Beyond Multiple Choice: Using Performance and Portfolio Assessments to Evaluate Student Learning

Assessments can be classified as either selected-response or constructed- response.

Selected-response types: true/false, multiple choice, multiple answer, matching

Selected-response types are typically graded objectively and usually measure recall of facts and information, lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Constructed-response types: essays, performance tasks, portfolios, projects

Constructed-response types are typically graded subjectively and usually measure application of knowledge and skills, higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Selected-response assessments are frequently criticized by education experts because of what they don’t do

Selected-response assessments don’t replicate the kinds of complex tasks that students will face in the real world when they try to use their knowledge and skills to succeed, tasks that involve more cognitively demanding decisions than picking the right answer.

Also, selected-response assessments don’t give students the responsibility to develop and opportunities to practice self-assessment and self-adjustment. Instead, they encourage passivity and a reliance on luck or chance.

However, selected-response assessments are the ideal choice when a teacher needs a simple, easy to grade method of assessing students’ knowledge of facts.

They are less useful if a teacher needs to measure synthesis of knowledge or application of information. In those cases, constructed-response assessments are more appropriate.

Today, performance assessment and portfolio assessment are considered the two types of constructed-response assessments most likely to allow the teacher to make accurate decisions about the students’ mastery of the learning outcomes.

Performance Assessment Students are given a task to complete. For authentic assessment, the task should be a challenge that is likely to be encountered by a worker, citizen, or consumer in the real world.

Performance Assessment Create a multimedia presentation that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a documentary on global warming.

Performance Assessment Build a website for a small business in your community. Write up a bid for a job to landscape the new Canyon Country campus.

Performance Assessment Have students plan how to invest $40,000 in the stock market for their children’s college education. They have to select the stock, make a record of their value for 30 days, then write a report describing their success and indicating what changes they would make in their stock portfolio.

Two Kinds of Performance Tasks Restricted performance: highly structured. Example: construct a graph from a set of data. Extended performance: comprehensive. Example: prepare a presentation on endangered species.

Most performance tasks fall into one of these three categories: 1. Solving realistic problems. 2. Oral or psychomotor skills without a product. 3. Writing or psychomotor skills with a product.

If you want to use performance assessment, what must you know?

The evaluative criteria for judging the performance have to be clearly explained to the student before he or she begins the task.

The student is given feedback on the quality of the performance using the evaluative criteria and then uses the feedback to improve in future performances of the task.

One area of concern when using performance assessment: Is the task actually a performance assessment or is it a learning activity?

A learning activity may help engage the students and provide an opportunity for them to practice with the material without being a good way for you to measure their learning.

Also, a learning activity may involve a kind of performance that is not the kind you want to measure in order to determine whether the student has met the learning outcome.

If we use a particular performance genre as a means to an assessment end, we may not think about how the performance genre itself is a variable in the task and will affect the results.

Example: a mock trial of Socrates in ancient Greece. A good way to assess this SLO: Judge the contributions of Socrates, Athens, Plato’s Apology to the Western philosophic tradition?

Always ask yourself: Could the student do well at the task for reasons that have little to do with the desired understanding or skill being assessed?

And, could the student do poorly at the task for reasons that have little to do with the desired understanding or skill being assessed?

Another area of concern when using performance assessment: Grading!

You need to establish the evaluative criteria for the quality of the task. These criteria should be based on the SLOs and objectives for the course.

Typically, the evaluative criteria are incorporated into a rubric that is used to grade the performance assessment.

By yourself or with a colleague from your discipline or a related discipline, design a performance assessment task for an SLO you are used to teaching to, first answering the questions on the handout.

Portfolio Assessment A collection of student work that is used for assessment purposes.

Its popularity comes from its ability to base assessment on diverse evidence (including different performance tasks) and to foster self-assessment in students in the process.

However, portfolio assessment has been sharply criticized on two counts: Sometimes its purpose is unclear from the beginning. Sometimes the way it is graded seems unreliable.

Three different kinds of purposes: 1. Document progress in student learning? 2. Showcase the student’s accomplishments? 3. Prove the student has met the learning outcomes?

Failure to define the purpose of the portfolio before designing it will undermine its validity!

Grading Issues Portfolio assessment requires specific evaluative criteria for grading to be valid. Portfolios are best graded through the use of a rubric built on the evaluative criteria.

Creating Rubrics for both Performance and Portfolio Assessments

Self-assess your level of experience with performance and portfolio assessment: Novice, Apprentice, or Expert

If you are now a novice, do you have any desire to become an apprentice? How would you do that? If you are now an apprentice, do you have any desire to become an expert? How would you do that? If you are now an expert, how might you share your expertise with your colleagues so that they also can reach experthood?