Assessment in PBL
~More qualitative than quantitative
Regardless of the method of guidance for students, assessment needs to take place throughout the PBL process, as it is an integral part of the PBL process for feedback and revision.
Suggestions for Aligning PBL Instruction and Assessment
Suggestion One: Stress that students are professionals in the field in which the ill-structured problem exists and assess them as if you were their supervisor.
One of the greatest challenges to teachers is to keep their students motivated and engaged in classroom activities. Having students operate as professionals in the field in which the ill-structured problem arises increases student enthusiasm and ownership for learning. For instance, if studying a unit on solar home design, the students could play the role of architects. As part of the role-playing, teachers acting as facilitators and real-world supervisors hold positions that make assessment both appropriate and realistic. Also in this context, the activity is no longer unrelated to anything outside of the classroom. Students in this scenario can now see that their efforts relate to issues that society has faced or is facing.
Suggestion Two: If instruction is problem-based, assessment should be similarly structured.
If students are asked in the course of a unit to solve ill-structured problems through hands-on activities, the assessment should include how well they complete that task. That is not to say an evaluation of their ability to learn factual and foundational information important to solving the problem should not be completed. Rather, an interdisciplinary, real world and hands-on approach to learning should be evaluated largely in the same manner it is taught. To have students design and build a model of a better solar home and then have the assessment be based solely on a true and false, multiple choice test undermines the creative process and sends mixed messages to students about the importance of the PBL activity. The instructor should instead act as a building inspector and qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the students' work.
Suggestion Three: Provide reasonable guidelines regarding your expectations for the students
A single path to the solution of a real world ill-structured problem rarely exists, whether it relates to what scientists face in the laboratory or professionals encounter in the field. Teachers engaged in PBL should present student expectations before the unit begins so the students will understand their goals and how their progress will be assessed. Of course, ridiculously detailed goals and solution criteria are antithetical to PBL, so expectations should be flexible enough to allow for student exploration. Providing students with this allowance for creativity while maintaining a realistic timeline fosters growth and inventiveness that is not easily achieved within a cookbook lab or worksheet based curriculum. For example, in the case of designing a better solar home, create a list of open-ended goals or "building code specifications" with the students at the beginning of the PBL activity.
Suggestion Four: Don’t hold off on assessment until the end of the activity or unit; model real-world behavior, in which ongoing assessment occurs
In traditional classroom teaching, assessment of student learning is often relegated to the end of a given unit. This assessment tends to stress student recollection of factual knowledge, in direct opposition to current beliefs that significant amounts of learning take place during the process of solving a problem. The emphasis on the use of factual knowledge in conjunction with real world problem solving skills makes PBL an advantageous approach to teaching and assessment. As shown in the following three examples, instructors need to assess students continuously during the course of their problem solving, much as real-world supervisors would oversee a project. For instance, the instructor as building inspector is free to examine how well the students address the established goals while also having the freedom to suggest modifications or ?sign off? on student developments. This role allows the teacher to act as a facilitator, asking guiding questions that allow students to approach a solution or solutions to the problem at hand.
Jeffrey A. Nowak and Jonathan A. Plucker
Indiana University
Extracted from: http://www.indiana.edu/~legobots/q515/pbl.html
Here are some assessment tools for reflection.
- What to Assess and How to Assess It
-Rubric Maker
-Peer and Team Assessment
-Self-Assessment
-Creativity and Innovation Rubrics
-Collaboration Rubric
-Assessment of PBL