Alternative assessment is a general term that encompasses several alternatives to ‘traditional’ standardized tests. Authentic assessment, performance- based, and portfolio- based assessment fall under that category. The purpose of these methods is to measure applied proficiency rather than measure knowledge. For instance, in language teaching, the productive skills of speaking and writing are routinely measured using one of the alternative assessment methods. Typical examples of alternative assessments include portfolios, project work, and other activities requiring some type of rubric.

 "Traditional assessment" usually refers to the forced-choice measures of multiple-choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks, true-false, matching and the like that have been and remain so common in education. Students typically select an answer or recall information to complete the assessment. These tests may be standardized or teacher-created. They may be administered locally or statewide, or internationally.

Below is the comparison of alternative and traditional forms of assessment.

Advantages of Alternative Assessments

• They provide a means of assessing valued skills that cannot be directly assessed with traditional tests.
• They provide a more realistic setting for student performance than traditional tests.
• They focus on student performance and the quality of work performed by students.
• They can be easily aligned with established learning outcomes.

Disadvantages of Alternative Assessments

• Process can be costly in terms of time, effort, equipment, materials, facilities, or funds.
• Rating process is sometimes more subjective than traditional exams.

To gain a better understanding of what alternative assessment means, read the following article.

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Reflection Question:

Have you observed any change in students' level of engagement with the material based on the form of assessment you used? Were your students more engaged in the classroom knowing that they will be evaluated with more 'traditional' methods or when you used an alternative approach to assessment? If you haven't used alternative assessment in the classroom, speculate how it could affect student learning.

 

Create an Update:

Share your (or your colleagues') experience implementing alternative assessment in the classroom. What type of alternative assessment did you use? Describe the approach in detail. How did the students react to it? What were the challenges? What would you change? If you have no experience with alternative assessment, elaborate on what problems alternative assessment can solve and what challenges it can create. When would using alternative assessment be inappropriate in language teaching?

What is a Rubric?
A rubric articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria, or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor (Andrade, 2012). Rubrics can make visible to students what they might be missing in an assignment and can help them from going wrong. The creation of a very specific rubric is one way that experts can draw out their own unconscious competence. (CITL). Rubrics are routinely utilized with most alternative forms of assessment.

DePaul University Teaching Commons provide a more detailed description and examples of an analytic rubric, developmental rubric (a subset of analytic rubrics), and holistic rubric.

Building a Rubric: First Steps

In order to effectively implement any type of alternative assessments and build an effective rubric, BYU recommends adhering to the following guidelines.

First of all, teachers need to define the instructional outcome they would like to assess as clearly and unambiguously as possible in terms of both the subject-matter content and the set of skills or operations that a student should demonstrate. For example, a possible outcome in a second/foreign language class could be: “Students will maintain simple conversations (provide biographical information; ask and answer simple questions, satisfy minimum courtesy requirements)."

After the outcome has been identified, instructors should distinguish between those outcomes that can validly be assessed solely by performance assessments and those that can be assessed just as effectively by objective measures. For example, students would have a difficult time demonstrating the ability to maintain conversations on a paper and pencil test.

The next step would be to create tasks that elicit evidence of the student’s ability to perform the targeted skill. To demonstrate the performance according to the language teaching outcome presented above, a possible language task could be to engage students in a mini immersion that simulates travel to the target language country. Students purchase plane tickets, reserve a hotel, answer questions at the customs, exchange currency, etc.

In the process of completing the set tasks, the teacher can decide how much and what kind of guidance can be provided to the students while still allowing them room to learn and do it their way. For instance, the teacher can resort to non-verbal cues or other aids only if a student is unable to complete a task using the target language.

The final, but continuously recurring step would be to try out the assessment and make revisions as necessary. Revisions could include modifying the evaluation rubric to make it more clear, adding or removing steps from each task, etc. (Using Alternative Assessment, 2018, as cited in Barley, 2018).

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Reflection Question:

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type of rubric? What are the considerations when developing a rubric?

 

Create an Update:

Follow the steps outlined above to identify the instructional outcome you would like to assess using an alternative assessment method. Create the tasks that will elicit evidence of the student’s ability to perform the targeted skill. This will serve as an outline for your first alternative assessment. Describe the outcome and the tasks in your update.

As mentioned in the previous update, the use of rubrics provides the following benefits:

Rubrics help instructors:

• Assess assignments consistently from student to student and among graders.
• Give timely, effective feedback and promote student learning in a sustainable way.
• Clarify expectations and components of an assignment for students.
• Conduct formative assessment.

Rubrics help students:

• Understand expectations and components of an assignment.
• Become more aware of their learning process and progress.
• Improve work through timely and detailed feedback.

To create a rubric, it is important to pay attention to the criteria and levels of performance.

Selecting Good Criteria

When determining rubric criteria, be sure that each criterion:

1. Demonstrates evidence of learning and meeting objective (not achievement of assigned tasks)

For example:

• comprehension/ability to understand the native speaker
• culturally appropriate courtesy
• fluency

NOT: # of questions asked, booking a hotel room within budget, exchanging exchanging currency successfully

2. Can be objectively measurable (can be named/defined, and observed)

For example:

• “Pronunciation”, “Fluency”
• NOT “natural speech”

3. Vary along a continuum of quality (not ‘yes’ or ‘no’)

• NOT: task completion, # of pages written

4. Unidimensional or distinct

• NOT: “Communication” (verbal or nonverbal?), or “language” (grammar or vocabulary?)

 

Differentiating Levels of Performance

• Start with a description of minimum proficiency (minimum passing grade/performance)

OR

• Yes -> yes but -> no but -> no
• How many levels? (minimum 3)
• Avoid unclear language and evaluative or negative terms (e.g. “creative,” “important,” “boring,” etc.)
• Determine the weight/labels of each criterion

For more detailed explanation of the rubric building process, watch the following video.

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Reflection Question:

Provide an evaluation of the attached rubric against the criteria defined in this update.

Create an Update:

Create your own rubric for the alternative assessment tool you described in the previous update. Post your rubric draft in the update and explain the development steps, i.e., what are the learning outcome(s) you will be assessing, what assessment tasks you will be using, how you determined specific rubric criteria and levels of performance).

Definitions

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

"...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229)

Authentic assessment integrates the assessment of traditional academic content with the knowledge and skills important to lifelong learning using a variety of techniques, including "real world" situations. (Marzano, Pickering, & McTighe, 1993). For an assessment to be authentic, the context, purpose, audience and constraints of the test should connect in some way to real world situations and problems. More information on authentic assessment is provided in the following video. 

Authentic assignments often focus on messy, complex real-world situations and their accompanying constraints; they can involve a real-world audience of stakeholders or “clients” as well. According to Wiggins (1998), an assignment is authentic if it

• is realistic.
• requires judgment and innovation.
• asks the student to “do” the subject.
• replicates or simulates the contexts in which adults are “tested” in the workplace or in civic or personal life.
• assesses the student’s ability to efficiently and effectively use a repertoire of knowledge and skills to negotiate a complex task.
• allows appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice, consult resources, and get feedback on and refine performances and products. (CITL)

Authentic assessments can be contrasted with conventional test questions, which are often indirect measures of a student’s ability to apply the knowledge and skills gained in a course. Conventional tests have an important place in college courses, but cannot take the place of authentic assessments. The table below, drawn from Wiggins, illustrates the differences between typical tests and authentic assessments.

Authentic assessments have several advantages over conventional tests. They are likely to be more valid than conventional tests, particularly for learning outcomes that require higher-order thinking skills. Because they involve real-world tasks, they are also likely to be more interesting for students, and thus more motivating. And finally, they can provide more specific and usable information about what students have succeeded in learning as well as what they have not learned.

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Reflection Question:

What are the potential advantages of authentic assessment over conventional tests? What would be the potential challenges? When would alternative assessment be most appropriate in language teaching?

 

Create an Update:

Implement the authentic assessment you designed in during the previous weeks. In your update, describe how you evaluated your students and reflect on the results. How well did it work? Were there any surprises? What are the lessons learned?

"Performance assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and competencies, that is, to apply the skills and knowledge they have mastered." -- Richard J. Stiggins -- (Stiggins, 1987, p. 34).

The essence of a performance assessment is that students are given the opportunity to do one or more of the following:

• Demonstrate their ability
• Perform a meaningful task
• Receive feedback by a qualified person in terms of relevant and defensible criteria

Authentic assessment and performance-based assessment are the terms that are often used interchangeably. However, while the description of these two forms of assessment may sound similar, they are not synonymous. Read the following article by C. Meyer that explains the differences between the two.

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Reflection Question:

In language learning, would authentic and performance-based assessment be considered synonymous? Why or why not?

 

Create an Update:

Find an example of a performance-based assessment for language teaching and evaluate its effectiveness.

Portfolio-based assessment relies on a collection of all student work during the course or semester; and represents the student's activities, projects and best pieces of classroom work. The collection should include evidence of student reflection and self-evaluation. The goal is to help students assemble portfolios that illustrate their talents and best represent their capability, and achievement. 

The following video demonstrates effective use of classroom technology. "Portfolio Assessment & High Technology" shows students engaged in a variety of portfolio assessment activities including selecting best pieces of classroom work and development

Valenzuela (2002), suggests some thought and planning should take place in the portfolio assessment process.  First, teacher and students need to identify the items and work that will go into portfolio contents. Second, the teacher needs to stipulate the evaluation procedures for keeping track of the portfolio contents and for grading the portfolio... Third, the teacher should also plan to hold portfolio conferences with the students, meetings in which students review their work and discuss their progress. The portfolio building process should encourage reflective teaching and learning. 

Below are some of the advantages of portfolio-based assessment mentioned by Valenzuela: 

1. Promoting student self-evaluation, reflection, and critical thinking.
2. Measuring performance based on genuine samples of student work.
3. Providing flexibility in measuring how students accomplish their learning goals.
4. Enabling teachers and students to share the responsibility for setting learning goals and for evaluating progress toward meeting those goals.
5. Giving students the opportunity to have extensive input into the learning process.
6. Facilitating cooperative learning activities, including peer evaluation and tutoring, cooperative learning groups, and peer conferencing.
7. Providing a process for structuring learning in stages.
8. Providing opportunities for students and teachers to discuss learning goals and the progress toward those goals in structured and unstructured conferences.
9. Enabling measurement of multiple dimensions of student progress by including different types of data and materials.

But, Valenzuela (2002) also warns of some potential challenges of portfolio-based assessment:

1. Requiring extra time to plan an assessment system and conduct the assessment.
2. Gathering all of the necessary data and work samples can make portfolios bulky and difficult to manage.
3. Developing a systematic and deliberate management system is difficult, but this step is necessary in order to make portfolios more than a random collection of student work.
4. Scoring portfolios involves the extensive use of subjective evaluation procedures such as rating scales and professional judgment, and this limits reliability.
5. Scheduling individual portfolio conferences is difficult and the length of each conference may interfere with other instructional activities.

And here are some additional thoughts for reflection: 

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Reflection Question:

Have you used any form of portfolio-based assessment in your class before? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered?

If you have never used any type of portfolio-based assessment in your classes, reflect on the video and comments presented here and based on your experience, do you see any benefits of building student portfolios as a form of assessment? What do you expect might be some of the challenges you will encounter?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try to incorporate some elements of portfolio building with your students, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. Describe the details and steps you followed? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter?

What is student-centered student self-assessment? What does it look like in the classroom? Do students and teachers find it useful and effective?

The following video gives a brief introduction (5min) to the notion of Student Self-Assessment and shares the reflections from students and Teachers:

Student Self-Assessment is not about asking students what grade they would give themselves, where each student would give themselves an “A”.

The self-assessment described in the video is about engaging students in a formative process. Students compare their work to clear criteria, and determine how to make improvements.

With self-assessment, students are encouraged to revise their work – students taking charge of the revision process. According to the video, students who engage in self-assessment, learn more and receive better test scores.

The first step in engaging students is self-assessment is the creation of a Rubric with clear criteria and a checklist.

Teachers also need to set aside time and provide opportunities for students to revise and improve their work.

“If you are not at the level you wish to be, then you are not done, yet”

The video offers a nice colored pencil technique for students to highlight different aspects of the rubric and then find evidence of that criteria in their own work, using different colors for each element from the rubric. At first, the instructor can guide the students through the process, until they become familiar with the concepts and the expectations.

With Student self-assessment, it’s no longer exclusively up to the teacher to tell students what to do, or how to improve their work. Students can do that themselves, and in doing so, they become independent learners and begin to take charge of their own learning process.

Teachers are no longer solely responsible for correcting students’ compositions, correcting mistakes and making suggestions for improvement. And students now have a greater involvement and responsibility than simply looking at the grade and putting the paper away without paying attention to all the comments. With Student self-assessment, teachers begin to move away from correcting and grading students work, and find ways to engage the students in the assessment process.

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Reflection Question:

Have you used student self-assessment in your class before? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered?

If you have never experimented with student self-assessment, reflect on the video and text presented here and based on your experience, do you think student self-assessment is a valid form of assessment? What challenges do you expect you might face?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try at least one of the ideas presented above, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. How did you set it up? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter?

In conjunction with student self-assessment, teachers are also encouraged to experiment with peer assessment.

The following video describes how to implement effective peer assessment in the classroom. Teachers and students reflect on their experiences.

The video describes the “Ladder of feedback,” which guides students to provide kind, thoughtful and effective feedback to each other. The steps are:

1. Clarify - students ask questions of clarification.
2. Positive feedback - highlights of the work, formulated as statements like “what I think works really well is…”
3. Concerns - comments of what might need to change, stated as “what I worry about is…”
4. Suggestions for improvement - “maybe this would work better if you…”

Peer feedback can also be based on a rubric developed with the students (See updates 10 and 11).

- - - 

In the following article, David Kofoed Wind describes how to use peer feedback: 

 

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Reflection Question:

Have you used peer assessment in your class before? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered?

If you have never experimented with peer assessment, reflect on the video and text presented here and based on your experience, consider why you might want to incorporate peer assessment in your classroom? What do you expect might be some of the challenges you will encounter?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try to implement some form of peer feedback either in class, or perhaps for homework correction, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. How did you set it up? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter?

 

Blogs can be a very effective tool in the foreign language classroom to provide students with an audience for what they have to say; and to create a sense of community and peer to peer dialogue. Blogs can be used as an integral part of the learning process and the work created by the students can be used in the assessment process as well. Student blog posts can be incorporated into their portfolios (discussed in Update 4); and peer-to-peer feedback can be part of the writing process and assessment. 

In this update, we will first look at why and how to use blogs in the classroom in general. And if you are not familiar with how to set up a blog, you can follow the instructions on the second video. Finally, we'll look more specifically at using blogs as a form of assessment. 

Why use blogs with students

Here is a short video produced by teacher Lindsay Jordan, where she reflects on some of the reasons why she began using blogs to deepen her own learning process and then discusses how teachers can use blogs with their students:

If you are not familiar with how to set up a blog for your students, here is a short video that describes the steps for setting up a blog with Blogger.com: 

Blogging for student assessment:

Blogs can be a very effective way to engage students and their peers, by giving students an authentic audience for their work. Students are no longer writing a composition or essay, simply to turn it in to the teacher - they now have to write for the entire class, or even the entire school...

In the following video Alyce McGovern, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at UNSW, discusses the impact of using a blog-based assessment task on student engagement

For additional insight and information on the use of blogs as a form of assessment, please refer to this short paper by Dr Emma Salter:

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Reflection Question:

Have you used blogs in your class before? Did you incorporate the blog writing process into the course assessment? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered? 

If you have never used blogs in your classes, reflect on the videos and text presented here and based on your experience, do you see any benefits to using blogs in language learning? What do you expect might be some of the challenges you will encounter?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try to set up a classroom blog with your students, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. How did you set it up? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter?

In this update, we look at a tool that can be incorporated into the student peer-feedback process. It is called the Tuning Protocol, which is part of the Critical Friends Groups described below. The Tuning Protocol is not intended as a stand-alone assessment tool, but rather as a complement to and as a means of implementing a systematic process for peer-to-peer feedback. 

The following video gives a very short overview of the Tuning Protocol, a structured process for giving and receiving feedback to improve a piece of work. The process can be used by teachers to generate feedback from a group of peers on a particular project; or it can also be used with students as a formative assessment tool on a project or piece of work in progress.

The Protocols were developed by the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF); and they can be very useful to use for a variety of situations, like team building, group projects among colleagues, as well as formative assessment for student work.

There are a variety of protocols for specific purposes and different situations.

The Tuning Protocol, described in the video is particularly good for helping the group give feedback in a systematic and productive way; and to help the presenter fine-tune their work.

The protocol includes 3 different roles: the facilitator, who guides the discussion; the presenter, who will receive the feedback; and the audience, who will provide the feedback.

The steps are as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Presentation
3. Clarifying questions
4. Examination of work
5. Warm and cool feedback (in my opinion this is where the “magic” happens). A) Participants share feedback with each other while the presenter is silent (at this stage the presenter only listens). B) The feedback generally begins with a few minutes of warm feedback. The warm feedback is framed as “I like” – this includes comments about how the work meets the desired goals. C) The feedback then moves on to a few minutes of cool feedback. The “cool” feedback is usually presented in the form of “I Wonder…” statements (these are intended to serve as reflective questions for the presenter to consider). D) During the feedback phase, the presenter remains silent and takes notes.
6. Reflection on the part of the presenter
7. Debriefing

All the NSRF protocols offer a very structured process for discussion, with very clearly defined roles and steps. And in the case of the Tuning Protocol, the presenter remains silent during the feedback step – this prevents the presenter from getting defensive – he/she can focus on listening and reflecting on the ideas and questions suggested by the group. (As a participant, this is a very interesting and challenging thing to do – takes practice)

The NSRF website describes the protocols as:

“… a structured process or set of guidelines to promote meaningful and efficient communication, problem-solving and learning. Protocols give time for active listening and reflection so all voices in the room are heard and honored. The NSRF website includes a comprehensive list of protocols to be used for a wide variety of purposes.”

Here is a detailed description and steps to follow with the Tunint Protocol: 

Lo learn more about the NSRF and Critical Friends Groups, you can visit their website: https://www.nsrfharmony.org/

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Reflection Question:

Have you ever used or been part of a Critical Friends Group before? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered?

If you don't have any experience with Critical Friends Groups, reflect on the concept presented here and based on your experience, do you see yourself using it in your classroom with your students? Why or why not? Can you anticipate any challenges that your might encounter?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try to conduct the Tuning Protocol as presented above, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. How did you set it up? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter? 

Differentiating Assessment:

As we reach the end of our workshop, we would like to offer some thoughts for reflection. Here  teacher Laura Panopoulos, discusses whether we should provide students with choice in assessment formats.

From Differentiated Instruction to Differentiated Assessment:

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Reflection Question:

Have you used Differentiated Assessment in your class before? If so, what was your experience with it? What were the benefits and what were the challenges you encountered?

If you have never experimented with Differentiated Assessment, reflect on the video and text presented here and based on your experience, can you think of how you might implement differentiated assessment in your classroom? What do you expect might be some of the challenges in doing so?

 

Create an Update:

Over the next month, you should try at least one of the ideas presented above, and then create an update where you describe the results of your experiment. How did you set it up? How did it work? What were the results? Any surprises? What was the reaction from the students? What challenges did you encounter?

Choose a form of assessment from the updates discussed in the workshop, try it in your class for the next 2 or 3 months and then report back…

The project should follow these steps: 

1. Define objectives and scope of assessment to be conducted.
2. Design steps and constraints to be followed by students.
3. Conduct assessment project and record all implementation steps and student results
4. Conduct short student interviews to get student reaction to assessment
5. Report results and student reactions
6. Reflect on results and level of project success
7. Consider lessons learned and suggestions for improvement

 

Rubric for Final Project A:

 

For this project you will create a new speaking assessment program to be implemented in your department. Your project should contain the following elements:

• Focus on speaking as a performance, or authentic assessment.
• Design a model for how to norm all teachers in the department.
• Consider how to reach uniformed consensus among teachers on procedures for grading assessments.
• Design the rubrics to be used with each assessment.
• Consider feedback strategies to students post-testing, and other aspects specific to speaking.

The project should include recommendations for the entire duration of the course; distinguishing the types of assessments needed at different stages of learning (beginning, middle, end).

 

 

Rubric for Final Project B:

• Complete the rubric below for each member of your work group other than yourself. You will then return your rubric to the facilitators of the workshop:

• Focus on speaking as a performance, or authentic assessment.
• Design a model for how to norm all teachers in the department.
• Consider how to reach uniformed consensus among teachers on procedures for grading assessments.
• Design the rubrics to be used with each assessment.
• Consider feedback strategies to students post-testing, and other aspects specific to speaking.

The project should include recommendations for the entire duration of the course; distinguishing the types of assessments needed at different stages of learning (beginning, middle, end).