ‘in-class snapshot progress’ and ‘mini-plenaries’ to be pulled out at will. Using mini-whiteboards in this way reduces it to a performative act, a theatre, where the purpose is to ‘tick a box’ and go “look at how well they are doing/look at how well I am doing”.

I remember an observation I had early in my career relating to alternate and corresponding angles within systems involving parallel lines. I had a plenary whiteboard task where students wrote ‘alternate angle” and ‘corresponding angle’ on either side of the board, and upon being shown diagrams identified the rule that would be used to solve the problem. The activity wasn’t a 100% success rate; for example alternate angle diagrams that formed N shapes instead of Z were often interpreted incorrectly. I attempted to address these in the moment, I got students with correct answers to explain why they were able to identify them and also was able to note that some students in the class had an over reliance on drawing a literal ‘Z’ to identify an alternate angle (and others merely guessed) – I needed to factor this into future tasks and would inform planning. All of this learned information was irrelevant to the observer in discussion, who simply pulled issue with a selection of incorrect answers – ignored correct answers and deemed mistakes meant ‘progress was not appropriately made’ in the topic.

This is treating the assessment activity as a theatre, the ‘end point’ to ‘show off’ learning and not part of the learning process itself. This approach is detrimental to high quality application of the assessment mechanism, as if the purpose is for students to just ‘get everything right’ then it’s not an activity with the desirable difficulty to provide appropriate data for teacher and student.

This mindset is vital to avoid!

INFOGRAPHIC

Mini-Whiteboard Infographic Download

REFERENCES & WIDER READING

Andersson, C & Palm, T (2017). Characteristics of improved formative assessment practice. Education Enquiry. Vol.8 (2).

Barton, C (2023). #26 Use mini-whiteboards when going through tests. https://tipsforteachers.substack.com/p/tips-for-teachers-newsletter-26

Barton, C (2023). #30 Add confidence scores on mini-whiteboards. https://tipsforteachers.substack.com/p/tips-for-teachers-newsletter-30

Barton, C (2023). #33 Carry a mini-whiteboard with you when circulating. https://tipsforteachers.substack.com/p/tips-for-teachers-newsletter-33

Barton, C (2024). #53 Ask students to put their mini-whiteboards together. https://tipsforteachers.substack.com/p/53-ask-students-to-put-their-mini

Black, P & William, D (2018). Classroom Assessment and Pedagogy. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice. Vol.25 (6).

Boxer, A & Forrester, A (2024). They Behave for Me PODCAST: Episode 17. https://podtail.com/podcast/they-behave-for-me/episode-17-should-i-apply-to-be-a-head-of-departme/

Callinan, C, Johnston, J & Fotou, N (2017). Capture Children’s Ideas in Science through the use of Mini Whiteboards: A case study of children with SEND. European Science Education Research Association Conference 2017, Dublin, Ireland.

Education Endowment Foundation (2018). Embedding Formative Assessment: Evaluation report and executive summary. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/embedding-formative-assessment

Eidissen, TF (2023). How mini-whiteboards can help teachers raise their level of communication in whole class plenary talks. Thirteenth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME13 – July 2023, Budapest, Hungary).

Fies, C & Marshall, J (2006). Classroom Response Systems: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Science Education and Technology. Vol.15 (1)

Gimbutas, EC (2019). The effects of using mini whiteboards on the academic performance and engagement of students in a tenth grade resource English/Language Arts classroom. Theses and Dissertations. 2712. https://rdw.rowan.edu/etd/2712

Kingston, N & Nash, B (2011). Formative Assessment: A Meta-Analysis and a Call for Research. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice. Vol.30 (4).

Marsh, RJ, Cumming, TM, Randolph, JJ & Michaels, S (2021). Updated Meta-Analysis of the Research on Response Cards. Journal of Behavioural Education. Vol.32 (2023).

Staberg, RL, Febri, MIM, Gjovik, O, Sikko, SA & Pepin, B (2023). Science teachers’ interactions with resources for formative assessment purposes. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability. Vol.35 (5).

Wake, G & Pampaka, M (2008). The central role of the teacher – Even in student centred pedagogies. International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education – PME32, Morelia, Mexico.

Wiliam, D (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Solution Tree Press.