Assessments ....are they really the same as assignments? I thought there were some basic differences
Assessment (dictionary.com)
- The act of assessing; appraisal.
- An amount assessed, as for taxation
- The act of assigning.
- Something, such as a task, that is assigned. See Synonyms at task.
- A position or post of duty to which one is assigned.
- Law
- The transfer of a claim, right, interest, or property from one to another.
- The instrument by which this transfer is effected.
leaves me very confused......
1 comment:
Hmm... so when commonly discussed in education assessment and assignment are essentially the same thing (though some might use the latter to denote things which are smaller and/or of shorter duration, reserving the word assessment to mean things like mid-term exams, final projects, etc).
This is what we mean when we use the three terms:
Activities are things that students do that are ungraded and do not directly tie back, in an evaluated fashion, to criteria of evidence and understanding.
Most of the time activities are a part of an assignment, which IS graded and which does tie back to particular desired outcomes. For instance, you might ask students to watch a short video that discusses a particular search engine then perform a particular kind of search task. The first part is an activity that feeds into the second part which is (presumably) the assignment/assessment.
The reality is that this is much more of a problem in K-12, where it is common to have activities that are not tied to an evaluation (or only vaguely so). Thus the snowflake example I used, where students fold paper and cut notches and unfold to make snowflakes. This is an activity unless the teacher has made part of the process having students demonstrate some kind of understanding such as the relationship of the number of cuts and folds to the number of "holes" in the snowflake, the number of folds and "sides" etc.
Most University instructors seem to naturally create assessments rather than "just" activities. But not all! So the point of of focusing on them is two-fold:
1) to make sure that the reasons for the activity-- the things that make it into an assessment-- have been considered, particularly in light of facilitating understanding as the UBD rubric shows and
2) to explore many alternative assessments/activities that might not be obvious whether technological and new to some (wikis, blogging, visual storytelling, etc) or just unfamiliar but "traditional" such as role playing, writing letters, portfolio building, etc.
Does that help?mqm
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