WEEK 5: Alternative Assessment

THOU TEATCHETH THOU SHALT ...
                                                                                                       "Assess alternatively"

Throughout the years, language practitioners have probed into many concepts related to the domain of Testing and Evaluation. These include Summative Assessment, Formative Assessment, Standardized Testing. This weeks reading assignment article develop one such concept of Assessment which is Aternative Assessment. But before making a summary of that article let us give a meaning to the notion of Assessment. Assessment can be understood as the process of making judgment about specific aspects of behaviour, consists of a set of skills by which determines whether or not the learner has mastered the objectives established. (FASTEF training Portefolio 2006)  

The article Assessing Learning, Alternative assessment, exposes the main features or distinctive traits of alternative Assessment. They can be summed up as follow:

Focus on the students’ strengths rather than weaknesses
Authentic tasks for communication goals
Focus on communication, not correctness 
More active role of learners in  assessment criteria determination
Oriented towards learner self-assessment and  peer assessment 
  

• 
  

  This approach to assesment has been further explained in the same article in the critereria to Aternative assessment authentic  Activities design section. The following diagram attempts to represent the relationship between Atlterative assessment and those key principles.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 
Looking at this diagram, it apprears that alternative assessment caters more for the need of a communicative and learner centered orientation of assessement. While assessment responsability solely resided on the teacher side, alternative assessment integrates an inclusive, progressive and communicative dimension to assessment. But, what are the assessment tools of this framework?

The two commonly used tools for alternative assessment are Checklists and Rubrics.

These are really important tools in the hands of both the learners and the teachers. For the groups, the checklist can serve as a guideline against which the steps to complete for a given project, activity or assignement are to be checked. They are are less descriptive and than rubrics. 

Rubrics on the other hand can be used for many purposes. They have been used in language teaching for diagnostic purposes or errors identification. They have come more into fashion with the development of online learning activities such as webquests. These tools are really handy when conducting a Project basedd learning (PBL). One advantage they have is they can enable students to keep tracks of their progress. Second, following the principles of Alternative Assessement, learners can participate in the determination of the evaluation criteria and cast  reflective thoughts about their own progress and learning skills. By designing a rubric, the teacher can control the level of expertise and difficulty required to perform some tasks and evaluate the learners accordingly.

According to the article,  Assessing Learning, Alternative assessment, rubrics can be grouped into four types which are:

1. Holistic rubrics 
2. Analytical rubrics 
3. Primary traits rubrics 
4. Multitraits rubrics

 The chart below attempts to repertoriate the different aspects of those rubrics.

TYPES OF RUBRICS	Purpose	Advantages	Limitations
Holistic rubrics	Holistic assessment of language	mostly suitable for large scale	Not precise when evaluating  separate or discreet learners problem
Analytic rubrics	Analytic assessment of students’ performance	Offers an analysis of different dimensions of the learner’s performance multiple weighting and separate scoring	non holistic approach Requires more preparation
Primary trait rubrics :	Focus on one criterion	Easy and quick to grade writing or speaking	Information  may not easily translated into grades. need constant adaptation of dimensions if to be reused for a different task (cf : Types of rubrics: Primary Trait and Multiple Trait )
Multitrait rubrics:	Enables the multiple traits rating related to tasks	allow separate scoring Scoring related to task features	Too much focus on the task may be to the detriment of the language dimensions May be more time consuming to prepare and analyze

Please help to improve this chart!