Beyond Multiple

Choice:
Using Performance
and Portfolio
Assessments to
Evaluate Student
Learning
Assessments can be classified as either
selected-response or
constructed- response.
 Selected-response types:
true/false, multiple choice, multiple answer, matching
 Selected-response types are typically graded
objectively and usually measure recall of facts and
information, lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.
 Constructed-response types:
essays, performance tasks, portfolios, projects
Constructed-response types are typically graded
subjectively and usually measure application of
knowledge and skills, higher levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy.
 Selected-response assessments are
frequently criticized by education experts
because of what they don’t do
 Selected-response assessments don’t replicate the
kinds of complex tasks that students will face in the
real world when they try to use their knowledge and
skills to succeed, tasks that involve more cognitively
demanding decisions than picking the right answer.
 Also, selected-response assessments don’t give
students the responsibility to develop and opportunities
to practice self-assessment and self-adjustment.
Instead, they encourage passivity and a reliance on
luck or chance.
However, selected-response assessments are the ideal
choice when a teacher needs a simple, easy to grade
method of assessing students’ knowledge of facts.
 They are less useful if a teacher needs to measure
synthesis of knowledge or application of information.
In those cases, constructed-response assessments are
more appropriate.
 Today, performance assessment and portfolio
assessment are considered the two types of
constructed-response assessments most likely to allow
the teacher to make accurate decisions about the
students’ mastery of the learning outcomes.
Performance Assessment
Students are given a task to complete. For
authentic assessment, the task should be a
challenge that is likely to be encountered by a
worker, citizen, or consumer in the real world.
Performance Assessment
Create a multimedia presentation that analyzes the
strengths and weaknesses of a documentary on
global warming.
Performance Assessment
Build a website for a small business in your
community.
Write up a bid for a job to landscape the new
Canyon Country campus.
Performance Assessment
Have students plan how to invest $40,000 in the
stock market for their children’s college education.
They have to select the stock, make a record of their
value for 30 days, then write a report describing
their success and indicating what changes they
would make in their stock portfolio.
Two Kinds of Performance
Tasks
Restricted performance: highly structured.
Example: construct a graph from a set of data.

Extended performance: comprehensive.

Example: prepare a presentation on endangered
species.
Most performance tasks fall into one of these three
categories:

1. Solving realistic problems.

2. Oral or psychomotor skills without a product.
3. Writing or psychomotor skills with a product.
 If you want to use performance
assessment, what must you know?
 The evaluative criteria for
judging the performance have
to be clearly explained to the
student before he or she begins
the task.
The student is given feedback on the
quality of the performance using the
evaluative criteria and then uses the
feedback to improve in future
performances of the task.
 One area of concern when using
performance assessment:

Is the task actually a performance

assessment or is it a learning activity?
A learning activity may help engage the students and
provide an opportunity for them to practice with the
material without being a good way for you to measure
their learning.
 Also, a learning activity may involve a kind of
performance that is not the kind you want to measure
in order to determine whether the student has met the
learning outcome.
If we use a particular performance genre as a means to
an assessment end, we may not think about how the
performance genre itself is a variable in the task and
will affect the results.
Example: a mock trial of Socrates in ancient Greece.

A good way to assess this SLO: Judge the

contributions of Socrates, Athens, Plato’s Apology to
the Western philosophic tradition?
 Always ask yourself:

Could the student do well at the task for

reasons that have little to do with the desired
understanding or skill being assessed?
And, could the student do poorly at the task for
reasons that have little to do with the desired
understanding or skill being assessed?
Another area of concern when using
performance assessment:

Grading!
You need to establish the evaluative criteria for the
quality of the task.

These criteria should be based on the SLOs and

objectives for the course.
 Typically, the evaluative criteria are
incorporated into a rubric that is used to
grade the performance assessment.
By yourself or with a colleague from your discipline or
a related discipline, design a performance assessment
task for an SLO you are used to teaching to, first
answering the questions on the handout.
Portfolio Assessment
A collection of student work that is used for
assessment purposes.
Its popularity comes from its ability to base assessment
on diverse evidence (including different performance
tasks) and to foster self-assessment in students in the
process.
 However, portfolio assessment has been sharply
criticized on two counts:

Sometimes its purpose is unclear from the beginning.

Sometimes the way it is graded seems unreliable.

 Three different kinds of purposes:

1. Document progress in student learning?

2. Showcase the student’s accomplishments?

3. Prove the student has met the learning outcomes?

 Failure to define the purpose
of the portfolio before
designing it will undermine its
validity!
 Grading Issues

Portfolio assessment requires specific evaluative

criteria for grading to be valid.

Portfolios are best graded through the use of a rubric

built on the evaluative criteria.
Creating Rubrics for both Performance
and Portfolio Assessments
Self-assess your level of experience with performance
and portfolio assessment:

Novice, Apprentice, or Expert

 If you are now a novice, do you have any desire to
become an apprentice? How would you do that?

If you are now an apprentice, do you have any desire

to become an expert? How would you do that?

If you are now an expert, how might you share your

expertise with your colleagues so that they also can
reach experthood?