PED - Evaluation and Assessment Lesson
Evaluation and Assessment
Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.
— Derrick Jensen 
Creating meaningful assessments that measure students' learning and abilities can be a challenging task, but evaluating assessments often proves to be even more confusing and challenging. Read about several forms of evaluation including rubrics, numerical grades, letter grades, holistic grades, pass-fail, and the omission of grades altogether. With what kind of grading system are you most familiar? Would school be more or less enhanced without grades? How do grading systems limit both the student and instructor? In what ways are grading systems beneficial to students and teachers?
Please read the following articles and reflect on the questions posed above.
Reading Assignment: "Indeterminacy in the Use of Preset Criteria for Assessment and Grading"
Reading Assignment: "Rubrics in Education: Old Term, New Meanings"
Reading Assignment: "The Trouble with Rubrics"
Click here to read the article "The Trouble with Rubrics" by Alfie Kohn. Links to an external site.
Self-Assessment and Practice
Drag the items from the bottom to the slots on the right.
RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.