Performance Assessment is a more effective alternative to norm-referenced tests, as it provides a realistic and comprehensive behavioral picture of what students know and can do.
However, the most significant risk committed by developing education systems, their teachers in schools, and instructors in higher education institutions is their general teaching of knowledge and memory. Students learn their courses based on knowledge and memory, and are then tested to retrieve this knowledge with traditional questions that require little more than knowledge and memory, and a limited amount of comprehension.
We sometimes observe, even at the university level, students complain about the difficulty of tests that ask them (unusually for transient learning and memory) to specifically apply a concept, principle, method, or theory; to conduct analytical comparisons; to infer specific organic or practical relationships; to propose a relatively new idea or method; or to judge the validity or effectiveness of knowledge or skill learned through memory.
Continuing this educational deviation in learning and teaching knowledge and memory, without elevating the other five higher cognitive abilities in Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy, for example, places young people, families, and institutions in inevitably imminent strategic danger. The inevitable result is the production of unthinking generations devoid of logic, critical thinking, or any significant effective institutional role.
Unless teachers and instructors shift from their current traditional teaching of knowledge and memory to more advanced cognitive and behavioral approaches, and then change their traditional assessment practices, often limited in resources and time, to active constructivism during the learning and teaching processes that advance individual students to higher intellectual and academic levels, educational laboratories (schools, colleges, and universities) will continue to produce weak, unthinking generations, thus contributing to the decline of society in various areas of life and work.
The Concept of Learning Achievement Assessment
Achievement assessment is the measurement of individual students’ responses to a question or situation, indicating their academic knowledge or behavior that demonstrates their practical skills in performing specific required types of learning.
Achievement assessment takes various forms, including behavioral learning, such as:
* Conducting experiments
* Operating equipment
* Performing a specific skill or behavior, either verbally or orally (as in languages)
* Writing a long essay
* Solving mathematical problems or exercises
The most appropriate assessment of achievement in education is one that is conducted through behavioral stages that reflect the progress of students in achieving the required learning, ranging from simple, limited answers to verbal or practical performances and demonstrations, and cumulative assignments for the assigned academic material.
Despite all the illustrative specifications of assessment achievements above, they are distinguished from other traditional types of measurement (such as paper-and-pencil tests) by the following:
* Students actually construct the required answers, rather than simply placing a check mark next to the correct option, as in multiple choice and objective true-false tests.
* Direct observation of students’ behavior in performing the required learning task.
* The correlation of students’ success in assessing the completion of the learning task with their success in the practical fieldwork of that task.
* Revealing the behavior, actions, skills, and thoughts of individual students by directly observing the types of responses they give to the task.
In conclusion, assessment of achievement measures what is taught in the prescribed curricula through behavioral and observational forms linked to the required performance in the field. Thus, it has two basic indicators:
1. The achievement of individual students through active response, directly observed, or indirectly through intellectual production (such as essays, solutions, or written theses). Or tangible material, such as in the performance of various academic skills, or when creating or manufacturing real or three-dimensional models, such as in graduation projects in engineering and other natural sciences, literature (poetry and stories), social studies, or other academic subjects.
2. The connection of individual students’ achievement to the field. The nature of the task and the situations through which assessment occurs are directly related to the actual performance in the work, profession, or job, which provides them with effective opportunities for behavioral success in these responsibilities.
General Methods for Assessing Learning Achievement
Assessment of achievement goes beyond the practical performance of knowledge and learning skills, but extends to students’ writing, explanations, experiments, projects, verbal and practical presentations, and the solution of learning and daily life problems. Many methods are currently available for implementing achievement assessment with students, including the following:
1. Activities involving learning situations and assessment, such as practical steps for conducting a practical experiment, examining laboratory samples, or operating a specific device, which the teacher observes while students perform them in real life.
2. Practical or written projects within the curriculum. While these projects adhere to the established scientific research methodology, students, individually or in small groups, undertake a sequential series of logical intellectual and performance steps, ultimately leading to the desired performance. These steps are then submitted at an appropriate time for teacher assessment or presented in practice or verbally to the entire class for a general discussion among peers about the adequacy and reliability of the results.
Projects and experiments that take several days to several weeks to complete require implementation. In performing these learning activities, students initiate the identification of learning problems, topics, or tasks, review available knowledge to understand the requirements, propose appropriate solutions, and then present these solutions to their peers and/or the teacher for scrutiny and educational assessment of the quality of the achievement.
Students generally work individually, but when necessary, they participate together in discussion and exchange of opinions and facts to analyze and adopt the most effective available options and possible formats for presenting their ideas and products.
3. Student Portfolios. A portfolio is a cumulative record of the work, activities, and projects undertaken by students in learning (see Chapter 1 of the book: Contemporary General Methods in Educational Assessment of Learning for more details).
The fact that a portfolio includes samples of project performance or required achievement assignments indicates not only the success or failure of the results, but also the nature of the cognitive and behavioral development experienced by students as they progress through their learning.
A portfolio, as a cumulative record of student work, writings, assessments, research, assignments, and tests, provides all stakeholders with a realistic, comprehensive picture of each student’s intellectual, behavioral, and academic development over a specific period of time, such as a month, a semester, a year, or sometimes several years, as in the case of a student’s portfolio for a school stage (elementary, basic, intermediate, or secondary), or for obtaining a diploma or bachelor’s degree in a profession or university major.
4. Video recordings. This technique can be used in educational assessment of student achievement in two forms: directly by recording achievement assessments on regular or small compact discs, then teachers can view them and determine the adequacy of individual students’ achievement of the required task. This can be used to advance them to higher levels of learning or to guide them to further learning when their achievement is weak.
The second contemporary form is remote video recordings, known as remote electronic video conferences or school videoconferences. Here, students perform the required work individually, in small groups, or in classrooms, while teachers observe directly remotely via audio and video. Their success is assessed based on specific qualitative and quantitative criteria, or their needs for further training and learning to improve their learning and enable them to achieve the required performance.
5. Preparing research reports on the subject’s literature.
6. Case studies recorded on audio CDs or portable digital devices, or written reports in the form of scientific research, presented orally at a meeting of the course’s peer group or sent to them via email.
7. Other selected assessment methods, such as: academic competencies performed by students in subject-related situations, pass/fail tests, graded grading scales from 1-5 or 1-7, formal written tests, and a 10-15 minute live or remote online interview.