…Is this a test?
During the past couple of weeks in CEP 813 Assessment, we have been asked to create assignments with various constraints. For example: "create a case study analysis standardized test about cellular respiration" or "use 'use-modify-create' from computer science to assess students' experimental design skills" (AH! intimidating!). Through this process, I've come to question two fundamental assumptions we make about assessment: first, that formative and summative assessments serve meaningfully different purposes, and second, that making assessments "creative" automatically makes them better.
Let's start with the formative-summative divide. Educational professionals love to say "formative is assessment for learning while summative is assessment of learning," as if learning suddenly stops when we slap a grade on something. But shouldn't every assessment be formative if we're doing our jobs right? As Shepard (2000) notes, citing Graue (1993), "assessment and instruction are often...curiously separate in both time and purpose" (p. 291). This separation fragments the learning experience, creating distinct "teaching times" and "testing times" rather than recognizing that authentic learning happens when students grapple with novel problems. A biologist encountering a new pathogen doesn't get a separate "assessment moment." They simply need to apply their understanding of immune responses to figure out what's happening. The work IS the assessment. What matters is the transferability of knowledge, what Wiggins and McTighe (2005) call the ability to use understanding in new, authentic contexts.
This focus on transferability and authenticity should guide our assessment design, but here's where I get stuck, and where the creative assessment movement might be missing the mark in its own special way. In our eagerness to escape the standardization of multiple-choice tests, we've swung so far in the opposite direction that we've lost sight of authenticity. We promote UDL and multiple means of expression, which sounds progressive and inclusive until you're asking students to perform a skit about cellular respiration. Yes, standardized tests are often terrible assessments as they reduce complex thinking to bubble-filling. But is asking students to write a song about mitosis really any better?
When I created my image-based assessment for Sandbox #5 (where students make connections between a provided image and cellular respiration), I tried to explore this. It's open-ended enough to allow for creative thinking but still requires students to demonstrate disciplinary knowledge in a way that mirrors how scientists actually think by making connections between observations and theoretical understanding. But even then, I wonder: am I just creating a different kind of performance that's equally divorced from authentic scientific practice? The image interpretation feels more authentic than a skit, but is it really how scientists engage with cellular respiration in their work? (no)
My assessment given the constraints: Technique: provide an image - have students make connections to it, Structure: Oral
The real question isn't whether assessments should be creative or standardized, formative or summative. It's whether they mirror how knowledge is actually used in the discipline. A scientist needs to write grants, analyze data, and communicate findings, therefore those are authentic assessments. If these are the skills required in the discipline, what is the point of assessing in another way?
Citations:
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
