PERFORMANCE

ASSESSMENT

What is Performance Assessment? One in which a teacher observes and makes a

judgment about the students demonstration of a skill or competency in creating a

product, constructing a response, or making a

presentation.

Emphasis on students ability to perform tasks by producing their own work with their

knowledge and skills.

Examples: singing, playing a piano, performing gymnastics or completed paper,

project

Characteristics of Performance

Assessment Students perform, create, construct, produce, or do

something

Deep understanding and/or reasoning skills are needed and assessed

Involves sustained work, often days

Calls on students to explain, justify and defend

Involves engaging ideas of importance and substance

Relies on trained assessors judgments for scoring

Multiple criteria and standards are prespecified

No single correct answer

Strengths & Weaknesses of

Performance Assessments

Strengths Weaknesses

Integrates assessment with instruction

Learning occurs during assessment

Provides opportunity for formative assessment

More authentic

More engaging, active involvement of students

Emphasis on reasoning skills

Teachers establish criteria to identify successful performance

Emphasis on application of knowledge

Encourages student self-assessment

Reliability may be difficult to establish

Measurement error due to subjective nature of the scoring

Inconsistent student performance across time may result in inaccurate

conclusions

Requires considerable teacher time to prepare and student time to

complete

Difficult to plan for amount of time needed

PROCESS-ORIENTED

PERFORMANCE-BASED

ASSESSMENT

It is important to assess students learning not only through their outputs

or products but also the processes which

the students underwent in order to

arrive at these products or outputs.

Learning entails not only what students know but what they can do with what they know.

It involves knowledge, abilities, values, attitudes and habits of mind that affect academic success and performance beyond the classroom.

Process-Oriented Learning

Competencies

Information about outcomes is important. To improve outcomes, we need to know about

student experience along the way - about the

curricula, teaching, and kind of students that

lead to particular outcomes.

Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; which such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.

Process-oriented performance-based assessment is concerned with the actual task performance rather than the output or product of the activity.

Learning Competencies

Competencies are defined as groups or clusters of skills and abilities needed for a particular task.

The objectives focus on the behaviors which exemplify best practice for the particular task.

Such behavior range from a beginner or novice level up to the level of expert.

Example

Task: Recite a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Objectives: to enable the students to recite a poem entitled The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

Specifically:

1. Recite the poem from memory without referring to notes;

2. Use appropriate hand and body gestures in delivering the piece;

3. Maintain eye contact with the audience while reciting the poem;

4. Create ambiance of the poem through appropriate rising and falling intonation;

5. Pronounce the words clearly and with proper diction.

The specific objectives identified constitute the learning competencies for this particular task.

Examples of simple competencies: Speak with a well-modulated voice

Draw a straight line from one point to another point

Color a leaf with a green crayon

Examples of complex competencies

Recite a poem with feeling using appropriate voice quality, facial expression and hand

gestures

Construct an equilateral triangle given three non-collinear points

Draw and color a leaf with green crayon

Task Designing

Standards for designing a task

1. Identifying an activity that would highlight the competencies to be evaluated.

2. Identifying an activity that would entail more or less the same sets of competencies.

3. Finding a task that would be interesting and enjoyable for the students.

Example

Topic: Understanding biological diversity

Possible Task Design bring the students to the pond or creek Ask them to find all living organisms near the pond

or creek

Bring them to school playground to find as may living organisms they can find

Observe how the students will develop a system for finding such organisms, classifying the organisms and concluding the differences in biological diversity of the two sites.

Scoring Rubrics

Rubric is a scoring scale used to assess student performance along a task-specific set

of criteria.

Authentic assessment are criterion-referenced measures;

A students aptitude on a task is determined by matching the students performance against a set of criteria to determine the degree to which the

students performance meets the criteria for the task.

Example

Criteria 1 2 3

Number of Appropriate

hand gestures

X1

1 - 4 5 - 9 10 - 12

Appropriate facial

expression

X1

Lots of inappropriate

facial expression

Few

inappropriate

facial expression

No apparent

inappropriate

facial expression

Voice inflection X2 Monotone voice used Can vary voice

inflection with

difficulty

Can easily vary

voice inflection

Incorporate proper

ambiance through feelings

in the voice

X3

Recitation contains

very little feelings

Recitation has

some feelings

Recitation fully

captures

ambiance through

feelings in the

voice

Descriptors

Descriptors spell out what is expected of

students at each level of performance for

each criterion.

It tells students what performance looks like at

each level and how their work may be

distinguished from the work of others for

each criterion.

Why include levels of performance?

1. Clearer expectations

Students know what is expected of them and teachers know what to look for in students performance.

Students better understand what good performance on the task looks like if levels

of performance are identified.

2. More consistent and objective assessment

3. Better feedback

4. Analytic versus holistic rubrics

An analytic rubric articulates levels of performance

for each criterion so that teacher can assess

students performance on each criterion.

Holistic rubric does not list separate levels of

performance for each criterion. Instead, it assigns a

level of performance across multiple criteria as a

whole.

3 Excellent Speaker Included 10 12 changes in hand gestures

No apparent inappropriate facial expressions

Utilizes proper voice inflection

Can create proper ambiance for the poem

2 Good Speaker Included 5 9 changes in hand gestures

Few inappropriate facial expressions

Have some inappropriate voice inflection changes

Almost creating proper ambiance

1 Poor Speaker Included 1 4 changes in hand gestures

Lots of inappropriate facial expressions

Uses monotone voice

Cannot create proper ambiance

Example of Analytic Scoring Rubric (for a Writing Sample)

Objective: Write a character study

Scoring Rubric

Ideas 20 points Creative presentation 5 Variety of character traits presented 10

Vivid mental pictures 5

Organizations 10 points Logical presentation of topics 2

Definite pattern discernible 5

Conclusion follows from details 3

Development 20 points All details relevant 10

Use of a variety of literary devices 5

Variety in sentence structure 5

Conventions 10 points Grammatical constructions 3

Spelling 2

Punctuation 3

Handwriting 2

Example of Holistic Rubric Objective: Write a paper to persuade the reader to accept clearly defined point of

view and course of action

Holistic Scoring Rubric (a paper on persuading the reader )

1 Little or no evidence of the skill Inappropriate language for the intended audience

Few or no supporting arguments

Details lacking or irrelevant

2. Competent performance Clear and appropriate language for the intended audience

Most supporting arguments are plausible and relevant

Most details are relevant

Evidence of some innovative thinking

3. Outstanding performance Clear, interesting, and appropriate language

Many plausible and relevant supporting arguments

Ideas are creative and well-expressed

When to choose an analytic rubric

For assignments that involve a larger number of criteria

When to use holistic rubric?

When a quick or gross judgment needs to be made

If the assignment is a minor one such as brief assignment (e.g. check, check-plus, or no check)

to quickly review student work.

How many levels of performance should I

include in my Rubric?

No specific number of levels

Will vary depending on the task and your needs

Start with at least three levels and then expand if necessary.

Example:

Makes eye contact with audience never sometimes always

Makes eye

contact

never

rarely

sometimes

usually

always