Performances Performance Based Assessments Can

¶ … Performances Performance based assessments can tell instructors and family members a significant amount of information about a particular student. In fact, as Grant Wiggins' interview readily demonstrates, they can provide a more comprehensive breadth of knowledge than typical assessment measures, such as standardized tests. This is principally because of the nature of performance based assessments, which are oftentimes more applicable to the real world. Wiggins makes this point fairly clear when he references the way a job tests its employees.

They do so not with a pencil and paper and multiple choice questions, but rather by measuring an employee's performance while on the job itself. There are several examples of performance based assessments that people can utilize within the classroom to more accurately measure a student's mastery of a particular topic. One of the most eminent of these is group projects, in which students collaborate on some type e of model or example that illustrates that they have learned about a particular subject of study.

Another really good example of a performance abased assessment is the presentation of a portfolio, in which students compile all of the work that they have performed during a finite period of time to indicate how much they have been able to actually do with the learning they have internalized. Power point presentations are excellent examples of performance based assessment. These presentations require students to individually or collaboratively create some form of visual, literary, and even auditory model that demonstrates what they have learned about a certain topic.

One of the principle challenges associated with performance based assessments, actually, is ensuring that they are actually aligned with the goals of teaching. As Wiggins himself noted, the best projects in the world will not benefit a student much if those projects are not rooted in reinforcing the fundamental concepts that have been provided by instruction. It can occasionally become difficult to find projects that truly engage students and that reinforce didactic principles as well.

Other challenges that are associated with performance based assessment include the pecuniary costs, as well as significant amounts of time, that are associated with coming up with alternative assessment measure. Creating and designing tests for students to complete are cost-effective, fairly quick ways of measuring a student's knowledge at a given moment in time regarding a particular subject.

Consequently, many administrative officials and state level educational personnel whose jobs it is to measure the most effective usage of monetary resources for schools prefer such assessment methods, and claim that alternative methods are more costly and not necessarily even worth the time and money to create or implement. It is difficult to say whether or not these criticisms of.