Assessment plan development and implementation framework

¶ … achievement inside American schools has been increasingly brought to the forefront. Part of the reason for this, is because they are consistently underperforming their peers in many developing and developed nations. Evidence of this can be seen with a study that was conducted by Harvard University. They found that out of 49 different countries, American students were falling behind in every single area that was surveyed. ("U.S. Students Still Lag Behind," 2012)

This is significant in illustrating how new transformations need to take place in order to enhance learner performance. To achieve these objectives requires developing a plan to assess student comprehension. This will be achieved through creating an assessment strategy, identifying critical tasks, developing a holistic rubric and determining constraints which will be imposed. Together, these different elements will highlight how this approach will improve academic performance and achievement. ("U.S. Students Still Lag Behind," 2012)

Create an assessment and describe the purpose of your assessment plan.

The basic educational assessment plan will focus on a number of different areas. The most notable include: effective communication, critical thinking, problem solving, the principles of math / science and flexibility. The way that this will be accomplished is by identifying each student's individual learning style. This will take place using a combination of traditional methods to give them an introduction to critical ideas. (Walvoord, 2010)

It is at this point, when the material will be presented to a student in a format they can understand. This will occur through the utilization of technology and reaching out to each person in a format based upon their unique learning style. The purpose of this plan is designed to improve everyone's understanding of the material utilizing the tools they will need to be competitive in real world situations (i.e. various technology applications and platforms). (Walvoord, 2010)

The learning outcome will enhance their comprehension of the material and it will teach them to be more marketable in a globalized workplace. This will help them to understand the importance of the material and how it can be used in the future. When this happens, everybody will have a greater appreciation for the material and why it is so important to apply various concepts on their own. (Walvoord, 2010)

Identify a task or a situation in which the learners will be able to demonstrate the knowledge or skills they have gained.

The basic tasks where learners can demonstrate their knowledge and abilities will be through an evaluation of their critical skills. This will be achieved by using both traditional and online tools. During this process, they will show how they understand these ideas through: an exam where they will explain them in their own words, demonstrate how they work through technology applications and with a written evaluation. These various elements will allow everyone to show how well they comprehend the material and provide areas for identifying critical weaknesses. These insights will be used to improve performance and enhance their comprehension of different areas. (Walvoord, 2010)

Create a fully developed holistic rubric.

The best way to develop a holistic rubric is to use Bloom's Taxonomy. This is designed to promote the most effective areas of evaluating student performance (utilizing testing) and determining if a particular approach is producing results. This is achieved by concentrating on their ability to use cognitive skills. The most notable include: recalling key ideas, focusing on their understanding, application, creativity, evaluation and analysis of them. (Weil, 2004)

Remembering the information is the most important part of helping a student to utilize the skills they are taught in the future. Understanding is when they can explain how it works in their own words. Application is when they can take these insights and use them. This leads to creative thinking, evaluating and the ability to analyze the information more effectively. Under this approach, students will be able to demonstrate their skills through an actual demonstration. This will severe as a critical part of the evaluation to determine if they understand the material and can apply key concepts. These areas will be followed by a traditional written examination. This will have lower amounts of weighting, with the actual demonstration playing the most significant part. When this happens, it will enhance their learning comprehension by having them show how they can use these skills. This is the point they will remember these concepts and utilize them in the future. (Weil, 2004)