Assessing Your/Student Progress

Assessment for learning is core to integrating making across the curriculum as both a mindset formaking to learn and learning to make. Two paths to assessment inform our work to create empathetic assessment:

Assessment in a maker culture is designed to show progress across what MIT and Maker Ed refer to as elements of making or what the Makeshop at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum refers to as Maker Learning Practices.

Single Point Rubrics

Using a single point rubric offers an opportunity to engage young makers in assessing their own development of elements of making and/or maker learning practices. This document provides insight into the process of constructing and using a single point rubric with young makers and a sample single point rubric.

Single Point Rubric – Co-planning Assessment for Learning

The Beyond Rubrics Toolkit offer alternatives to the rubric as an assessment tool. The focus of the toolkit is to collect evidence across three categories: setting context, evidence collection, and meaning making. This PDF describes some of the tools. A complete toolkit can be downloaded from Maker Ed.

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From the Beyond Rubrics Toolkit: Maker Elements and Tools

Use StereoCraft Make 3D shapes to share evidence and tell your process story. Students transform a flat piece of paper into a 3D shape that shows evidence of the Maker Elements students demonstrate. At the start of a class period, the flat shape may prompt students to set goals and/or show evidence for a particular Element. Then, as students carry out an assigned activity, they use the flat shape to record evidence of demonstrating the Element(s): recorded as writing, images, sculpture, etc. Once every face of the shape is filled with evidence, it can be assembled into a three-dimensional shape and shared. Teachers, students, and other stakeholders can start seeing the many ways that Maker Elements can manifest in student work, develop a better understanding of each Element, and reflect on the progress students make through repeated (and remixed) use of this tool.