Healthier Testing Made Easy: The Idea of Authentic Assessment (http://www.edutopia.org/healthier-testing-made-easy)

It’s crucial to assess work authentically because as described in the article, research has been revealing, to the field of education, that testing and other older forms of assessment aren’t furthering the learning of students.  Wiggins states, “A good local assessment system does more than audit performance. It is deliberately designed to model authentic work and to improve performance. The aim of teaching is not to master state tests, but to meet worthy intellectual standards. We must recapture the primary aim of assessment: to help students better learn and teachers to better instruct.”  Unfortunately, the requirement for passing state tests and midterms/finals is considered to be more important by certain people than the actual learning which could be done by students if they were to be able to be assessed differently.             The days of solely lecturing and testing should be forgotten because students around the world have different learning styles and are best assessed by multiple methods, not just one method.  Students will be increasingly different as the 21^st century progresses from the generations of the Past because of their use of technology and necessity for multiple assessments during their school career. 

According to the article, “Students overwhelmingly report that the single most important ingredient for making a course effective is getting rapid response on assignments and quizzes.  An overwhelming majority are convinced that their best learning takes place when they have a chance to submit an early version of their work, get detailed feedback and criticism, and then hand in a final revised version. ... Students improve and are engaged when they receive feedback (and opportunities to use it) on realistic tasks requiring transfer at the heart of learning goals and real-world demands."  This was reiterated during the article and I believe that it’s crucial to this discussion because the research clearly reveals to people that students greatly desire teachers to respond to their work and critic it relatively quickly because they are of the mind that this allows them to revise their work and begin the editing and/or revision process, which furthers their learning. This process also appears to further engage the students because they are constantly working on their project, not waiting and waiting for their work to be handed back to them with little to no feedback or comments.  If this is the case, students probably place the work in their folder and never look back upon it; the learning which could’ve occurred is gone.   

   As a recent College graduate, my experience with teacher feedback was extremely varied.  Some of my professors handed us back our research papers and projects with numerous comments, suggestions, etc.  Certain classes would be solely devoted to revision amongst our classmates and professors.  Whereas, other professors would have little to no class time devoted to editing and revision amongst students and little to no feedback on our work.  This made it difficult for us because we wanted to receive some sort of feedback on our work, which research shows furthers the learning done by the students.   

            In order to effectively assess students, teachers should help them by giving them feedback upon their work and in my opinion, giving them class time to work with their peers through editing each other’s work.  Projects should have clear and concise objectives which will hopefully allow the students to learn what you are attempting to teach them.  As time progresses, students will change even more and assessment shouldn’t stagnate because it will harm the learning which could be done by your students.