New ways of looking at assessment

How a creative assessment challenge revealed my thinking about evaluation of student learning

After producing six new creative assessments for my culinary arts classroom in a short period of time, I have clear evidence of how I approach evaluation of student learning. I like rubrics. I avoid grades, but like standards. I use both peer and teacher feedback as evaluative tools. I build creative projects around required curriculum content. I minimize the impact of grades by setting minimum standards, adding flexible skill demonstrations, and allowing revisions. Finally, I prefer to create authentic, creative summative assessments for learning.

 I like rubrics. I avoid grades, but like standards.

Working on several assessments in a row made these preferences clear to me, but it also revealed that I rarely use creative, structured formative assessments, including what Wiggins and McTighe (2005) call practice sets or exercises. This indicates an area in which I can develop my assessment portfolio. At the same time, my assessments and activities are consistent with my learning objectives, which reflects Wiggins and McTighe’s (2005) backward design. I also focus on documenting what students can do in authentic scenarios, rather than what they cannot do on tests, which reflects Kohn’s (2011) critique of grading, and the alternate ungrading practices proposed by Stommel (2018) and Blum (2022). I want to preserve these qualities in my assessment creation process.

 I decided to explore how I could support student learning throughout a unit on international cuisine, in which students travel around the world in the kitchen.

The challenge that helped me explore creative, structured formative assessments was a student-choice group scrapbook activity. Since a scrapbook evokes the process of making a coherent story out of a travel adventure, I decided to explore how I could support student learning throughout a unit on international cuisine, in which students travel around the world in the kitchen.

 The creative challenge of the scrapbook project focuses students on engaging with the content, while giving me more opportunities for feedback and reteaching during the process.

International Cuisine Rubric--by Region

I began with two learning objectives: students will be able to work productively in teams while using cultural global competence and determine differences and similarities of various types of international and regional cuisines. Normally, I would design a summative project in which students have creative choices; instead, I introduced more creativity into the learning and formative assessment stages by creating a multi-stage lab-centered project that connects cooking activities to content and reinforces learning while revealing misunderstandings in a timely fashion. The creative challenge of the scrapbook project focuses students on engaging with the content, while giving me more opportunities for feedback and reteaching during the process.

 The project encourages students to engage and explore the foods, customs, and flavors of regions from around the world...

Using backward design, I created a rubric to help students identify and organize the key aspects of each regional cuisine. Groups of students choose three typical foods from each region to research, prepare, document, and reflect upon. Scrapbook evidence of student learning is reviewed weekly, with teacher feedback and notes for revision. The project encourages students to engage and explore the foods, customs, and flavors of regions from around the world in such a way that they will be prepared to explain how each region’s unique characteristics and typical practices are reflected in their chosen menus.

 I expect that shifting from individual summative to group formative assessment will improve learning outcomes...

Group presentations of the scrapbooks at the end of the unit will serve as a review before the required unit exam. Using a total points grading scheme, the scrapbook project will be recorded as a completion grade. This, along with opportunities to retest, will balance the unit exam grade to better reflect student learning. I expect that shifting from individual summative to group formative assessment will improve learning outcomes through frequent, low-stakes feedback and higher engagement with student-chosen groups and menus. This experience has given me new ways of looking at assessment—seeing creativity not as the ultimate goal of learning, but as a way of making learning visible.

References

Blum, S. D. (2022). The ungrading umbrella. Grow Beyond Grades. https://growbeyondgrades.org/blog/the-ungrading-umbrella

Kohn, A. (2011). The case against grades. Alfie Kohn. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/

Stommel, J. (2018, March, 11). How to ungrade. Jesse Stommel. https://www.jessestommel.com/how-to-ungrade/

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.