"Project-based Learning" meets "Performance-based Assessment"

The trend toward project-based learning stems from our desire to provide learning opportunities with real-world applications that are engaging, cross-curricular, student-centered and meaningful. Project-based learning encourages creativity and innovation, and accommodates a variety of learning styles and strengths. Because of its open-ended, collaborative nature, there are challenges associated with the assessment of student learning within the context of project-based learning.

From the AAC Key Visual

As always, when we plan for assessment in Alberta classrooms we begin with outcomes from Alberta Programs of Study. Typical projects in a PBL classroom likely address a large number of outcomes from a variety of subject areas. When we begin to plan a project, we identify specific learning goals connected to those outcomes and plan ahead for the ways in which we will assess student learning. Project-based learning requires performance-based assessment: giving student the opportunity to demonstrate what they know and can do through their work on a variety of tasks.

After we're clear on our learning goals, we identify the criteria we will use to assess out students, and then consider how we'll help them build an understanding of what success will look like for those criteria. Because the scope of a project is often quite broad, it's appropriate to plan a variety of performance assessments along the way, to allow us to gather evidence of learning for a more manageable number of outcomes and learning goals.

We gather that evidence through recorded observations of students as they work on the project and conversations with students about their learning, as well as by considering their finished products and performances. Being clear about our specific learning goals and how we will assess them at the beginning of the project helps us focus on those key goals. This in turn makes it more likely that students will successfully meet those goals. We provide students with many opportunities to reflect on their learning during and after the project, and encourage them to set next steps and goals for further learning.

Performance-based assessments in the Alberta Assessment Consortium collection are smaller in scope than most projects in a PBL classroom, but can provide a useful model for assessing students in this environment. The teacher materials for every task include a chart outlining the curricular outcomes being addressed by the task, linked to criteria for assessment. The criteria addressed by a task are manageable in number, and are made explicit for students in the task itself. The very same criteria appear again on the rubric used to assess student learning. Take a look at some of these tasks, and consider how a similar model might help you support and assess student learning within a project-based learning context.

AAC Assessment Materials Support Teachers in Achieving the Vision of Inspiring Education

View of the NEW Competency Connections
tab on the AAC website

Performance Assessment Update: Task Specific Competency Connections

Alberta is in a time of transition. A new Ministerial Order is now in effect which outlines expectations for student learning, including a focus on literacy, numeracy, and competencies. Although curriculum prototyping is underway, the results of which will inform the development of the new programs of study, the existing programs of study are still in effect.

Gr. 9 Social Studies: Papaschase Land Claim
Task Outcome/Criteria Correlation

The Ministerial Order states that "competencies are interrelated sets of attitudes, skill and knowledge that are drawn upon and applied to a particular context for successful learning and living, are developed over time and through a set of related learner outcomes." It has not yet been determined whether the competencies will be addressed separately from the outcomes or embedded within the assessment of outcomes.

During this time of transition, AAC performance tasks will continue to link the assessment criteria to the existing learner outcomes. However, a separate document has been provided that shows the specific competencies that are addressed within the task. For educators who are grappling with what the "new" competencies might look like in action, the AAC competency connection and task specific outcome/criteria correlation documents can provide concrete examples to consider.

Gr. 9 Social Studies: Papaschase Land ClaimTask Competency Connections

Browse through the library of Performance Assessment Tasks on our website (like the Papaschase Land Claim PA Task shown on this page) and have a look at how the Outcomes/Criteria of the task align with the competencies in the related Competency Connection documents. We hope that by making links between the familiar language of outcomes and criteria to the potentially not-so familiar language of competencies, you might gain some clarity around what the competencies look like in the classroom.

We'd like to hear from you: 

• Does this process help you to gain clarity about what the new competencies entail? 
• Are there questions that arise when doing so? 
• What additional support do you require to assist you in this process?