I took this class when I was at Monroe Community College (MCC). The class was actually titled, "Performance Assessment." At the time, I was unsure of what exactly performance assessment meant, but I did not really care when my professor told me that we would have "no grades" for the class and all we had to do was show up. My immediate response was "YEAH! I don't have to do any work and just show up." This was not the case, however, I ended up doing more work than my other courses while learning about different types of performance assessment tasks in the class.
We had to write one paper per class by reading some article on the history of different topics in education and responding to it in an informal manner. We were not graded on these assignments, but we discussed them in whole and small group in class. As part of the class, we also had service learning hours (about 30 I think) to full-fill. At the end of the class, we had to create an assignment that would be performance assessment based and create a rubric that we would use in our service learning class.
I learned a lot about performance based-assessments and was all about one in particular-portfolios. Now, I believe there is a place for portfolios, but it matters how they are used. In the case of my class, I learned a lot and was really invested in the course and the material. I turned in every assignment, implemented an assignment that would be performance assessement-based, but in the end the only thing that hurt my grade was that I missed a class. It was kind of funny.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. I was surprised to see how much you liked portfolios. I haven't assigned a project like that yet, because I am still not sure how I would properly and fairly assess them. You make a good point though, "it matters how they are used." This is something I plan on learning more about though. It seems like a positive idea.
~Adrienne Loftus
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed you post. I also took this course at MCC and was really pleased with what I learned form the class. I hope that I can find a way to incorporate portfolios into my teaching in the future.
I can't help but wonder how many teachers and administrators would cringe reading that a teacher will assign "no grades" for the semester. I'm sure they, like you initially though, would think that no work would be getting done. It sounds like a lot of the classes were the same though and it lacked variety; that can get tiresome, as tiresome as just coming into a room and listening to the teacher lecture. But hey, give credit to the prof for thinking outside the box.
ReplyDeleteMike, since you're correctly worried about using the proper assessment format (like worrying about "how" portfolios are used), you should pay special attention to this when you decide on a final project for this class.
ReplyDeleteJeremy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input. I am not going to create a portfolio assignment for my final project.