Chapter 10 – Assessment Using Technology

Traditional Assessment vs. Alternative Assessment

(and finding authenticity therein)

            The difference between traditional assessment and alternative assessment is multifold.  The most obvious difference is time; the most profound differences include educational philosophy and methodology.  Traditional assessment refers to traditional test taking practices that measure what a student has learned.  It is a snapshot to see if the student has acquired the knowledge and skills being tested.  Traditional end of the chapter, unit tests, SAT, and GEPA tests come to mind as excellent examples.  Alternative assessment refers to a more authentic sort of testing that measures performance over time, and the acquisition of knowledge and skills through meaningful learning experiences.  An excellent example of alternative assessment is this e-portfolio, which has been itinerantly graded at each task throughout its development.  Another example would be an English class writing and performing a skit that was revised, re-written, rehearsed and performed, and at each step, it was graded and reviewed by the teacher for input, assessment, and revision. 

            Many technologies exist that aide a teacher in performing more authentic alternative assessments as well as in aiding teachers in collecting traditional assessment data and analyzing it.  Below is a link to Hot Potatoes.  Hot Potatoes as well as Survey Monkey (from this e-portfolio's similarly named tab) will aide teachers in automating traditional assessments.  Hot Potatoes enables a teacher to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill tests.  In addition, the battleship game, a concentration game or any of the Quia games of this type are fun, online, and interactive, but truly are another form of traditional assessment.  They entertainingly and electronically show how much a person knows about a specific topic at that moment.  The addition of the computer allows the assessor to quickly and easily administer, gather and analyze the results as well as see trends and areas needed for improvement.

As teachers and students become more accustomed to utilizing word processing, database, and presentation software as tools, and websites and online databases for resources, the more popular and important electronic portfolios, such as this one in Taskstream, become.  E-portfolios enable teachers to perform alternative assessments on performance tasks and goals throughout a project or course.  They allow teachers to view a group of students or an individual student’s collection of work, and to assess effort, progress, and achievements throughout the process of knowledge acquisition, process, and mastery.  Taskstream, in particular, is quite thorough, allowing one to associate tasks with various educational standards, create or access websites, and seamlessly integrate many different file types from a multitude of sources.  In addition, it helps the teacher in assessment by its format and through the use of editable rubrics.

Rubrics are also an excellent example of alternative assessment; and technologies, such as online rubric banks and rubric generation tools are available to aide teachers in their creation.  A rubric allows a teacher to rate or score complex learning tasks and performance based upon a rating or scoring system and criteria as defined specifically by the assessor.  I believe the key to a rubric is ensuring the student knows the level of performance and achievement expected beforehand in addition to the rubric creator being as specific about the details of the criteria as possible.  Please see the Task Rubric below we created in class.  I would also create an appropriate rubric for aiding in the objective analysis and grading of a final draft of a 6^th grade essay.  I would grade this essay as a project to be graded in three steps, weighted equally (with one free point for handing each in on time) or perhaps weighted 25%, 25% and 50% for the final draft depending on how competent their previous pre-writing assignments were.  I would assess the pre-write/story outline, first draft, and final draft as well as insure each student was effectively communicated with after assessment and aware of the assessment criteria via the rubric before submission. 

            The benefit of traditional assessment seems to be the ability to be totally objective and unbiased, but many also argue that it doesn’t measure all types of knowledge and biases are just more subtly hidden.  The benefit of alternative assessment is a more realistic look at the acquisition and ability to learn knowledge as well as being a better predictor of future goal attainment and realistic challenges in life.

            As I believe learning is a natural, multi-faceted human process, I believe it should be graded accordingly.  As a teacher, I believe I would use both traditional and alternative forms of assessment to ensure my students obtained truly meaningful knowledge and skills through authentic learning and authentic teaching.