Assessing Student Project Work

Techniques to evaluate progress and ensure success Project work challenges students to think beyond the boundaries of the classroom, helping them develop the skills, behaviors, and confidence necessary for success in the 21st-century. Designing learning environments that help students question, analyze, evaluate, and extrapolate their plans, conclusions, and ideas, leading them to higher–order thinking, requires feedback and evaluation that goes beyond a letter or number grade. The term “authentic assessment” is used to describe assessment that evaluates content knowledge as well as additional skills like creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and innovation. Authentic assessment documents the learning that occurs during the project-building process and considers the real-world skills of collaboration, problem solving, decision making, and communication. Since project work requires students to apply knowledge and skills throughout the project-building process, you will have many opportunities to assess work quality, understanding, and participation from the moment students begin working. For example, your evaluation can include tangible documents like the project vision, storyboard, and rough draft, verbal behaviors such as participation in group discussions and sharing of resources and ideas, and non-verbal cognitive tasks such as risk taking and evaluation of information. You can also capture snapshots of learning throughout the process by having students complete a project journal, a self-assessment, or by making a discussion of the process one component of the final presentation. Developing Assessment As you design the project, it is helpful to begin with the end in mind. What performances do you want to see? Then, determine exactly how students will demonstrate each performance as they build a product or solve a problem to complete the task. Most of our assessment focuses on content mastery. Techniques we are all familiar with include the evaluation of the final product and having students complete quizzes or tests. Other benchmarks for content mastery you can use include the number of citations a student references, amount and quality of research, use of experts, validity and effectiveness of arguments, meeting the topic, and answering the essential question. Completing complex authentic projects that require collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, and innovation helps prepare students for increasingly complex life and work environments. Effective communication in the 21st-century requires that students can effectively express themselves in writing, verbally, and visually. Be sure to assess the quality of writing, including ideas, vocabulary, fluency, organization, and conventions, as well as the use of media and overall design. Since a project is a collaborative effort that occurs over time, include evaluation components that consider teamwork, organization, planning, and behavior.