READ | TEACHING @ | EVALUATING STUDENT LEARNING
designing | grading | learningDesigning Performance Assessment
In many fields (such as dance, studio art, allied medical professions, and sometimes laboratory sciences), student performance is the most appropriate way to judge student progress. Different kinds of measures will be appropriate for different fields, but some general guidelines are listed below:
It is important to base the assessment on the specific skills or competencies that the course is promoting. A course in family therapy, for example, might include performance tests on various aspects that are covered in the course, such as recording client data, conducting an opening interview, and conducting a therapy session. Developing a performance assessment involves isolating particular, demonstrable skills that have been taught and establishing ways in which the level of skill can be assessed for each student. One might, for example, decide that the best way in which a student can demonstrate counseling skills such as active listening would be to have the student play the role of therapist in a simulated session.
It is best to define the task as clearly as possible. Rather than simply alerting the students to the fact that their performance will be observed or rated, it is helpful to give more precise instructions on how the test will be structured, including how long they will have, the conditions under which they will perform the task, and other factors that will allow them to anticipate and prepare for the test, as well as the criteria by which the performance will be assessed. If possible, it is best in setting up a new assessment situation to ask a student or colleague to do a trial run before using the test with students so that unanticipated problems can be detected and eliminated.
Good performance assessments identify criteria on which successful performance will be judged and specify these in advance. For curriculum areas in which it is possible to clearly define mastery, such as, “the student will be able to tread water for five minutes,” it is desirable to do so. In most areas, however, effective performance is a complex blend of art and skill, and particular components are very subtle and hard to isolate. In these cases, it is often useful to try to highlight some observable characteristics and to define what would constitute adequate performance. In a test of teaching, for example, students might be expected to demonstrate clarity, organization, discussion skills, reinforcement of student responses, and the like. Operational definitions for specific components to be evaluated may be phrased like the following excerpt from a teaching observation checklist: “Praises student contributions—The teacher acknowledges that he or she values student contributions by making some agreeable verbal response to the contributions. The teacher may say, ‘That’s a good point,’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ ‘Thanks for raising that,’ ‘Right, well done,’ or the like.” Such information is helpful to the student as well as to the instructors who will be rating the performance. See the section below on Primary Trait Analysis for an example of one method for doing this.
It is important to give the same test or kind of test to each student. When possible, it is best to arrange uniform conditions surrounding a performance testing situation. Students can be given the same materials to work with, or the same task. Often, however, particularly in professional practice situations, it is hard to control the context of a performance testing situation. One nursing student may be evaluated while dealing with an especially troublesome patient while another will be working with a helpful patient. In these situations, documenting and allowing for the contextual influences on the performance are extremely important parts of the evaluation, but the evaluator will be called upon to exercise informed, professional judgment.
In summary, the effectiveness of a given performance assessment is directly related to how appropriate it is, given the course objectives; how clearly the tasks are defined; how well the criteria for successful performance have been identified and conveyed; and how uniform the testing is for all students involved. The section on grading later in this chapter contains a discussion on grading students in a performance situation.
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