Authentic Assessment and Rubrics

What is Authentic Assessment? A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills Jon Mueller Professor of Psychology, North Central College, Naperville, IL

Basic Elements of Authentic Assessment Requires students to develop responses rather than select from predetermined options Elicits higher order thinking in addition to basic skills Directly evaluates holistic projects Synthesizes with classroom instruction Uses samples of student work (portfolios) collected over an extended time period Stems from clear criteria made known to students (rubrics) Allows for the possibility of multiple human judgments Relates more closely to classroom learning Teaches students to evaluate their own work

Traditional vs. Authentic Assessment Traditional --------------------------------------------- Authentic Selecting a Response ----------------------- Performing a Task Contrived ------------------------------------------------- Real-life Recall/Recognition -------------------- Construction/Application Teacher-structured --------------------------- Student-structured Indirect Evidence --------------------------------- Direct Evidence

What does Authentic Assessment look like? An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.

Examples Geometry History Earth Science Health English Fine Arts You want to install new carpet and a baseboard in you room, but you need to know how much carpet and wood to purchase. Write a set of directions to follow, measure and calculate the square footage of each item needed, and determine the cost of carpet and pad (use the Internet to research). History While studying the stock market and its effects on the economy, students will “purchase” a stock or stocks with $5000 and plot their earnings over a three month period. Earth Science Participate in a lab to observe the effects that an iceberg has on the ocean and surrounding land. Health Record and analyze your food consumption over a given amount of time. English Research a career that interests you and report on the educational and job requirements, career outlook, job description, etc. Fine Arts In small groups, process the black and white photos you took for the “My Friends and Family” assignment.

How do you create Authentic Assessments? Identify your standards for your students. For a particular standard or set of standards, develop a task your students could perform that would indicate that they have met these standards. Identify the characteristics of good performance on that task, the criteria, that, if present in your students’ work, will indicate that they have performed well on the task and have met the standards. For each criterion, identify two or more levels of performance along which students can perform which will sufficiently discriminate among student performance for that criterion. The combination of the criteria and the levels of performance for each criterion will be your rubric for that task (assessment).

Your turn… Get with a partner or small group and brainstorm a few authentic assessments you could implement in your classes and then choose someone from your group to share two of them with the whole group. 10-15 minutes

Assessing the Assessment What is a rubric? A scoring scale used to assess student performance along a task-specific set of criteria

How do you make a rubric? Microsoft Excel Microsoft Word http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

More info about rubrics… Share rubric with students when you give assignments. Let students practice grading their own assignments and classmates assignments using rubrics. Model how to use rubrics with students. Let students help create the criteria for rubrics.

Works Cited and Sources http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/index.htm http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/assess.shtml http://www.funderstanding.com/authentic_assessment.cfm http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php http://intranet.cps.k12.il.us/Assessments/Ideas_and_Rubrics/Rubric_Bank/rubric_bank.html