Reflective Journal #4
The Pros and Cons of Assessment Methods
Selected Responses work well with assessing mastery of knowledge and reasoning proficiency; however this method is not good for assessing skills or the ability to create products. A pro is that it makes assessing quick and easy, because it provides a given right or wrong answer, which enables the teacher to quickly observe mostly accurate results that can be expressed in terms of a score as a number. A con is that it is variable to test anxiety and test preparation from the student and the quality of questions from the teacher.
Extended Written Responses work well with assessing mastery of knowledge, reasoning proficiency and works the best with assessing the ability to create products. However, this method is not beneficial in assessing skills. A pro of this method is that it allows the teacher to assess students on larger more complex pieces of knowledge, rather than in selected responses where students are asked to pick from list of responses. For example, it enables students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of topic. This is useful for demonstrating knowledge on topics with multiple steps or are bigger concepts than can be simply put in a selected response test. It also can produce a physical product that can be scored using a rubric or scoring guide. A con of this method is that it takes more time than Selected Responses.
Performance Assessments work best with assessing skills, and can work well with assessing reasoning proficiency and the ability to create products. For example, in the case of assessing a skill such as sewing or learning another language, performance assessments provide the best results since these skills cannot be efficiently and effectively demonstrated in a written response. Although, if you are assessing the mastery of knowledge in skills such as sewing or mastering a foreign language, then selected responses may fit well with assess these, as well. However, Performance Assessment do not work will for assessing knowledge mastery, because it can be too time consuming to cover everything. A con of this method is that it is variable to the students ability to perform under certain conditions and other reasons dependent of the student. For instance, under-preparedness or nervousness may skew the quality of the student's performance.
Personal Communication works best with assessing skills, and can work with assessing mastery of knowledge and reasoning proficiency. A pro of this method is that the teacher will be able spend time assessing a student one-on-one, which can allow the teacher to ask personalized questions for the student. This is beneficial for young students or students with special needs. It also gives an opportunity for students to think aloud and for the teacher to ask follow-up questions in order to gain further responses for reasoning. A con is this method is time-consuming. this method works best when the questions require short responses. Another can is that it does not assess the ability to create products well. This method asks for short oral responses, so it cannot effectively ask for students to provide a physical product or accurate performance, such as a written response or a demonstration of a skill.
I think that in my lesson planning I would want to use extended answer responses, because my lesson idea is to look at details in that appeal to feelings. I believe that I would want to use this is writing lesson, so the product that students produce will be used in the assessment. I believe that this would best match the aspects that I am looking for in my assessment. This would enable students to demonstrate their mastery of knowledge about the messages and word choices used in poems.
Lillian, you have a really great understanding of the four types of assessment. The only thing I would add to your blog post would be that performance assessments rely heavily on the process. For instance, in your example about sowing, a teacher who uses a performance assessment to grade a students sowing skills would most likely watch the entire process of sowing, not just grade the finished product.
ReplyDeleteLillian, you did a wonderful job of analyzing the pros and cons of the four types of assessment. I like that you narrowed in on the specifics how extended answer responses would be utilized within your lesson. I think this blog helped me realize a couple of demensions that I had failed to think of in my own blog. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI too look to the extended answer response as a sort of "best fit" assessment for most situations. If we are measuring knowledge and students should be able to recall, they should be able to write it down, not pick from a list (that might just be me). But more than that, the extended answer gives students a chance to think through and give reason for their response, a representation of true mastery, in my opinion. Even an answer that isn't technically right, may be reasoned by a student in such a way that shows how they could be right, or more importantly, show examples of where we as teachers may have misrepresented a concept, or misled students to approach content in a way that led to an incorrect answer. Without that information, we may not be able to correct our teaching to be better in future.
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