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Using Performance Assessment Tasks

Learn how to use rubrics, self-assessment, and classroom lists for performance assessment.
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Use a Mix of Assessment Strategies
Teachers should use quizzes, open-book exams, traditional test, and performance assessment tasks in a combination to allow them to assess student progress.
 
Start Slowly and Go One Step at a Time
The teacher may begin by choosing one performance task to start with. After some experience, more tasks may be used.  

Another strategy is for the teacher to give the students a menu of performance tasks early in the course, and let the students select one or two to do as major projects for the course. At set times in the course, each student presents his or her product or performance to the class. If the student's task calls for the product or performance to be given to an audience outside of the class, then allow that experience to occur first. When the student reports to his or her peers in class, the experience with the outside audience can be part of the report. Attentions should be focused on how the performance tasks are helping to build subject area literacy in the students. 

Use Classroom Lists and Models of Excellent Work
At the beginning of a performance task show students the classroom list relevant to their project. Also show them examples of excellent work that is similar to, but not identical to their current project. You may not have models of excellent work at first.

Models of excellent work should come from your students. You and your colleagues could define what excellent work is in your course, For a poster talk, for example, you might collect excellent posters on different topics. If two or more teachers are teaching the same course, each one can collect a set of excellent posters. When the collection is finished, review the posters and select a final set that includes a variety of topics and styles created for different audiences. You can choose to have students participate in the final selection. 

Require Self-Assessment
Especially in the beginning, students will have the tendency to complete their work and turn it in without assessing it themselves. Require that they use the classroom lists and assess their work using each element in the appropriate lists.

Helping Students Become Better at Self-Assessment
If students are not experienced in writing self-assessments, they will need training during the course so that they can write an self-assessment narrative. After students complete tasks, ask them to respond to the following questions so that they will gain experience with self-assessment.
  1. What do you like the most about your project? Why?
  2. What was the most difficult part about making the project? Why?
  3. If you were to do this project again, what would you do differently? Why?
  4. If you were to revise this project one more time, how would you change it and why?
  5. How did you craft your project so that it would be just right the specific audience?
  6. What helps you be creative?
  7. What are three words that describe you as a student? Explain how those three words best describe you.
  8. If a candid camera were to take pictures of you working on this project, what would it see?
  9. Who was the biggest help to you on this project? How did they help you?
  10. How does this project show that you understand the important concepts we have studied so far?
Assessing Tasks
Attention should be focused on how the performance tasks are helping build an understanding of course concepts. Rubrics and classroom assessment lists can be the main criteria used to assess performance tasks.
 
Rubrics
A rubric is a set of descriptions of the quality of a process and/or a product. The set of descriptions includes a continuum of quality from excellent to poor. There are many varieties of rubrics. The one that follows is a six-level rubric called a "Two-Decision Rubric."
 
Using the Rubric
To use the rubric, the assessor studies the product and makes the first of two decisions. The assessor decides if the product is more like the one that is excellent (T) or more like the one that is poor (W). If the first decision is that the product is more like a T, then you are ready to make the second and final decision. Is the product unusually excellent (S), is it evenly excellent (T), or is it mostly excellent (U)?
S
Superb, eloquent, unusually excellent
T
Evenly excellent
U
Mostly excellent, unevenly excellent, one or two important elements that are not excellent
V
Better than poor, one or two important elements that are better than poor
W
Evenly poor
X
Not done or very poor
If the first decision is that the product is more like a W, you must rate the project based on the following questions.. Is the product evenly poor (W), mostly poor but with some better elements (V), or is it not completed or very poorly done (X)? In only two decisions, the product is placed on a six-point scale.

Rubrics presented here use letters instead of numerals. There is good reason for this. If numerals were used, for example, and a student were to make, on a scale of 1 to 4, a 2 on one presentation and a 4 on another, someone might be tempted to report that the student made an average of 3 on the product. The score of 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in a continuum of quality, but the distances between each of the levels of quality are probably the same. Rubrics are more like the Continuum B than Continuum A, shown below, so the values should not be added together and a "mean" score should not be calculated. 

Continuum A:

Equal intervals between values:

1.........2.........3........4........5 

Continuum B:

Unequal intervals between values:
1....2....3....4....5...6
Consider the ratings made by the student on seven posters made throughout the course:
W     U     T     U     U     T     T
It would be correct to describe the student's long-term performance by reporting that he or she made three T's, three U's, and a W. Another observation, however, would be that the rating of T was earned during the later part of the course, which showed that the student improved with time and practice.

A rubric is designed to lay out a continuum of quality from very excellent to very poor. It is a tool that puts this continuum into words and that can be used to place students' work on a continuum of quality. If two or more teachers are assessing the same type of performance, such as a poster, then using the same rubric for the posters will help them both view posters in the same way. Once a rubric has been created, it can be used unaltered by many teachers. (Even teachers at different grade levels and/or teaching different subjects can use the same rubric. Use of a common rubric can provide continuity of teaching and learning from grade to grade and from subject to subject.) 

Classroom Assessment Lists
The rubric is not a tool for students. Each teacher who uses the rubric makes his or her own classroom assessment list. That classroom assessment list uses terms the students can easily understand. Classroom lists are guidelines. If a student meets every guideline of a classroom list in an excellent manner, the product would probably be assessed as a T. 

While the rubric remains unchanged from teacher to teacher, the classroom assessment lists will likely differ from teacher to teacher. The teacher decides how best to translate the rubric into a useful list of guidelines for a particular class of students. It should be noted that after a few experiences using the classroom assessment lists, the students working either alone or in cooperative groups can make their own lists of guidelines; thus, further engaging them in active learning. 

Student Self-Assessment
An important life skill is the ability to self-assess and plan for improvement. Students often complete their assignments expecting the teacher to grade and return them. Students should learn to thoughtfully study their own work and identify what they have done well and where they need improvement. When students are taught to use the instructions in the performance task, the classroom assessment list, and the models of excellence to assess their own projects, their self-assessment will be more effective.
One successful strategy for teaching students how to use these tools is to show them posters from a previous year or another class that were rated as V or U. Without telling the class what ratings the posters were given, organize the students into small cooperative groups to assess the posters, using the classroom assessment lists and models of excellent posters. Involve the class in a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each sample poster. Then, when students make their own posters, use cooperative groups for peer-assessment. Require that the student assess his or her own work on each element of the classroom assessment list before it is submitted to the teacher. This process can be used with any other type of product.
 
Read more about it…
To learn more about creating appropriate tasks, read this Teaching Today article.
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