Despite the generally negative attitude towards testing, assessment certainly does have an appropriate place in America's education system. It has become most closely associated with "high-stakes" testing which occurs once or periodically throughout the year and has been known to send both students and teachers scrambling to prepare. However, assessment can also be a helpful tool by which classroom participants can set benchmarks, checking their progress (Popham, 2009). Furthermore, this allows the individual imparting information to preemptively gauge the potential success of the learner in future endeavors.

This artifact was created towards the end of CI 6331: Tests and Measurements. It explores the ability to create a variety of test questions, as well as choosing the appropriate questions for a given circumstance. For instance, multiple choice is great for simple, rote memorization, but more complex concepts often require essay questions to fully check for understanding (Salkind, 2006). This exercise helped to understand and practice structuring questions for various occasions. Though these questions are written, they do not have to be presented to students in a written format, and could therefore provide a more casual assessment. It is easy to adapt this to classroom use or really any job where training or instructions are involved. I use methods like these to make sure my husband knows and understands what I asked him to do all the time. Being able to successfully use formative or summative assessments are an asset in any job in which one interacts with other people.

References

Popham, J. (2009). 6 Curriculum Mistakes. American School Board Journal , 36-38.

Salkind, N. (2006). Tests and Measurements for People Who Think They Hate Tests and Measurements. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.

Principle eight focuses on a teacher's ability to note benchmarks and student achievements via assessment.  With all of the controversy surrounding the overwhelming volume and appropriateness of standardized testing (Popham, 2001), it becomes necessary to make sure formal and informal assessments are effective and useful. An educator should know her class better than any testing institution and must be competent at judging whether or not her students are "getting it" to determine whether or not she has been successful at her job. This spans much farther than the typical test or quiz into quick question and answer sessions, reviews, and even body language (Ruiz-Primo, 2011). Formal assessments are of course necessary, but it is ultimately the informal that are used to make sure students are learning and learning well.

 This particular artifact was created as part of the Effective Instruction and Assessment (CI 6321) and takes the form of a lesson plan for a single forty-five minute period. The setting is a secondary Art I class, and the assessment that takes place is informal formative assessment. Earlier in the week, students would have learned about lines and forms as elements of art. In the beginning of class, student are asked to review that knowledge and use it creatively to make a form out of lines, in this case, pipe cleaners. Since the "lines" are already provided, the main assessment is whether or not students remember the difference between a shape (2-D) and a form (3-D). After a lesson on the elements of texture and space, the closure of this lesson also becomes a way of assessing comprehension of this new knowledge through discussion. Here, students are asked to examine their pipe cleaner forms and discuss how the lines interact and create positive and negative space, as well as whether or not the texture provided is "appropriate."

This lesson is a personal favorite because it feels well put together. The assessment here is not arbitrary and is instead connected to both old and new knowledge, serving as a bridge between the two. Most students will not even realize they are being assessed. Rather, this has the feel of a simple and fun hands-on activity. Things like this are proof that an effective assessment need not be a stressful hassle for students or their instructor.

References

Popham, J. (2001, April 25). (J. Tulenko, Interviewer)

Ruiz-Primo. (2011, March). Assessment for Learning. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 37(1), 15-24. doi:10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.04.003