Non-Traditional Assessment Models

Authentic Assessment: Assessing by Doing

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What is Authentic Assessment?

Authentic assessment is based on students’ abilities to perform meaningful tasks they may have to do in the “real world.” In other words, this form of assessment determines students’ learning in a manner that goes beyond multiple choice tests and quizzes.

Why Should I Consider Using Authentic Assessment?

Authentic assessment has several advantages over traditional assessment, summarized in the table below.

Wiggins, Grant (1990). The case for authentic assessment. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. 2(2).

How Can I Develop Authentic Assessment?

Here are some suggestions for developing an authentic assessment:

• Identify at least one task students need to be able to do to be successful in employment and/or continuing education
• Work with your fellow faculty/staff to determine how students might be able to demonstrate their ability to do the task(s)
• Identify criteria to evaluate the task(s)
• Evaluate students’ abilities to complete the criteria of the task(s)

What are Some Authentic Assessment Methodologies?

Examples:

• Biology lab practical
• ePortfolio
• Music jury
• Mock trial
• Acting in a play

The basic premise of authentic assessment is that if you want to know how well someone golfs, the best way to assess it is to have that person play a round of golf.

What are the Critical Elements I Should Think about when I Use Authentic Assessment?

There are several critical elements to consider before deciding to use authentic assessment.

• This type of assessment requires a sense of meaningful tasks that students would need to be able to do after they leave DePaul. 
• These meaningful tasks are often linked to demonstration of knowledge/skills/abilities needed in the post-college world.
• Authentic assessment typically relies on using a rubric (or some other scoring guide). 

What Sorts of Things Should I Consider When I Develop an Authentic Assessment?

Before deciding to implement authentic assessment, you should consider the following two questions:

• Where do students go after they complete your program?
• What do students need to be able to do to be successful in what they do after they complete your program?

Additionally, you should take the following things into consideration:

• Time: Developing the tasks for students to complete takes time, as does developing rubrics/scoring guides and assessing students’ tasks.
• Authentic Assessment needs to be done at a developmentally appropriate time.
• Students need to grasp knowledge and skills before they will be able to apply them.

Developmental Assessment: Assessing by Progress

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What is Developmental Assessment?

Authentic assessment looks at students’ progress in developing skills, abilities, values, etc., rather than evaluating students’ final products.

Why Should I Consider Using Developmental Assessment?

Not every type of learning is best assessed by looking at the quality of a final product. In fact, sometimes there is no expectation that students should, or even could, fully develop in the assessed area by the end of a course or program. An example of this is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Theoretically, very few people ever fully develop to the final “self-actualized” stage. A few advantages of authentic assessment are:

• Developmental assessment is useful for outcomes based on students’ development rather than their abilities to create a final product. 
• This assessment is based on relevant principles of development in your discipline. 
• This type of assessment emphasizes emerging knowledge and skills, rather than recognizing only students’ final products.
• Developmental assessment gives you the ability to focus on strengths and unique aspects of your program. 
• Developmental assessment is ongoing and may occur in many contexts, giving you a richer view of students’ learning.
  

How Can I Create Developmental Assessments?

Developmental assessments require some sort of pre- post- design. If you would like to know how much a student has developed their knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or values, you need to measure that information at the beginning of a learning experience, then again at the end.

Example: One could administer a test at the beginning of a class, then ask the same students to take the same test at the end of a class. By comparing students’ performances on the pre- and post-tests, an instructor could determine students’ levels of development.

What are Some Developmental Assessment Methodologies?

Methodologies tend to rely on observational and work sampling techniques that continually focus on performance, processes, and products over selected periods of time and in a variety of contexts.

Example: An instructor may compare two work samples using a developmental rubric to determine students’ levels of development.

What are the Critical Elements I Should Think about when I Use Developmental Assessment?

Developmental assessment requires a theory of how students develop the knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or values you intend to measure. The person or people conducting the assessment need to have good knowledge of the stages through which students progress as they develop. Developmental assessment necessarily requires some sort of a pre- post- assessment design.

What Should I Consider When I am Thinking About Using a Developmental Assessment?

• The purpose of assessment is to collect information necessary to make important decisions about students’ development and educational needs.
• Assessment must serve in ways that enhance opportunities for optimal growth, development, and learning.
• The process of determining individual developmental and educational needs informs instructional practices and provides a template for setting individual and program goals.

Emergent Assessment: Assessing by Discovery

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What is Emergent Assessment?

Emergent assessment is a model based on Michael Scriven’s (1967) goal free evaluation model. With emergent assessment, assessment is structured using “effects” rather than learning outcomes. This model honors the idea that you may bias your assessment by specifically defining what you are looking for (i.e. when you focus exclusively on a learning outcome, you may be ‘putting on blinders’ regarding the other things that may be happening with student learning). This assessment model tends to be more qualitative in nature.

Why Should I Consider Using Emergent Assessment?

Emergent Assessment addresses concerns about inquiry shared by many disciplines, particularly those disciplines that tend to use more qualitative methodologies. A few examples of these concerns are:

1. There may be differences between explicitly stated learning outcomes and their associated implicit learning.
   • Prevents overlooking unintended outcomes (both good and bad).
   • Focus is on what program actually does, rather than what it intends to do.
2. Does defining learning outcomes in “testable” ways alter the learning outcomes (and not always in desirable ways)?
   • With this type of assessment, the assessment process and learning outcomes are equally subject to evaluation as student learning.
3. Are we sacrificing the roles of assessment for the goals of assessment? In other words, are we sacrificing the process for the outcomes (i.e., assigning grades or writing an assessment report)?
   • This assessment method more directly takes students needs into consideration than a more traditional assessment model.

How Can I Develop Emergent Assessment?

Profile the actual effects of instruction or educational program against demonstrated needs of students who complete a course or program.

Step One

Create a profile of the needs of students who finish your course, graduate from your program (that goes beyond what you intend to deliver).

Step Two

Identify effects of educational program on students’ learning using primarily direct methods, considering

• both intended and unintended effects
• both positive and negative effects

Step Three

Compare the information gained in step one with the information gained in step two.

What are Some Emergent Assessment Methodologies?

Methodologies may include anything that includes a global, comprehensive look at student work, behavior, performance, attitudes, and values to determine what affect the academic program is having.

Examples

• Writing Samples
• Especially those requiring reflection
• Interviews or focus groups with students
• Ex. Brainstorming sessions with students
• Ecological observation of students engaged in work in a classroom

What are the Critical Elements I Should Think about when I Use Emergent Assessment?

• Assessors need to be competent in the subject of assessment.
• Assessors need to “know it when they see it.”
• Assessors need to be aware of and conscientious of their bias.
• Ideally, the assessors would have no knowledge of intended learning outcomes, but this is generally not possible in assessment.
• Assessors do not look for effects solely through the lens of defined learning outcomes or intended learning based on course/program academic content.
• Need to be Critical!
• Are you just seeing what you want to see?

What Sorts of Things Should I Consider When I Develop an Emergent Assessment?

• First, you should consider the necessarily intrusive nature of this type of assessment. Is this appropriate for your setting (i.e., the culture or nature of your course or program)?
  
• Also, this type of assessment can be very time-consuming – both for the faculty/staff and for the students.
  
• There is a need for both candor and honesty with this assessment model, which may not be comfortable for some people.
  
• Assessment with this model needs to be both balanced and unbiased. Note that this requires knowledge from the assessors of their natural biases.
  

Scriven, M. (1967). The methodology of evaluation. In R. W. Tyler, R. M. Gagne & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives on curriculum evaluation, (p. 39-83). Chicago: Rand-McNally.

What is Learning-Oriented Assessment?

Learning-Oriented assessment is assessment that has the purpose of bringing about deep and meaningful learning for student.  This is a course-based type of assessment that focuses on students’ learning rather than instructors’ teaching. 

Why Should I Consider Using Learning-Oriented Assessment?

Huba, M.E. & Freed, J.E. (2000). Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses. Allyn and Bacon: Boston.

How Can I Develop Learning-Oriented Assessment?

Here are some suggestions for developing a learning-oriented assessment for a course:

• Develop course-based learning outcomes
• Create learning experiences designed to bring about the learning based on the defined learning outcomes
• Engage students in ill-defined (rather than well-defined) problems
• Evaluate students’ abilities to complete the criteria of the task(s)
• Provide formative assessment to involve students in improving their learning
• Gather feedback from students about instructors’ teaching and their learning to involve instructors in improving students’ learning
• Adjust instruction based on feedback from students

What are Some Learning-Oriented Assessment Methodologies?

Methodologies tend to focus more on formative assessment and classroom assessment strategies.  All assessment methodologies should have the purpose of contributing to students’ learning

Examples:

• ePortfolios
• Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
• Work on ill-defined problems (example: “grand challenges” in your field)

What are the Critical Elements I Should Think about when I Use Learning-Oriented Assessment?

This type of assessment breaks down the barrier between instructors and students

• Both are equal partners in students’ learning
• Requires a lot of formative assessment (students need consistent feedback on their learning)
• This is a course-based (rather than a program-based) form of assessment.
• Focuses heavily on formative assessment (rather than summative)
• BUT, still need to determine how grades will be given in the course
• This type of assessment is based on an assumption of “backward design”

What Sorts of Things Should I Consider When I Develop a Learning-Oriented Assessment?

Before deciding to implement learning-oriented assessment, you should consider the following two questions:

• This type of assessment requires a lot of faculty buy-in (due to its classroom-based nature)
• Requires a shift in both instructors’ and students’ thinking about mistakes
• Making mistakes is to be expected as a natural part of the learning process
• Use caution that the classroom does not have a punitive view of mistakes
• Instructors’ teaching is equally up for evaluation as students’ learning.
• This is a time-consuming form of assessment.

Further Resources

Huba, M.E. & Freed, J.E. (2000). Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses. Allyn and Bacon: Boston, MA.

Knight, P. (1995). Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. Kogan Page: London.

Maki, P. (2010). Assessing for Learning. Stylus: Sterling, VA.