What is an Assessment Task?
Assessment Tasks or Assignments are instructional strategies used to collect evidence that a student has mastered specific course or unit outcomes. It allows us as instructors to measure whether learning has occurred or not, based on a set of benchmarks that we define. How our learners provide this evidence can vary from the creation of an artefact such as an essay, video, performance or presentation, to their performance on a quiz, exam or skills demonstration.
There are two types of Assessment Tasks.
Summative Assessments are the focus of this resource and are defined as a task given to learners which provides learners the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of specific course level learning outcomes, while at the same time, allowing instructors to measure whether learning has occurred. If the learner cannot demonstrate mastery of this outcome, learning may have not been achieved at the appropriate level.
Formative Activities serve to allow students to process new information, integrate them into their existing knowledge base and work to understand relationships between theory and practice. These are the activities in which learners practice at becoming proficient in different skills, while continuing to understand new information they have ben exposed to. These will be addressed in the next section.
Authentic Assessment
As discussed in the Writing Learning Outcomes section, whatever we expect our learners to do and create should ideally be tied to the skills and abilities they will apply after they have graduated, either in the workplace or in home life. For this reason we should consider how the tasks we set for students can demonstrate how they will apply what they learned in each course in the real world, and develop assessment tasks that reflect these skills. This means that we will engage in Authentic Assessment, which refers to the practice of providing learners with Assessment Tasks that closely resemble practices in the workplace.
The difference between KNOWING HOW and DOING
For example, let’s imagine a teacher candidate needs to be able to make appropriate choices in the integration and application of technology in the classroom. Knowing How: One way to assess this would be to have the learner research some technologies, and write a report on what technology they chose and why. This assessment task definitely measures their ability to know how to do what we’ve asked, but doesn’t provide any evidence that they can do it. It is therefore not an authentic assessment because it is a task that learner completes within the context of the course, but may not be beneficial to them after they graduate, as they will most likely never need to write a report like this again. Doing: An authentic assessment based on this same example would be to give the learner time to research a technology and plan a mini-lesson using it. They would then deliver this to their peers, then answer questions after the lesson to speak to why the choice was made. This assessment task is more authentic because the learner is demonstrating they can do what we want them to do, not just know how. As an added benefit, now that they have completed this task, they can go into their classrooms and apply what they have learned. |
How to develop Assessment Tasks
Developing Assessment Tasks requires a lot of imagination, so while it may be comfortable to refer to examples from your own education in how you were assessed, these may not be the most engaging, fun, or valuable experiences for your own learners.
The first step in Developing and Assessment Task is to look at a Course Learning Outcome you wish to measure. When considering this course outcome, what would it look like in the workplace for you to see a seasoned expert demonstrating their time-tested mastery of this outcome? After picturing that, try to imagine a scenario either in class or somewhere on campus where you see a learner doing the exact same thing. Are other people involved? Is the learner using specific equipment? Is the learner talking through what they’re doing, or just silent?
The goal here is to develop a task the learner can complete in such a way that they demonstrate they can do what your outcome describes. You may need to involve other students, have them verbally debrief their experience or even teach others as part of the task. Whatever task learners are asked to complete, it should be valuable to them after they graduate, either in the form of an artefact they can use in the workplace, or a skill they can impart to others.
BUT…My learners need to KNOW things! I should be assessing their knowledge!
This is very true. It is common to assess learner understanding of certain topics, but as described above, Summative Assessments are generally in place to provide learners the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of an outcome. If they are still processing newly acquired information and forming relationships between theory and practice, they are not ready to provide evidence of mastery. It is more appropriate then, to use Formative Activities to assist learners in their acquisition of knowledge and skills.
It is also important to consider that if our course and unit outcomes are supportive of each other, then learners simply would not be able to demonstrate mastery of a skill or ability without having already consolidated their understanding of new concepts, terms and practices. In fact understanding of new information is a prerequisite for mastering a skill.
Download ‘Planning Assessment and Activities’ Worksheet