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STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. 2

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
MODULE OVERVIEW

Too often, we tend to assess student’s learning through their outputs or products or through some kind
of traditional testing. However, it is important to assess not only these competencies but also the processes
which the students underwent in order to arrive at these products or outputs. It is possible to explain why the
students’ outputs are as they are through an assessment of the processes which they did in order arrive at the
final product. This module is concerned with performance-based assessment.

Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional,

integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. It entails not only what
students know but what they can do with what they know. Assessment should reflect these understandings by
employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so
as to reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration.

The role of assessment in teaching happens to be a hot issue in education today. This has led to an
increasing interest in “performance-based education”. Performance-based education poses a challenge for
teachers to design instruction that is task-oriented.

At times, performance-based assessment has been used interchangeably with “authentic assessment”
and “alternative assessment”. In all cases, performance-based assessment has led to the use of a variety of
alternative ways of evaluating student progress as compared to more traditional methods of measurement.

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this Module, you should be able to

1. Design and develop performance tasks using the Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Products,
Standards (GRASPS) model.
2. Develop appropriate assessment rubrics or customize existing ones to fit the desired outcome.
3. Interpret performance assessment data/ results for monitoring and evaluating learner achievement to
improve learner performance and inform instruction.

WHAT AND WHY OF PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

In the act of learning, people obtain content knowledge, acquire skills, and develop work habits—and
practice the application of all three to “real world” situations. Performance-based learning and assessment
represent a set of strategies for the acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and work habits through the
performance of tasks that are meaningful and engaging to students.

Performance-based learning and assessment achieve a balanced approach by extending traditional

fact-and-skill instruction. Performance-based learning and assessment are not a curriculum design. Whereas
you decide what to teach, performance-based learning and assessment constitute a better way to deliver your
curriculum. Teachers do not have to “give up” units of study or favorite activities in a performance-based
classroom. Because authentic tasks are rooted in curriculum, teachers can develop tasks based on what
already works for them. Through this process, assignments become more authentic and more meaningful to
students.

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Types of Performance Assessment

A. Process-Based Performance Assessment

Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students “end up” matters greatly. But to
improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way – about the curricula,
teaching and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand
which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the
whole of their learning. Process-oriented performance-based assessment is concerned with the actual task
performance rather than the output or product of the activity.

1. Learning Competencies
The Learning objectives in the process performance-based assessment are stated in
directly observable behaviors of the students. The objectives generally focus on the behaviors
which exemplify a “best practice” for the particular task. Such behaviors range from a
“beginner” or “novice level” up to the level of an “expert”.
The objective starts with a general statement of what is expected of the student from
the task and then breaks down the general objective into easily observable behaviors from the
task. The specific objectives identified constitute the learning competencies for this particular
task. A competency is said to be more complex when it consists of two or more skills.

2. Task Designing
Learning tasks need to be carefully planned. In particular, the teacher must ensure that
the particular learning process to be observed contributes to the overall understanding of the
subject or course. Some generally accepted standards for designing a tsk include:
 Identifying an activity that would highlight the competencies to be evaluated.
 Identifying an activity that would entail more or less the same sets of competencies.
 Finding a task that would be interesting and enjoyable for the students.

3. Scoring Rubrics
Rubric is scoring scale used to assess student performance along a task-specific set of
criteria. Authentic assessments typically are criterion-referenced measures, that is, a student’s
aptitude on a task is determined by matching the student’s performance against a set of criteria
to determine the degree to which the student’s performance meets the criteria for the task. To
measure student performance against pre-determined set of criteria, a rubric, or scoring scale,
is typically created which contains the essential criteria for the task and appropriate levels of
performance.
The rubric includes another common, but not a necessary, component of rubrics – descriptors.
Descriptors spell out what is expected of students at each level of performance for real criterion.

Why include levels of performance?

a. Clearer expectations
b. More consistent and objective assessment
c. Better feedback

Analytic Versus Holistic Rubrics

a. Analytic rubric – articulates levels of performance for each criterion so the teacher can
assess student performance on each criterion.

When to choose an analytic rubric?

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Analytic rubrics are more common because teachers typically want to assess each
criterion separately, particularly for assignments that involve a larger number of
criteria. It becomes more and more difficult to assign a level of performance in a
holistic rubric as the number of criteria increases.

b. Holistic rubric – does not list separate levels of performance for each criterion.
Instead, a holistic rubric assigns a level of performance by assessing performance
across multiple criteria as a whole.

When to choose a holistic rubric?

Holistic rubric tends to be used when a quick or gross judgment needs to be made
and can be also be employed for more substantial assignments. Some educators
believe a holistic or global assessment of student performance better captures
student ability on certain tasks.

B. Product-Based Performance Assessment

Student performance can be defined as targeted tasks that lead to a product or overall learning
outcome. Target task include behavior expectations targeting complex tasks that students are expected to
achieve. Using rubrics is one way that teachers can evaluate or assess student performance or proficiency
in any given task as it relates to a final product or learning outcome.

1. Learning Competencies
The learning competencies associated with products or outputs are linked with an
assessment of the level of “expertise” manifested by the product. Thus, product-oriented
learning competencies target at least three (3) levels: novice or beginner’s level, skilled level,
and expert level. Such levels correspond to Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive domain in that
they represent progressively higher levels of complexity in the thinking processes.

Performance-based assessment for products and projects can also be used for
assessing outputs of short-term tasks.

There are other ways to state product-oriented learning competencies. For instance,
we can define learning competencies for products or outputs in the following way:
 Level 1: Does the finished product or project illustrate the minimum expected
parts or functions? (Beginner)
 Level 2: Does the finished product or project contain the additional parts and
functions on top of the minimum requirements which tend to enhance the final
output? (Skilled)
 Level 3: Does the finished product contain the basic minimum parts and
functions, have additional features on top of the minimum, and is aesthetically
pleasing? (Expert)

2. Task Designing
How should a teacher design a task for product-oriented performance-based
assessment? The design of the task in this context depends on what the teacher desires to
observe as outputs of the students. The concepts that may be associated with task designing
include:
a. Complexity. The level of complexity of the project needs to be within the
range of ability of the students. Projects That are too simple tend to be
uninteresting for the students while projects that are too complicated will most

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likely frustrate them.

b. Appeal. The project or activity must be appealing to the students. It should be
interesting enough so that students are encouraged to pursue the task to
completion. It should lead to self-discovery of information by the students.
c. Creativity. The project needs to encourage students to exercise creativity and
divergent thinking. Given the same set of materials and project inputs, how
does one best present the project? It should lead the students into exploring
the various possible ways or presenting the final output.
d. Goal-Based. Finally, the teacher must bear in mind that the project is
produced in order to attain a learning objective. Thus, projects are assigned to
students not just for the sake of producing something but for the purpose of
reinforcing learning.

3. Scoring Rubrics
Scoring rubrics are descriptive scoring schemes that are developed by teachers or
other evaluators to guide the analysis of the products or processes of students’ efforts
(Brookhart, 1999).

Scoring rubrics are typically employed when a judgment of quality is required and may
be used to evaluate a broad range of subjects and activities.

The criteria for scoring rubrics are statements which identify “what really counts” in the
final output. The following are the most often used major criteria for product assessment:
 Quality
 Creativity
 Comprehensiveness
 Accuracy
 Aesthetics

From the major criteria, the next task is to identify substatements that would make the
major criteria more focused and objective. The scoring rubrics that can be used is “holistic
scoring rubric”. It will be noted that each score category describes the characteristics of a
response that would receive the respective score. Describing the characteristics of responses
within each score category increases the likelihood that two independent evaluators would
assign the same score to a given response. In effect, this increases the objectivity of the
assessment procedure using rubrics. In the language of test and measurement, we are actually
increasing the “inter-rater reliability”.

Authentic assessment schemes apart from scoring rubrics exist in the arsenal of a
teacher. For example, checklists may be used rather than scoring rubrics in the evaluation of
essays. Checklists enumerate a set of desirable characteristics for certain product and the
teacher marks those characteristics which are actually observed. On the other hand, scoring
rubrics are based on descriptive scales and support the evaluation of the extent to which
criteria have been met.

Scoring rubrics provide at least two benefits in the evaluation process. First, they
support the examination of the extent to which the specified criteria have been reached.
Second, they provide feedback to students concerning how to improve their performances.

General Versus Task-Specific

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a. General Scoring Rubric – can be used across similar performances.

b. Task-Specific Rubric – can be used only for a particular task or assignment.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 1

Directions: Choose any six (three for process-based and three for product-based) activities below and
construct your own scoring rubrics.

A. Process-based Activities
1. Participate in a debate.
2. Infer the main idea of a written piece.
3. Write a research paper.
4. Design a museum exhibit.
5. Combine information from several sources to draw a conclusion about something.
6. Use evidence to solve a mystery.
7. Propose and justify a way to resolve a problem.
8. Write an outline of a text or oral report.
9. Evaluate the quality of a writer’s arguments.
10. Compare and contrast two stories or articles.

B. Product-based Activities
1. Essay on “Why Jose Rizal Should be the National Hero?”
2. Oral presentation on the piece of the “Land of Bondage, Land of the Free”
3. Scrapbook on “EDSA I Revolution”
4. Group activity on “Genomic Shapes through Paper Folding”
5. Specimen preservation on biological diversity
6. Writing a short computer program on “Roots of a quadratic equation”
7. Laboratory output in “Frog Dissection”
8. Evaluating a kinder piano performance
9. Evaluating performance in argumentation and debate
10. Group activity on “Solutes and Solvents”

DEVELOPING PERFORMANCE TASK

A performance task is any learning activity or assessment that asks students to perform to demonstrate
their knowledge, understanding and proficiency. Performance tasks yield a tangible product and/or performance
that serve as evidence of learning. Unlike a selected-response item (e.g., multiple-choice or matching) that asks
students to select from given alternatives, a performance task presents a situation that calls for learners to apply
their learning in context.

Performance tasks are routinely used in certain disciplines, such as visual and performing arts, physical
education, and career-technology where performance is the natural focus of instruction. However, such tasks can
(and should) be used in every subject area and at all grade levels.

Characteristics of Performance task:

1. Performance task call for the application of knowledge and skills, not just recall or recognition.
2. Performance tasks are open-ended and typically do not yield a single, correct answer.
3. Performance tasks establish novel and authentic contexts for performance.
4. Performance tasks provide evidence of understanding via transfer.

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5. Performance tasks are multi-faceted.

6. Performance tasks can integrate two or more subjects as well as 21 st century skills.
7. Performances on open-ended tasks are evaluated with established criteria and rubrics.

When used as assessments, performance tasks enable teachers to gauge student understanding and
proficiency with complex processes (e.g., research, problem solving, and writing), not just measure discrete
knowledge. They are well suited to integrating subject areas and linking content knowledge with the 21st Century
Skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, and technology use. Moreover,
performance-based assessment can also elicit Habits of Mind, such as precision and perseverance.

Designing Performance Task Assessments

Creating effective assessment tasks requires thinking through curriculum content to establish learning
outcomes, then designing performance activities that will allow students to demonstrate their achievement of
those outcomes, and specifying criteria by which they will be evaluated, experts say.

Grant Wiggins, director of programs at the Center on Learning, Assessment, and School Structure,
recommends designing curriculum “backward from the assessment tasks”—deciding what students should be
able to demonstrate they know and can do before deciding what to teach them. Such an approach lends
coherence to the entire curriculum, he wrote in the 1995 ASCD Yearbook, Toward a Coherent Curriculum. “With
clarity about the intended performances and results, teachers will have a set of criteria for ordering content,
reducing aimless `coverage,' and adjusting instruction en route; and students will be able to grasp  their priorities
from day one.”

To develop meaningful performance assessment tasks that will reveal the learning that teachers hope
to see, educators need to take an assessment perspective from the beginning, Wiggins believes. “If you think
like an assessor, you're thinking, `Given what I want them to learn, what counts as evidence that they
understand that?'” he says. “That's a very different question than, `What is a good activity?'”

Per Wiggins & McTighe (2006), the root of a performance task is a problem which is not to be confused
with an exercise. An exercise “involves a straightforward execution of a ‘move’ out of context”. In other words,
exercises are discrete. Problems, on the other hand, involve integration of knowledge and skills as applied to a
problem designed to simulate “real-world” scenarios. Problems allow students to see what they do in the
classroom beyond the four walls of the classroom (or learning management system). Wiggins and McTighe
argue that problems provide evidence of “genuine understanding”.

To achieve this kind of understanding, Edmund J. Hansen (2011) provides some additional guidelines for
designing performance task assessments:
 “Be realistically contextualized,
 Require judgement and innovation,
 Ask the student to ‘do’ the subject,
 Replicate key challenging situations in which professionals are truly ‘tested’ in their field,
 Assess the student’s ability to use a repertoire of knowledge and skill, and
 Allow appropriate opportunities to rehearse, practice, and get feedback.”

Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Products, Standards (GRASPS) model:

A guide to developing authentic performance tasks

GRAPS is a model advocated for by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe to guide teachers in designing
authentic performace-based assessment. It’s a form of assessment that engages learners to employ their

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thinking skills and demonstrate application of essential knowledge, conceptual understanding, and skills
acquired throughout a unit of learning.

Constructing an assignment based on these guidelines can be tricky, but Wiggins and McTighe’s GRASPS
model is an excellent starting point. GRASPS is an acronym for:
 Goal – established the challenge, issue or problem to solve.
 Role – give students a role that they might be taking in a familiar real-life situation.
 Audience – identify the target audience whom students are solving the problem for or creating the
product for.
 Situation – create the scenario or explain the context of the situation.
 Product, Performance, and Purpose – paint a clear picture of the WHAT and WHY of the product
creation or the performance.
 Standards and Criteria for Success – informed students how their work will be assesses by the
assumed audience.

Through the use of the GRASPS assessment model, teachers can create opportunity for students to
develop the metacognition. In order to create a product or solve a problem effectively and efficiently, students
first need to clarify the task, identify their strength and weakness, set appropriate challenging goals, analyse the
context, chunk the big task into small subtasks within the timeline, seek feedback for improvement, and self-
evaluate their work against the success criteria before final submission. During the process of the product
creation, teachers provide both explicit and implicit feedback and guide students to monitor their progress.
Frequent check-ins are essential.

Differentiating Performance Tasks for Diverse Learners

Differentiation is an instructional strategy used at all levels of K-12 education to meet the needs of
students with diverse abilities. Though widely used, questions still exist for teachers about how they can
differentiate efficiently and effectively in their classrooms.  Incorporating Project Based Learning (PBL)
through performance tasks is an effective strategy that teachers can use that creates opportunities to
differentiate the learning experience.

Differentiating content is a way of helping every student learn and grapple with important standards at
the appropriate level of rigor. While all students may work with similar concepts and themes throughout a unit of
study, in a differentiated classroom the depth  to which students explore a concept and the level of
rigor associated with their application of that concept may differ.

Performance tasks help teachers easily differentiate the way students demonstrate and apply their
learning because they provide a variety of product options. Though all students must show evidence of
learning, differentiation in this area means that it does not have to be delivered in the same medium.
Differentiating by product involves giving students options and potential choice for the culminating work they
create to demonstrate understanding and application of important learning outcomes.

Designing various performance tasks apt for specific groups of learners provides more opportunities for
students to effectively demonstrate what they have learned, and also guide teachers on how they can
differentiate, modify and improve instruction.

Differentiated performance tasks can be done by designing and providing various assessment methods
and activities that are appropriate for each type of students such that they can effectively learn and demonstrate
what they have learned. Differentiated assessments can be done by providing them various options and

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opportunities to show their learning and proficiency. From a list of Zach Burrus, Dave Messer and Judith Dodge,
here are some ways of differentiating assessments:
 Designing tiered activities
 Scaffolding struggling learners
 Challenging advanced learners with more mid-stimulating activities
 Adjusting questions
 Compacting
 Flexible grouping
 Flexible assignments and tasks based on students’ learning styles
 Learning contracts

LEARNING ACTIVITY 2

Directions: Create two performance task scenarios according to your field of specialization and design it
using GRASPS model. You can consider the following set of statements.

Title

Goal:
Your task is ______________________________________________________________
Your goal is to ____________________________________________________________
: The problem/challenge is ____________________________________________________
The obstacle(s) to overcome is (are) ___________________________________________

Role:
You are
__________________________________________________________________
You have been asked to ____________________________________________________
You job is ________________________________________________________________

Audience:
Your client(s) is (are) _______________________________________________________
Your target audience is _____________________________________________________
You need to convince _______________________________________________________

Situation:
The context you find yourself in is _____________________________________________
The challenge involves dealing with ____________________________________________

Product/Performance and Purpose:

You will create a ___________________________________________________________
in order to ____________________________________________________________
You need to develop _______________________________________________________
so that _______________________________________________________________

Standards and Criteria for Success:

Your performance needs to __________________________________________________
Your work will be judged by __________________________________________________
Your product must meet the following standards __________________________________

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Successful results will ______________________________________________________

SUMMARY

Here are some pointers to remember:

 Performance-based learning and assessment achieve a balanced approach by extending traditional

fact-and-skill instruction.
 Performance-based assessment is divided into two types – process-based performance assessment
and product-based performance assessment.
 Process-based performance assessment is concerned with the actual task performance rather than the
output or product of an activity. It evaluates the actual task performance and does not emphasize on
the output or product of the activity. This assessment aims to know what processes a learner
undergoes when given a task.
 Product-based performance assessment is a kind of assessment where in the assessor views and
scores the final output made and not on the actual performance of making that product. It is concern on
the product alone and not on the process. It is more concern to the outcome or the performance of the
learner. It also focuses on achievement of the learner and on evaluating the result or outcome of a
process.
 Scoring rubric in process-based performance assessment is a scoring scale used to assess student
performance along a task-specific set of criteria.
 Scoring rubric in product-based performance assessment is a descriptive scoring schemes that are
developed by teachers or other evaluators to guide the analysis of the products or processes of
student’s efforts.
 GRAPS (Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Product/Performance/Purpose, and Standards and Criteria
for Success) is a model advocated for by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe to guide teachers in
designing authentic performance-based assessment. It’s a form of assessment that engages learners
to employ their thinking skills and demonstrate application of essential knowledge, conceptual
understanding, and skills acquired throughout a unit of learning.

REFERENCES

 Navarro, R & De Guzman-Santos, R. (2013). Authentic Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes,

Assessment of Learning 2, 2nd Edition. Quezon City, Lorimar Publishing Inc.

 De Guzman-Santos, R. (2007). Advanced Methods in Educational Assessment and Evaluation,

Assessment of Learning 2. Quezon City, Lorimar Publishing Inc.

 http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/aug95/vol37/num06/Designing-
Performance-Assessment-Tasks.aspx

 https://blog.performancetask.com/what-is-a-performance-task-part-1-9fa0d99ead3b

 https://teachingcommons.unt.edu/teaching-essentials/course-design/grasps-model-meaningful-
assessment

 https://alisonyang.weebly.com/blog/grasps-assessment-design-and-student-metacognition

 https://blog.definedlearning.com/blog/differentiate-instruction-meet-needs-diverse-learners

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 https://abdao.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/differentiated-assessment/

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