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This article explores the use of Performance Assessments in online learning.

Table of Contents

Exploring Performance Assessments

What Are They?

Individual and team projects, portfolios, and self-assessments all fall into this category, where you might provide a checklist or rubric to assess (a) skills in performing a task or (b) the quality of a product created by the student. We’ll discuss rubrics later; for now, we’ll take a closer look at the various tools for performance assessment.

PLEASE CHOOSE: Depending on your learning style, visit one of the following resources to learn more about performance assessment, also known broadly as alternative assessment or authentic assessment:

Why Use Them?

Performance assessments tend to be most effective for measuring student learning at the higher levels of cognitive skills from Bloom’s taxonomy — analyzing, evaluating, and creating — although they can address the applying level as well. The main point of using performance assessments is to measure student learning above and beyond recall of facts or concepts. Can the students actually apply the knowledge in ways that professionals in the discipline might? That is the heart of authentic assessment.

OPTIONAL: If you wish, read this brief page by Jon Mueller (professor at North Central College) that explores the benefits of using performance assessment:

Best Ways to Use Them?

By nature, performance assessments tend to be summative because they typically measure the achievement of intended outcomes. They are best used when you have particular standards that students need to meet, which can range from standards set by an accrediting body for a discipline to standards set by a university or program to standards determined simply by the instructor acting as a subject-matter expert. The performance assessment must be designed in such a way as to directly measure whether students are meeting the standards.

To explore several common types of authentic assessment in more detail, move on to the page below titled Designing Performance Assessments. The page covers the following tools:

  • Group projects

  • Wikis

  • Portfolios

  • Self-Assessments

Examples of Performance Assessments

Here is an example of a performance assessment--in this case, an online wiki collaboration--using the course topic of World War II. In a later section, you will see what other kinds of elements should be included in the directions, such as due dates, parameters, etc.

In groups, create a wiki that describes the following related to a famous general:

  1. The individual's career

  2. His involvement in important battles

  3. An evaluation of the contextual factors that resulted in his success/failure

Choose one of these famous generals for your Wiki project:

  • George Catlett Marshall, Jr.

  • Georgy Zhukov

  • Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel

  • Chester William Nimitz

  • Karl Dönitz

  • George Patton

  • Douglas MacArthur

  • Bernard Law Montgomery

  • Yamamoto Isoroku

  • Dwight David Eisenhower

  • Hermann Göring

  • Earl Mountbatten

Designing Performance Assessments

Performance assessments can include, but are not limited to, the following types of assessments:

  • Group projects

  • Wikis

  • Portfolios

  • Self-Assessments

Below, we present information on each of these four areas to help you determine whether they might work well for what you are trying to assess.

PLEASE READ: Before you explore the four tools, we’d like for you to have an idea of how to go about designing authentic assessments. Jon Mueller offers practical tips:

Group Projects

Often involving research projects, case studies, and problem-based learning, group work offers the opportunity to assess students both in terms of their individual performance and knowledge and their contribution to the group effort.

Palloff and Pratt (1999) recommend these seven basic steps in designing collaborative learning environments:

  1. Clearly define the purpose of the activity.

  2. Create a distinctive gathering place for the group.

  3. Promote effective leadership from within.

  4. Define norms and a clear code of conduct.

  5. Allow for a range of member roles.

  6. Allow for facilitating of subgroups.

  7. Allow members to resolve their own disputes.

OPTIONAL: If you wish, read any of the following for sound considerations and ideas:

Wikis

One of the supporting tools for group projects is a wiki, a website that allows users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser. If you choose to include group projects in your assessment plan, you may want to incorporate the use of a wiki so that students can build a document or presentation together.

OPTIONAL: The following optional resources can help you decide whether to use wikis and plan for them:

Portfolios

An idea borrowed from the arts, portfolios can take a variety of forms but are essentially collections of student work that demonstrate learning and development over time. Portfolios can include a self-assessment component that builds students’ reflective skills as well as provide faculty with valuable insight into student learning. Sometimes, an “e” is placed in front of the word portfolio to indicate it is a digital repository (as opposed to paper).

A portfolio would be an appropriate capstone project for a course or program and is therefore summative in nature.

OPTIONAL: The following resources provide details about portfolios that you may explore if you wish:

- What, why, and how from Jon Mueller, professor at North Central College

Self-Assessment

This type of assessment involves reflection on learning and growth and may be linked to criteria that you develop or that you negotiate with the student. Self-assessment involves students in a process of self-discovery and analysis that has educational benefits beyond the individual course.

OPTIONAL: The following resource offers several good ideas for designing self-assessments that you may read if you wish:

References

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