From both Sides: Assessment Benefits for Teacher and Student

Abstract

This paper examines my past and present experiments with assessment as a vehicle for learning for both teachers and students. Initially, the assessment experiments grew from two directions: the need to create clear standards for students and the need to find a stronger structure for a student-centered, project-based curriculum. These needs led to a study of the assessment techniques developed by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero, as well as a series of consultations with Heidi Andrade, one of their foremost assessment researchers. In the semesters that followed, I introduced three assessment tools into my courses: rubrics co-created with students who then used the rubrics as a guide for self- and peer-feedback, process-folios added to student conference materials, and collaborative assessment techniques employed as an alternative method of mentoring project work. As a result of these efforts, students involved in the project classes, as well as in other classes gained a clearer understanding of class standards, became more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, and took more responsibility for setting and reaching higher goals in their work. An additional and unexpected benefit for me, as teacher, was the precise reframing of the class content material that became evident with the helpful magnifying lens of the assessment tools. Thus, what started out to be a simple search for standards and structures quickly evolved into a method by which I was able to articulate tools and skill sets that have been the underpinning of more than twenty-five years of teaching. The paper cites examples of student interviews in tandem with my own notes and observations to look at the benefits of implementing assessment techniques from both sides of the classroom.