Assessment for Learning

5. Alternative Assessment

Alternative Assessment 81 5 Alternative Assessment Objectives By the end of this chapter, you should be able to: • understand what alternative assessment is and how it supports learning; • enumerate a broad range of assessment strategies, indicating their characteristics, assessment procedures, and how they assist students in learning; • highlight the significance of self and peer assessment and demonstrate how they are used with alternative assessment strategies; • know how to use rubrics for helping teachers make judgements of students’ performance. In many educational contexts, assessment is largely used for measuring learning outcomes at the end of learning. This kind of assessment tends to have less direct effect on students’ learning. Assessment is most effective for student growth when it reflects, supports, and advances learning. Alternative assessment is designed to stimulate students’ abilities to create and apply a wide range of knowledge rather than simply engage in acts of memorization and basic skill development. Alternative assessment provides a tool for students to see ways to improve their higher-order learning. By integrating different forms of alternative assessment strategies in their instruction, such as portfolios, observations, experiments, projects, simulations, interviews, performances, presentations, peer assessment, and self assessment, teachers can achieve a deeper understanding of students’ learning and promote deeper learning on the part of the learners. Understanding Alternative Assessment In recent years, there has been growing dissatisfaction with traditional test-based assessment. There is a heightened awareness that it is necessary to collect information 82 Assessment for Learning about student learning through different sources. The result is an explosion of interest in diversification in what has become known as alternative forms of assessment. From the late twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, writers of curriculum documents and designers of assessment have attempted to put more demanding tasks involving investigation, problem-solving, report writing and applying skills into the curriculum. These experts stressed that it was necessary to move beyond paper-and-pencil tests of the recall (memorization) of knowledge, towards more extended and open-ended forms of assessment, including assignments, projects and practical activities. The term alternative assessment has been used to refer to a number of related concepts. Sometimes, it is used interchangeably with authentic assessment, performance assessment, performance-based assessment, or productive assessment. However, it should be noted that each of these distinct terms addresses its own important dimension of assessment. For example, authentic assessment reflects some characteristics of alternative assessment but has its own distinctive “real” personality. Authentic assessment is normally interpreted as a form of alternative assessment that engages students in real-world tasks (Brady and Kennedy, 2005: 3). One common feature of all of the above-listed categories of assessments is that they represent “alternatives” to the more traditional test formats found in so many classrooms. A very simple but useful way to define this kind of assessment is that alternative assessment is any method that differs from conventional paper-and-pencil tests, most particularly objective tests (McMillan, 2007; Shohamy, 2001). Alternative assessment does not have to be a replacement of tests. The information collected can be used to support evidence collected from tests, notwithstanding that it can be used independently for understanding student learning. Most forms of alternative assessments, such as portfolios, projects, and learning journals, lend themselves effectively to the “assessment for learning” philosophy, with its emphasis on supporting learning. In this form, assessment is an ongoing process during which teachers diagnose learning problems, monitor student learning and help them through giving quality feedback, as well as adjust teaching with reference to learning outcomes. This kind of assessment intends to make assessment an integral part of the learning experience. It can motivate students by embedding some authentic assessment activities in the learning processes. When students work on tasks and assignments that are “authentic”, it makes the acquisition of knowledge and learning of skills more natural and more meaningful. In contrast, when learning is shaped by the nature of the tasks, and students have some latitude in how their response to the task may come out, care must be taken to ensure that important learning in support of the task is in fact taking place. These activities stimulate students’ abilities to create and apply a wide range of knowledge rather than simply engaging in acts of memorization and basic skill development (Berry, 2003). Alternative assessment also motivates students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Students can be given opportunities to reflect on their own learning and make plans for their learning [3.145.47.253] Project...