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Performance Tasks: Introduction and Purpose

Performance tasks ask students to create a product or perform a task to demonstrate their mastery of skills. They can take many forms from informal to highly structured. Benefits are that they approximate real-world skills and allow active demonstration of learning, but challenges are that they can be time-consuming to design and score consistently. A "what-who-how" framework can be used to design performance tasks, specifying the task, whether it's individual or group work, and parameters of the task.

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MarryShailaine Clet
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67 views

Performance Tasks: Introduction and Purpose

Performance tasks ask students to create a product or perform a task to demonstrate their mastery of skills. They can take many forms from informal to highly structured. Benefits are that they approximate real-world skills and allow active demonstration of learning, but challenges are that they can be time-consuming to design and score consistently. A "what-who-how" framework can be used to design performance tasks, specifying the task, whether it's individual or group work, and parameters of the task.

Uploaded by

MarryShailaine Clet
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PERFORMANCE TASKS

INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE


By the end of this module, you should be able to define what a performance task is, list a variety of
performance tasks, identify the benefits and challenges of performance tasks, know that there is a
“what-who-how” framework that you can use to design performance tasks, and use the assessment
blueprint to design assessment items.

KEY CONCEPTS
Performance Tasks
Performance tasks ask students to create products or perform tasks to show their mastery of particular
skills.1 Teachers at all grade levels and disciplines can use performance tasks to measure learning. A kindergarten teacher asks a
student to count from 1 to 30 or say her ABCs. A first-grade teacher asks her students to read a passage out loud from a book. A
fourth-grade physical education teacher asks her students to demonstrate skills they have developed during a unit on jumping
rope. An eighth-grade visual arts teacher asks his students to use different media to create sculpted figures that convey actions or
gestures. All teachers use performance tasks.

These examples illustrate how performance tasks take a wide variety of forms. They can be so informal that students don’t even
realize that they are happening, highly structured and standardized, or somewhere in between. They can last only a few minutes or
take place over the course of a month. You can use them for diagnostic, formative, interim or summative purposes. You can include
a performance task as an item within an assessment, or a single performance task can make up the entire assessment. We often use
extended-response and long-essay items as performance tasks within a larger assessment. Performance tasks that serve as
assessments in and of themselves often involve multiple steps and culminate with a physical, verbal, visual or written product. We
use scoring guides and rubrics to score all types of performance tasks.

Performance tasks offer several benefits beyond selected- and constructed-response items. Performance tasks also come
with challenges.
 Performance tasks place student demonstration of ability at the center of assessment.  Performance tasks can be
 Performance tasks approximate real-world application of complex skills. time-consuming to design
 Allow students to actively demonstrate their learning and skills. and score in a consistent
 Performance tasks can measure abilities beyond academic knowledge and skills. and unbiased manner.
 Performance tasks are typically more engaging for students.

How to Use a What-Who-How Framework to Design Performance Tasks


There’s no such things as a “typical performance task,” and in this sense, performance tasks are different from selected- and
constructed-response items. However, you can use a simple “what-who-how” framework to design a performance task.

What Who How


 What is the task?  Will students work in  Will you prescribe the parameters of the task,
 Is the task a written performance or a groups or individually? or will students be allowed leeway to
physical, verbal or visual performance? If determine how to complete it?
the task is a written performance, you  Will you time the task? If you time the task,
can use guidance from the module about how much time will you allot for students to
how to write and select a constructed- complete the task?
response item to help you create or  How and when will you communicate precise
select a well-designed performance task. directions to the students?

Part of Assessment Design Toolkit: http://csai-online.org/spotlight/assessment-design-toolkit.


CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
Assessment Items
1. List a variety of performance tasks, either repeating those listed early in this module or using those you come up with on your
own or in teams.

2. Describe one benefit and one challenge of performance tasks.

Answers
1. List a variety of performance tasks, either repeating those listed early in this module or using those you come up with on your
own or in teams.
A kindergarten teacher asks a student to count from 1 to 30 or say her ABCs. A first-grade teacher asks her students to read a
passage out loud from a book. A fourth-grade physical education teacher asks her students to demonstrate skills they have
developed during a unit on jumping rope. An eighth-grade visual arts teacher asks his students to use different media to create
sculpted figures that convey actions or gestures. A middle-school science teachers asks her students to complete experiments to
demonstrate that they know how to apply scientific method and how to use the scientific equipment that they will use to do more
advanced experiments.

2. Describe one benefit and one challenge of performance tasks.


Performance tasks place student demonstration of ability at the center of assessment. They approximate real-world application of
complex skills more closely than other types of items, and they allow students to actively demonstrate their learning and skills. On
the other hand, performance tasks can be time consuming to design and score in a consistent and unbiased manner.

Part of Assessment Design Toolkit: http://csai-online.org/spotlight/assessment-design-toolkit.


1
Kansas State Department of Education, “Assessment Literacy Project”; Ohio Department of Education, “How to Design and Select
Quality Assessments”; Relay Graduate School of Education, Designing and Evaluating Assessments (2014); and Rhode Island
Department of Education, “Deeping Assessment Literacy.”

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