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
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