Republic of the Philippines

Commission on Higher Education

Region V (Bicol)
OAS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Calzada, Oas, Albay

Professional Education (Prof. Ed.) 9

Assessment in Learning 2

Course Reading 2

Topic
Performance Assessment

Learning Outcomes

After reading this topic, the student is expected to design appropriate performance
tools for intended students learning outcomes.

Introduction

To be able to perform successfully the culminating performance tasks, you should have
distinguished have distinguished between traditional and performance assessments,
understood the processes in setting learning objectives and student outcomes and in
preparing the table of specifications, identified the different types of performance assessment
tasks, and learned the guidelines in designing performance assessment tools. To be able to
learn or enhance your skills on how to develop good and effective performance assessment
tools, review your prior knowledge on the differences between traditional and alternative
assessment and how and when to choose a particular assessment method most appropriate
to the identified learning objectives and desired learning outcomes of your course.

Discussion

What is performance assessment?

Performance assessment is an assessment activity or set of activities that require

students to generate products and performances that provide direct or indirect evidence
of their knowledge, skills, and abilities in an academic content domain. It provides teachers
with information about how well a student understands and applies knowledge and goes
beyond the ability to recall information. It is used for assessing learning outcomes that
involve designing or creating projects or products such as research papers, art exhibits,
reflective essays, and portfolios. On the other hand, performance-based tasks include actual
performances of making those products, such as carrying out laboratory experiments,
exhibiting creative and artistic talents, such as dancing, painting, and playing a musical
instrument, and demonstrating writing skills through extemporaneous essay writing, article
review, and reflective papers. Both product-based and performance-based assessments
provide information about how a student understands and applies knowledge and involve
hands-on tasks or activities that students must complete individually or in small groups.
Below are examples of product-based and performance-based assessments:

Types Examples
A. Product-Based Assessment
Charts, illustrations, graphs, collages,
Visual Products murals, maps, timeline flows, diagrams,
posters, advertisements, video
presentations, art exhibits
Kinesthetic Products Diorama, puzzles, games, sculpture,
exhibits, dance, recital
Journals, diaries, logs, reports, abstracts,
letters, position paper, poems, story,
Written Products movie/TV scripts, portfolio, essay, article
report, research paper, thesis
Verbal Products Audiotapes, debates, lectures, voice
recording, scripts
B. Performance-Based Assessment
Paper presentation, poster presentation,
Oral Presentations/Demonstrations individual or group report on assigned topic,
skills demonstration such as baking,
teaching, problem solving
Dramatic/Creative Performances Dance, recital, dramatic, enactment, prose
or poetry interpretation, role playing,
playing musical instruments
Public Speaking Debates, mock rial, simulations, interviews,
panel discussion, story telling,poem reading
Athletic Skills Demonstration/Competition Playing basketball, baseball, soccer,
volleyball, and other sports

Similar to performance assessment is the concept of authentic assessment. Authentic

assessment requires students to actually demonstrate or apply their skills and knowledge
they have learned from the class. It involves tasks that resemble what people do in the real
setting or context, such as doing an actual research, making a case study, giving a speech,
or performing on a stage.

What are the characteristics of a good performance assessment?

With so many types of performance assessment tasks or tools that can be used to
measure students’ learning outcomes, deciding which one to use can be confusing and
challenging. In choosing and designing the best performance assessment, it is good to
evaluate its suitability against the following criteria:
1. It is authentic, that is, it includes performance tasks that are meaningful and
realistic.

Performance assessment should present or require tasks that are realistic and related
to everyday life. As it involves an authentic task, it should convey its purpose and reflect its
relevance to the students, their discipline, and the outside world as a whole. Foe example,
in an Entrepreneur class wherein one of he learning outcomes is the ability to develop a
business plan, instead of giving a final exams to test students’ knowledge of concepts,
principles, and processes of developing a business plan, the students will be required to
submit a proposed business plan for putting up a new investment. This performance task
entails students to identify the market needs and gaps, plan out the marketing mix, and the
4Ms of operations, and forecasts the costs and revenues of the business. This task allow
students to have hands-on experience in performing a task that is done in the actual world.

2. It provides opportunities for students to show both what they know and how
well they can do what they know.

Performance assessment should achieve a balance approach wherein it gives students

opportunities to show their knowledge-and-skill competencies. Since the main goal of
teaching and learning is for the students’ acquisition and application of knowledge and skills,
course assessment should therefore help answer the questions “Do the students know it?”
and “How well can they use what they know?” to determine whether the students have
actually achieved this goal. For example, in a Practical Research 2 class, the teacher may
require research output at the end of the course, since his performance task will not only
inform the teacher whether the students can conceptualize a good research paper, conduct
review of related literature, apply appropriate data gathering procedure and analysis, and
make valid interpretations and implications of the results. The main challenge is for the
teachers to choose performance tasks that can measure both the competence of “knowing”
and “applying” and at most “creating”.

3. It allows students to be involved in the process of evaluating their own and

their peers’ performance and output.

Performance assessment should allow students to be involved in the process of

evaluating of evaluating themselves and their peers. It should give students the opportunity
for self-reflection or self-assessment, as well as to be involved in evaluating their classmates’
performance. Self-assessment allows students to make judgement about their learning
process and products of learning, track their progress, and identify the areas where to focus
or improve on. Peer assessment, on the other hand, allows students to give constructive
feedback about the performance of their classmates or group mates, which the latter can use
to revise or improve their work. Both assessments require that scoring or grading is based
on the criteria agreed upon by the teacher and the students. The use of a rubric can facilitate
self-assessment and peer assessment.

4. It assesses more complex skills.

 Unlike traditional tests that usually assess a single skill and require simple tasks such
as remembering or recalling of concepts, performance assessment usually taps higher-order
cognitive skills to apply knowledge to solve realistic and meaningful problems. As such,
performance assessment allows students to engage in more challenging activities that require
various skills, such as planning and decision-making, problem-solving, critical thinking,
communication, and creative skills, among others. For example, instead of giving final exams
to assess students’ learning in a marketing class, the teacher may require the students to
conduct a marketing and market research, come up with a marketing strategy, and/or
conduct an actual marketing for a product of their choice. These performance tasks not only
assess students’ knowledge of principles and processes in marketing but also tap their
creativity, planning skills, collaborative skills, communication skills, and research skills.

5. It explains the task, required elements, and scoring criteria to the students
before the start of the activity and the assessment.

At the start of the class, it is important that the requirements of the subject are
presented and explained to the students. These include the requires tasks, activities or
projects, the expected quality and level performance or output, the criteria to be included for
assessment, and the rubric to be used. Ideally, students should be involved in the whole
assessment process from the very onset, by providing them assessment options, getting them
involved in discussions and decision making on performance standards and criteria, giving
them the opportunity to give feedback on teacher-made rubrics and to revise them, and
training them on how to apply rubric for self- and peer-assessment.

What are the general guidelines in designing performance assessment?

The learning outcomes at the end of the course serve as the bases in designing the
performance assessment tasks. With the learning outcomes identified, the evidence of
student learning are the most relevant for each learning outcomes and the standard or criteria
that will be used to evaluate those evidence are then identified. To guide you in designing
performance assessments, the following questions may be addressed:

1. What are the outcomes to be assessed?

2. What are the capabilities/skills implicit or explicit in the expected

outcomes (e.g., problem-solving, decision-making, critical thinking,
communication skill)?

3. What are the appropriate performance assessment tasks or tools to

measure the outcomes and skills?

4. Are the specific performance task aligned with the outcomes and skills
interesting, engaging, challenging, and measurable?
 5. Are the performance task authentic and representative of real-world
scenarios?

6. What criteria should be included to rate students’ performance level?

7. What are specific performance indicators for each criterion?

Furthermore, the choice of teaching and learning activities is also of utmost importance
in choosing the performance assessments to use. There should also be an alignment among
the learning outcomes, the teaching-learning activities, and assessment tasks. For example,
in a Physical Education-Dance class, the following three-course components should be
explicitly clear and linked, as shown below:

Intended Learning Teaching-Learning Performance Assessment

Outcomes Activities Tasks
At the end of the course,
the students should be able
to:
⚫ Perform dance routines Lecture, class discussion, Culminating dance class
and creatively combine movement exercises, dance recital, practical test for
variations with rhythm, demonstration, actual each type of dance,
coordination, correct dancing with the teacher reflection papers, peer
footwork technique, and partners, collaborative evaluation rating
frame, facial and bodily learning
expression.

⚫ Participate in dance Required attendance and Actual dance performance in

socials and other participation in school and school or community
community fitness community dance programs,
advocacy projects. performances reaction/reflection papers

How do you conduct performance assessment?

Unlike in most traditional tests wherein student responses can be scored using an
answer key, performance assessments require the teacher’s and peers’ judgement when
evaluating the resulting products and performances. This necessitates using a set of
predetermined criteria that are aligned with desired targeted standards or desired learning
outcomes.

The following are the basic steps in planning and implementing performance-based or
product-based assessments:

1. Define the purpose of performance or product-based assessment. The teacher

may ask the following questions:

⚫ What concept, skill, or knowledge of the students should be assessed?

 ⚫ At what level should the students be performing?
⚫ What type of knowledge is being assessed (e.g., remembering to create)?

2. Choose the activity/output that you will assess. The required performance or
output should be feasible given the time constraints, availability of resources, and amount of
data/materials needed to make an informed decision about the quality of a student’s
performance or product. The performance tasks should be interesting, challenging,
achievable, and with sufficient depth and breadth so that valid evaluation about students’
learning can be made.

3. Define the criteria. Criteria are guidelines or rules for judging students’ responses,
products, or performances. Before conducting the assessment, the performance criteria
should be predetermined. The set of criteria should be discussed and agreed upon by the
teacher and the students. Performance criteria are important since they define for the
students the type of behavior or attributes of a product that are expected, as well as allow
the teacher and the students to evaluate a performance or product as objectively and as
consistent as possible. There are four types of criteria that can be used for evaluating student
performances:

A. Content criteria - to evaluate the degree of a student’s knowledge and

understanding of facts, concepts, and principles related to the topic/subject.

B. Process criteria - to evaluate the proficiency level of performance of a skill or

process.

C. Quality criteria - to evaluate the quality of a product or performance.

D. Impact criteria - to evaluate the overall results or effects of a product or

performance.

4. Create the performance rubric. A rubric is an assessment tool that indicates the
performance expectations for any kind of student work. It generally contains three essential
features: (1) criteria of the aspects of performance that will be assessed, (2) performance
descriptors or the characteristics associated with each dimension or criterion, and (3)
performance levels that identifies students’ level of mastery within each criterion. There are
different type of rubrics:

A. Holistic rubric - in holistic rubric, student performance or output is evaluated by

applying all criteria simultaneously, thus providing a single score based on overall
judgement about the quality of student’s work.

B. Analytic rubric - in analytic rubric, student’s work is evaluated by using each

criterion separately, thus providing specific feedback about the students’ performance
or product along several dimensions.
 C. General rubric - contains criteria that are general and can be applied across tasks
(e.g., the same rubric that can be used to evaluate oral presentation and research
output).

D. Task-specific rubric - contains criteria that are unique to a specific task (e.g., a
rubric that can only be used for oral presentation and another rubric applicable only
for research output).

(NOTE: There will be another Module for Process in Developing and Using
Rubrics for Alternative Assessment)

5. Assess student’s performance/product. In assessing a student’s work, it is important

to adhere to the criteria set and use the rubric developed. This is to ensure objective,
consistent, and accurate evaluation of student’s performance. It is also important to provide
specific and meaningful feedback and explanation to students on how they have performed
the tasks, clarifying to them what they understand, what they don’t understand, and where
they can improve.

References

Textbook

Assessment in Learning 2, Dr. Adonis P. David. Et al., Rex Publication, May

2020: Quezon City, Philippines

Prepared by:

RAYMUNDO B. SALISI, MAEd

College Instructor