Ed 227- Assessment in Learning 2

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT / ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT

Over the past few years, there has been a general dissatisfaction over the results
of traditional standardized objective tests. Concerted efforts have been expended to find
alternative assessment mechanisms of measuring educational outcomes and processes
and measure more complex processes in education.
Alternative Assessments, also referred to as performance test or authentic
assessments, are used to determine what students can and cannot do, in contrast to what
they do or do not know. It measures applied proficiency more than it measures
knowledge.
The essence of a performance assessment is that students are given the
opportunity to do one or more of the following:
• Demonstrate their ability
• Perform a meaningful task
• Receive feedback by a qualified person in terms of relevant and defensive criteria
In short, its purpose is to assess student’s proficiency in performing complex tasks
that are directly associated with learning outcomes and merely asks students to analyze,
synthesize and apply what they have learned in a substantial manner and students create
new meaning during the process.

Examples of Alternative Assessment

There are many ways to assess students’ mastery of material besides multiple-choice
examinations. Here are some examples of alternative assessments:
1. Open Book Exams – Encourage students to learn to apply knowledge rather than
memorize material and are usually somewhat less-provoking than regular tests.

2. Crib Sheets – Allowing students to bring some notes provides the same advantage
as an open book examination. The process of deciding what to include in the notes,
putting concepts in your own words, is a good learning experience for the students
and with appropriate parameters and guidance provided by the instructor.

3. Take Home Exams – Allow instructors to give students problems which will take
longer than a class period to manage and/or require the students to use a variety of
references.
4. Collaborative Testing – Some instructors have students take multiple choice test in
pairs or small groups. This approach which allows students to discuss the materials
and “teach each other” usually increases the students’ grasp of the material. If tests
are to be taken collaboratively, test items should be written at a higher level of the
taxonomy.

5. Student Portfolios – These are most often a collection of written work, but could
also include computer programs, drawings, video tapes or problem solving which
provide a more accurate picture of a student’s achievement than a single test or
project could.

6. Performance Tests – Students are required to perform a complex skill or procedure,

or create a product to demonstrate that they can apply the knowledge and skills they
have learned while the instructor observes and evaluates the process. These tests
are time consuming and often difficult to grade.

7. Retake Policies – Providing students with the opportunity to repeat an exam benefits
most students. It decreases student anxiety and provides the students to learn from
their mistakes. However, this policy demands a large bank of test items and additional
instructor time for grading the exams.

8. Adding the option of explanation to an M-C test – Allowing students to explain an

answer decreases student anxiety and often prevents penalizing the “good” student
for interpreting the question at a deeper level than was intended.

9. Replacing Tests with Summaries – Some instructors, rather than testing, require
students to regularly write summaries of the class readings and lectures which include
the main points, a critical reaction to the ideas, and a discussion of what’s important.

Advantages of Alternative Assessment

• They provide a means of assessing valued skills that cannot be directly assessed
with traditional tests. (direct measures)
• They provide a more realistic setting for student performance than traditional tests.
• They focus on student performance and the quality of work performed by students
• They can be easily aligned with established learning outcomes. (more flexible)

Disadvantages of Alternative Assessment

• Process can be costly in terms of time, effort, equipment, materials, facilities, or
funds.
• Rating process is sometimes more subjective than traditional exams.
Steps in Developing Alternative (Authentic) Assessment

The following steps might help us develop an authentic assessment by setting up:

1. Standards – What should students know and be able to do?

2. Authentic Tasks – What indicates students have met these standards?
3. Criteria – What does good performance on this task look like?
4. Rubric – How well did the students perform?

Guidelines for Constructing Alternative Assessments

• Define the instructional outcome you want to assess as clearly and unambiguously
as possible in terms of both the subject-matter content and the set of skills or
operations that a skillful performer would exhibit.

• Distinguish between those outcomes that can validly be assessed solely by

performance assessment and those that can be assessed just as effective by
objective measures.

• Create tasks that elicit evidence of the student’s ability to perform the targeted skill.

• Decide what kinds of teacher guidance can be used while still allowing students
freedom to learn and do it their own.

• Try out the assessment and make revisions as necessary.

There are many testing procedures that are classified as performance tests with a
generally agreed upon definition that these tests are assessment procedures that require
students to perform a certain task or activity or perhaps solve complex problems. One of
the performance testing procedure is the performance tasks where students are
required to draw on the knowledge and skills they possess and to reflect upon them for
use in the particular task at hand.
Of course, the essential idea in performance tasks is that students or pupils learn
optimally by actually doing the task which is constructivist philosophy. As in any other
test, the tasks need to be consistent with the intended outcomes of the curriculum and
the objectives of instruction; and must require students to manifest what they know and
the process by which they came to know it.
Another is the rubrics; a scoring method that lists the criteria for a piece of work, or
“what counts” and articulates gradations of quality for each criterion. Modern assessment
methods tend to use rubrics to describe student performance. Here is an example of a
rubric;
 Rubric for an Invention Report
Criteria Quality
(3) (2) (1) (0)
Most Acceptable Acceptable Less Not Acceptable
Acceptable
Purposes The report The report The report The report
explains the key explains all explains does not refer
purposes of the the key some of the to the purposes
invention and purposes of purposes of of the
points out less the invention. the invention invention.
obvious ones as but misses
well. key
purposes.
Features The report details The report The report The report
both key and details the neglects does not detail
hidden features of key features some the features of
the invention and of the features of the invention or
explains how they invention and the invention purposes they
serve several explains the or purposes serve.
purposes. purposes they serve.
they serve.
Critique The report The report The report The report
discusses the discusses the discusses does not
strengths and strengths and either the mention the
weaknesses of weaknesses strength or strength or the
the invention and of the weaknesses weaknesses of
suggests ways in invention. of the the invention.
which it can be invention but
improved. not both.
Connections The report makes The report The report The report
appropriate makes makes makes no
connections appropriate unclear or connections
between the connections inappropriate between the
purposes and between the connections invention and
features of the purposes and between the other things.
invention and features of invention
many different the invention and other
kinds of and one or phenomena.
phenomena. two
phenomena.

Sub-totals

Average: ___________
Figure 1 – Prototype of Rubric Scoring
Why do rubrics scoring are popular in Philippine school system?
1. It is very useful tools for both teaching and evaluation of learning outcomes.
2. It allow students to acquire wisdom in judging and evaluating the quality of
their own work in relation to the quality of the work of other students.
3. It is quite efficient and tend to require less time for teachers in evaluating
student performance.
4. It is easy to understand and construct a rubric scoring guide.

How to create a rubric?

In designing a rubric scoring guide, the students need to be actively involved in the
process. The following steps are suggested in actually creating a rubric:

1. Survey models – Identify the characteristics that make the good ones good and the
bad ones bad.

2. Define criteria – From the discussions on the models, identify the qualities that define
good work.

3. Agree on the levels of quality – Describe the best and worst levels of quality then fill
in the middle levels

4. Practice on models – Using the agreed criteria and levels of quality, evaluate the
models presented together with the students.

5. Use self and peer-assessment – Give students their task. As they work, stop them
occasionally for self and peer-assessment.

6. Revise – Always give students time to revise their work based on the feedback they
get.

7. Use teacher assessment – Use the same rubric students used to assess their work
yourself.

Tips in designing Rubrics

Perhaps the most difficult challenge is to use clear, precise and concise language.
Terms like “creative”, “innovative” and other vague terms need to be avoided. If a rubric
is to teach as well as evaluate, terms like these must be define for students. Instead of
these words, try words that can convey ideas and which can be readily observed in which
students could meet the criterion (figure 2).
This approach provides valuable information to students on how to begin a talk
and avoid the need to define elusive terms like “creative”.
 Criterion Quality
Gives details or Does a 2- Does a 1- Does not
an amusing sentence sentence attempt to
Gains fact, a short introduction, introduction, gain
attention of demonstration, then starts then starts attention of
the a colorful visual speech. speech. audience,
audience or a personal just starts
reason why speech.
they picked this
topic.
Figure 2 – Parts of Rubric for an Oral Presentation

Specifying the levels of quality can often be very challenging also. There is
clever technique often used to define levels of quality. It essentially graduates the
quality levels through the responses: “Yes”, “Yes but”, “No but” and “No” as shown
in the figure below.

Criterion Quality
Yes, I put in Yes, I put in No, I didn’t No, I had
enough some details put in enough almost no
Gives enough details to give but some key details but I details.
details the reader a details are did include a
sense of time, missing few.
place and
events.
Figure 3 – Parts of Rubric for Evaluating a Scrapbook