Session 3, Part 1: The Balance Between Clarity and Autonomy

Create Your Ideal Curriculum, Session 3: Design an Authentic Assessment Process

In this third session (of four), we lay out a systematic approach for ensuring that student learning is truly represented when assessments are administered. There needs to be a balance between clarity of what success resembles and autonomy for the student to shape their own ways of knowing. This occurs best when the assessment is educative, in that it teaches as much as it reveals student understanding. Two approaches for creating more authentic performance tasks - place-based and project-based - are described for this process. Related, anticipated feedback is aligned with the tasks and the standards to ensure information is helping the student move forward. Just starting? Begin with Session 1 here.

When I first started teaching graduate courses in curriculum development and instructional leadership, it was clear that I wasn’t “clear” in my directions all the time. Our final assessment was a developed unit of study that was accompanied by a reflection in which the student described th…