How to assess PBL Assignments? This is one of my main concerns. I do believe that Rubrics are the key to actually assigning a grade. That isn't the difficulty. The problem comes when you are really trying to assess if the student has learned what they should have learned.
At the Georgia Virtual School, we require a project for every module, but we still require a multiple choice objective test as well. This has been the best way for us to marry the two at this point. It gives the student opportunity to demonstrate they know what they should know. It also allows them practice for high-stakes tests they will be required to take later (EOCT, CRCT, SAT). However, this shouldn't be necessary.
The ideal situation would be for a teacher to build such a good project that it would be obvious the student had mastered the standards. But that isn't done overnight. This requires skill and probably trial and error!
I have one other concern with PBL as the main assessment. Most PBL assignments require group work. Now I'm not sure who in the group has learned what when the project is complete. Did one student do the majority of the work while the others watched? Did most do what they needed and one was left out? Here's where I'm not sure where to go as a teacher if you don't have the independent objective test to really see how things worked!
So I will continue to investigate and read up on information. Learning from other's good and bad experiences!
Excellent observations! Assessment is a tough thing to deal with. You bring up excellent points about assessment. I think that we all struggle with the group work thing, and with "what is mastery?"
ReplyDelete"The ideal situation would be for a teacher to build such a good project that it would be obvious the student had mastered the standards. But that isn't done overnight. This requires skill and probably trial and error!" -- This is an excellent point, Tami. We can probably all agree that every assignment/test/activity we ever have students do should be improved upon each and every time we assign it. Learning from the difficulties and successes the students have with the project helps the instructor add or take away certain scaffolds or milestones within the process. As a young teacher, I didn't realize that. I would just throw entire assignments or projects out when I didn't get the results I was hoping for...
ReplyDeleteI think that is why there are so many trends in educational legislation as well... Legislators make laws, not educators. If the educators made the rules, we would tweak and change until we got it right. We wouldn't just throw something out completely every two years when it isn't working like we would want it to...
Assessment exists everywhere--
I agree with everything you've said. Marrying tests with PBL seems to be the easy solution to also make sure the students are prepared for the EOCT/CRCT...
ReplyDeleteOne way to make sure everyone pulls their weight during group assignments is to have individual evaluations that each group member will fill out about the other group members. But I agree, if we could figure out how to do PBL all the time, school would be so much more fun:)
Tami, you had such a thoughtful discussion. I agree with you in that having a balance between two types of assessments is critical because we evaluate students for both the formative and summative purpose. As far as assessing a group work, you might want to consider assigning different roles to each students in a group. Also, you might want to have each student evaluate their group member's performance.
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