Breaking through an Episode of Dysfunctional Procrastination

Do you suffer from dysfunctional procrastination? If deadlines paralyze you, then you might be the way I was when I was a teenager. I certainly know what it's like to experience anxiety about looming deadlines, overdue assignments, and growing task lists. It can be paralyzing. When I was younger, dysfunctional procrastination essentially crippled me and set profound barriers to the possibilities available to me in life.

If this is the case with you, then I've got some personal advice that I would like to share with you. Here it is.

The best approach to to confronting dysfunctional procrastination is to just set yourself a task of doing something small... something quick. This could be just opening up an assignment and reading it.

Then (and this is the key to truly breaking through the anxiety of dysfunctional procrastination) you trick yourself into doing just a little bit more than your initial small goal: perhaps you might just answer one question within an assignment. You then experience just a little bit of a rush associated with doing more than your initial goal. 

Now you've felt the rush. The high. So you do that again: you set another small goal, you do it, and perhaps you go just a little beyond your goal. You feel another rush. Repeat.

Before you know it, you break through your anxiety and you get into a flow state.

Three Styles of Assessment

These days, most teachers and students are familiar with the three styles of assessment that are commonly delineated as assessment "for," "as," and "of" learning. However, it never hurts for teachers to make the distinction between these types of assessment perfectly clear right up front in their course, and to then follow up on the distinction by clearly identifying each assessment piece in the course as being either one or the other. 

  
Delineating the Three Styles of Assessment Up Front

I would offer the following descriptions, and even the graphic to the right, to teachers who might wish to delineate between the three styles of assessment right up front in their courses. This information could be included within a website, a learning management system, or a course syllabus.  

Assessment FOR Learning:

Assessment that is intended to provide students the opportunity to apply their learning. This assessment is formative in nature: providing both the student and the teacher with insight into the learning that is taking place. This assessment does not count toward the student's grade.

Goal(s): To allow students to practice skills and apply knowledge, and to guide the next steps for intstruction and learning.

Examples: formative quizzes, exercises, and presentations.

Assessment AS Learning:

Assessment that is intended to provide students the opportunity to reflect upon their learning. This assessment is formative in nature: providing both the student and the teacher with insight into the student's own reflection upon his/her learning. This assessment does not count toward the student's grade.

Goal(s): To develop student metacognition. In other words, to give students insight into their own thinking and learning and to help students develop and refine strategies to use in future learning.

Examples: reflective journals, exit cards, pre-test and post-test surveys.

Assessment OF Learning:

Assessment that is intended to depict a student's level of achievement at a given point in time. This assessment is summative in nature, and thus will count toward the student's grade.

Goal(s): To provide the student with a mark that will inform the student and other interested parties of the student's relative achievement with respect to the course curriculum.

Examples: summative quizzes, tests, essays, reports, labs, and presentations.


Identifiers:

Teachers are welcome to download the icons from the image gallery below and use them within their term outlines, course profiles, assessment summaries, lesson plans, review sheets, or wherever they may plan or discuss assessment in their courses.