Beyond Paper and Pencil Assessments
Sun, Oct 05, 2014 3:47 PM
Beyond Paper and Pencil Assessments
The information in this article is a history of the development of project based assessment in one small population. It seems the author seeks to inform other educators of the round-about pathway to developing, implementing, and assessing student-generated project based assessment. I agree with the need for these types of assessment in which students are able to demonstrate the skills acquired as a part of the "habits of mind" necessary for science and critical thinking. The author also speaks of the difficulty in standardizing these types of assessment and the subjectivity of assessing a product with a rubric. Given the public's desire to have easy-to-understand numbers as a part of the accountability process for teachers, project based assessment poses a quality/quantity problem. I did like the inset describing how a student might achieve a low evidence of inquiry score but a high communication score. Assessing over a wider scale allows for more students to demonstrate proficiency, but, again, very difficult to "grade" with equitable outcomes. As to the grammar/spelling problem, it seems a low level concern to me. Yes, students need to be able to communicate effectively, but critical thinking is the true goal of science. Any worthwhile word processor can correct grammar and spelling errors.