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Effect Criteria: A Bridge To Authentic Teaching, Learning
and Assessment
As many teachers have discovered, one of the most significant
ways for teachers to focus students upon quality and continuous
improvement is through the use of portfolios and student-led
conferences. Recently, New Measure, LLC., assisted a local
district in the design of student-led conferences---how
to plan, conduct, and evaluate them. Performance checklists
were developed for portfolio artifacts, improvement charts,
action plans, feedback cards, etc. An implementation timeline
was formulated. Then, the teachers were asked the critical
design question: "To what extent is it possible for
a student to meet all of our portfolio and conference
checklist expectations and still not have a good conference?"
From a teachers' perspective, all agreed that the conference
checklists would really help students. However, when posed
another question, the "effect question", "What effect
will my conference have on parents"?, a whole different
type of discussion emerged with many questions.
- Do we need a parent effect checklist? Do we need a parent effect rubric?
- How can we assess students on effects they cannot control?
- What parts of
a performance should be graded?
- What parts of a performance should not be graded,
but thoroughly discussed?
We have found that "effect questions" add several missing
dimensions to most performance assessment tasks and rubrics. Effect questions make the learning
more authentic, uncovering many real life dilemmas to both students and teachers. Among the "major
aha's!" of this dialogue was the realization that often as assessment designers we do not identify
our performance task's purpose and audience in specific terms and frame our criteria statements
from an audience impact perspective. Thus, the challenges of good criteria design force us to
reflect upon deeper issues related to our most valued desired learning results and outcomes.
For more information on this design approach and "effect
questions", email New Measure, LLC. at support@newmeasure.com.
Oh, by the
way, click here to view the first draft of this Effective
Student-Led Conference Rubric. It is a rough draft,
but it does lead us in the direction of a need for new
measures of student performance. |
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