Art Production and Arts Assessment

Assessment in the Visual Arts

The textbook included some wonderful ideas of how to incorporate assessments in to visual arts. In particular, look at the art progress report and the questions on "evaluating our year in art." You might use those questions to help you with your final reflection for this course. I have also included parts of the California framework that address the importance of assessment in the arts. Your final project is a "final assessment" for this course. Rather than take a final exam or write a final paper, you will be collecting artifacts from your work in this course and putting them together into an electronic portfolio. A portfolio is a natural part of the artists' toolbox. Artists typically show their work in a portfolio collection so using a portfolio as an arts assessment is a great alternative for your students as well. Using technology that is now so accessible - PowerPoint presentations, blogs, wikis, webpages - perfect for showcasing your art work and lesson plans.

Multiple Measures of Student Progress in the Arts

• Selected response items: multiple choice, true-false, matching, enhanced choice

• Brief constructed responses: fill in the blank (words, phrases), short answer (sentences, paragraphs), label a diagram, visual representation (Web, concept map, flowchart, graph/ table, illustration)

• Products: essay, research paper, log/journal, report, story/play, exhibit, project, artwork, model, a dance, video/audiotape, portfolio

• Performances: oral presentation, dance, sing or play an instrument, demonstration, dramatic reading, enactment, debate, recital, teach a lesson

• Process-focused: oral questioning, observation, interview, conference, process description or demonstration, think aloud, learning log

California Frameworks - Assessment in the Arts - http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fd/documents/vpach5.pdf

Included are quotes from the draft of the California Visual and Performing Arts Framework section on Assessment (approved by the California Board of Education, January 5, 2004 based on standards approved in 2001)

Throughout California the visual and performing arts content standards provide teachers, administrators, students, and the community with a clear set of expectations for what students should know and be able to do in dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts in elementary school, middle school, and high school.

The Role of Student Assessment in Visual and Performing Arts Programs

Assessment in the arts provides teachers with valuable information on what needs to be adjusted in instruction to meet students’ needs toward achieving the content standards. It helps teachers build a profile of each student that can be used to communicate progress. At the school district level, the assessment data provide the help administrators need to make effective decisions about instruction, personnel, and resources for the arts education program.

Assessment and instruction are aligned within the curriculum. The key to using assessment effectively and efficiently is to recognize that, above all, no single assessment tool meets all assessment needs. Assessments are used to inform instruction, monitor student progress, provide feedback to students and parents, summarize students’ learning over a given period of time, and provide additional information to qualify students for special programs.

Assessment of student work in the arts may be accomplished through thoughtfully designed performance, critique, and analysis. Artists are constantly assessing their own performances and products and asking others to assess or critique their work. If visual and performing arts curriculum and instructional materials fully integrate assessment, most assessment activities—especially the monitoring of progress—will contribute to learning and maximize instructional time.

The visual and performing arts content standards focus on developing the knowledge and skills required to create artwork and performances. They also include the study of the arts and artists and their influence on culture. Comprehensive assessment relies on a variety of tools to create a complete evaluation of the students’ progress. Student work, performances, open-ended projects or questions, research assignments, constructed response items, and multiple-choice items (multiple choice) are all appropriate for use in the arts curriculum.

Scoring Guide

For any performance assessment tool used, explicit criteria for the evaluation of the students’ work should be identified and shared with the students prior to the evaluation process. Because the arts encourage enthusiasm or willingness to try new things, there are a number of ways in which students can solve artistic problems. Therefore, the result of an assignment or performance task may be very different from what was envisioned yet meet the stated criteria for assessment. When students and parents or guardians are familiar with the criteria and rubrics or scoring guides that teachers use to identify the students’ levels of success in meeting the content standards, the students can fully express their creativity according to the accepted criteria. Sample scoring guides describing levels of performance can accompany assignments or performance tasks to help students maintain a focus on their work.

Types of Assessment

Regular assessment of student progress in mastering grade-level standards is essential to the success of the instructional program based on the visual and performing arts content standards and framework. Assessments of student work should be informative and timely and contribute appropriately to student learning and development.

The three types of assessments are characterized as follows:

Entry level:

Do students possess crucial prerequisite skills and knowledge?

Do they already know some of the material that is being taught?

This type of assessment identifies what students already know and helps teachers determine the most efficient starting point for learning. Some entry-level assessments should measure mastery of foundational standards; others should measure the degree to which students have mastered some portion of what is to be learned next. Teachers should use the information from the entry-level assessment to ensure that students are supported in specific areas while including them in grade-level instruction. An entry-level assessment might consist of a pretest of vocabulary, open-ended conceptual questions, performance opportunities for students to show current mastery of theory or technique, or opportunities to demonstrate current level of skill by means of a set of material or prompts.

Monitoring of Progress:

Are students progressing adequately toward achieving standards?

Monitoring of their progress helps steer instruction in the right direction and should occur regularly. In standards-based classrooms, such monitoring becomes a crucial component of instruction for every student. It signals when alternative routes need to be taken or when students need to review material before moving forward. It is only through such monitoring that teachers can continually focus instruction so that all students are constantly progressing. In a sense, everything students do during instruction is an opportunity for monitoring. Ongoing assessment allows student artists to reflect on their own creations and use the insights gained from the process to enrich their own work. Students need to learn how to appraise their own work as well as that of their peers and professional artists. Monitoring should therefore reflect the essential nature of the skill or knowledge being assessed, directing student learning and establishing expectations for achievement. It may be internal or external. Internal monitoring is a process for students to determine their level of mastery according to a set of clear criteria. External monitoring provides opportunities for teachers to determine the students’ level of mastery according to a set of clear criteria.

External monitoring should:

• Document performance.

• Help teachers make instructional decisions and adjustments based on the documented performance.

• Identify student performance in relationship to the standards.

• Include a variety of strategies to determine students’ level of knowledge and skills. Page 180 Chapter 5 - Assessment in the Arts

Monitoring of progress in the arts is formal or informal. Formal monitoring might be in the form of questions or prompts that students answer or performance of a prescribed set of skills on demand. Informal monitoring might include a conference or conversational analysis centered on a work in progress and determination of the next steps needed for completion.

Summative evaluation:

• Have students achieved the goals defined by a given standard or group of standards?

• Do students know and understand the material?

• Can students apply the material in another situation?

• Are students ready to move on?

Summative evaluation is used to determine whether students have achieved the goals defined in a standard or group of standards. Typically, this type of assessment comes at the end of an instructional unit or school year. The most important aspect of summative evaluation is that it measures the students’ long-term growth and mastery of grade-level standards.

Student performances and exhibitions can lend themselves to informal or formal assessment. Careful planning allows beginning performances to be shared and critiqued to help students gain mastery of the skills being developed. Supportive and creative environments allow students to build their confidence. Students gain experience through informal presentations or at school board or parent meetings. The entrance requirements of the University of California and California State University call for performance course criteria to include appropriate cocurricular work, such as performances and exhibitions.

Example of 3rd Grade Artist Portfolio

Student Portfolios

One way to assess student learning is to examine a collection of work. Professional and student artists maintain portfolios of formal and informal work to monitor their progress and show the depth and breadth of their skills over time. The portfolio helps students see their improvement and helps teachers evaluate student progress as well as the effectiveness of their teaching strategies. When portfolios are reviewed according to predetermined criteria, teachers and students can identify the students’ levels of content mastery. Portfolios can also be used to demonstrate to parents students’ strengths and challenges in the content mastery being discussed. Assessment portfolios might include draft sketches, technique development, finished work, or documentation of artwork or performances in forms such as photographs, audiotapes, videotapes, digitally formatted compilations, and reflective writings. Portfolios that may be presented as collections of original work or recorded on a videotape, CD, or DVD are as follows:

Process portfolio:

This portfolio demonstrates student mastery over time. The work includes rough sketches or drafts, preliminary plans for staging, scores or scripts, choreography notes and diagrams, and more refined and finished works. It may also include written reflections on the works in progress, the process for completing the work, influences on the work, and critiques of self and peers. The teacher and the student discuss the work periodically during the course to determine progress and areas of need.

Portfolio of assessment tasks:

This portfolio includes a series of specific tasks or assignments usually related to mastery of a set of specific content standards in each of the strands. The California Art Education Association has developed a middle school portfolio of the assessment tasks. In task 1 the student compares and contrasts two works of art that are portraits; in task 2 the student creates a self-portrait; and in task 3 the student evaluates his or her own artwork, using a scoring guide.

Best-work portfolio:

This portfolio is intended to showcase the best work the student has completed in a course. Usually selected jointly by the student and teacher, this portfolio is typically used in formal and informal reviews of student progress.

Competition or high-stakes portfolio:

Portfolios of this type are developed by students for competitions, applications for advanced study, or admission to special programs. Works included in this portfolio are of the highest quality and demonstrate advanced technical skills and conceptual awareness. They usually show evidence of accomplishment in a variety of media and include a reflective statement written by the student regarding the work.

New Media and Electronic Technology in Arts Assessment

Using new media and electronic technologies for assessment is of increasing value to visual and performing arts educators and students. As a method of delivering constructed response items, a school or district may select exemplary student or teacher work to be digitally photographed and/or recorded. Virtual reality software facilitates a 360-degree view of an object or a performance with a simple move of the computer mouse. Once the information is burned onto a CD, it may be used by the entire school or district as part of an assessment. Portfolios of student work in any arts discipline can be burned onto a CD or DVD and stored and shared with others for assessment. Students may send portfolios to colleges or universities for entrance into a program or may use them in applying for employment. In creating portfolios students develop skills in critiquing their own work, a sense of accomplishment, marketable technology skills, an insight into their body or work, and a portable record of their work. Student performance artists will especially find videotapes invaluable in documenting their work and in critiquing it. An electronic process for assessing student work and providing professional development for arts teachers involves a Web site with an interactive digital interface. Teachers upload a standards-based assessment task with an accompanying scoring guide. Examples of student work are then added so that other teachers can evaluate to what extent the work meets the criteria on the scoring guide. Teachers from different schools and school districts may have access to the site to provide their observations and comments. Insights are gained by having multiple reviews of the work, and anchor or benchmark performances can be established for the task.

Electronic Portfolio Assessment

Why develop electronic portfolios?

Bennett and Hawkins (1993) discussed the use of technology as having "unique capabilities that would make crucial contributions to the creation of workable and meaningful forms of alternative assessment." They stated that computers and video records offered potential for collecting and storing records of students’ work. Lankes (1995) discussed the use of computer technology as a "likely solution" to the problem of creating, managing, and storing portfolios. Electronic or computer-based portfolios were considered similar to traditional paper portfolios, but information was collected, stored, and managed electronically with computerized text, graphics, sound, and video. Lankes (1995) stated that computer-based portfolios provided authentic demonstrations of accomplishments and motivated students to take responsibility for their own work.

Niguidula (1993a) defended the idea behind portfolio assessment as a means of understanding a student's abilities and accomplishments. However, he asked the question, "What are we going to do with ALL THIS STUFF?" (p. 1). He discussed the "logistical nightmare of thousands of papers turning brittle and collecting dust" (p. 1). He presented two other drawbacks to traditional portfolios: performance evidence may not be on paper and the materials for presentation may not be easily manageable. He proposed that we create a tool using computer technology that allows us to create a richer picture of what a student can know and do (p. 2). Niguidula has been working on developing ways to create a digital portfolio through The Exhibitions Project at the Coalition of Essential Schools and the IBM Corporation.

Sheingold and Frederiksen (1994) stated that technology could provide "the media through which students and teachers can have conversations that lead to shared understandings of the values and standards for student performance" (p. 112). Technology could help link assessment with reform by providing the following functions: support for student work in extended, authentic learning activities; portable, accessible and replayable copies of performances in multiple media; libraries of examples and interpretive tools; greater participation in the assessment process; and publication of works recognizing student accomplishments (p. 121). Technology could provide evidence of assessment beyond products that are text-based or activities that require the physical presence of the evaluator. Student work could be captured and preserved using interactive multimedia formats that integrate many forms of information on one computer disk (p. 122).

Barrett (1998a) supported the use of portfolios for authentic assessment of student learning. She believed portfolio-based assessment was one of the most exciting developments in the school reform movement. She proposed that standards provide the basis for portfolio organization:

An electronic portfolio without clear links to standards is just a multimedia presentation or a fancy electronic resume or digital scrapbook. Without standards as the organizing basis for a portfolio, the collection becomes just that…a collection, haphazard and without structure; the purpose is lost in the noise, glitz and hype. High technology disconnected from a focus on curriculum standards will only exacerbate the lack of meaningful integration of technology to improve teaching and learning. (1998, Tel-Ed Abstract)

Barrett (1998b) suggested that a portfolio include the following elements: learner goals, guidelines for selecting materials, work samples, teacher feedback, student self-reflection, clear and appropriate criteria for evaluating work (rubrics based on standards), and standards with access to examples of good work. She believed that technology should be considered for creating portfolios for the following reasons:

1. Documents are generally created with a computer anyway.

2. Hypertext links allow clear connections between standards and portfolio artifacts.

3. Creating an electronic portfolio can develop skills in using multimedia technologies.

4. If teachers develop electronic portfolios, students may be more likely to do the same.

5. Electronic portfolios are fun and it is easier to manage the process, especially storage, presentation, and duplication.

6. Electronic portfolios make student work replayable, portable, examinable, reviewable, and widely distributable. (1998b, 1999)

Stages for Portfolio Development

Barrett, 2001

Dr. Barrett provides us with a guide for planning describing the following stages:

Stage 1 – Determine the portfolio context and goals

• Identify the assessment context, including the purpose of the portfolio

• Identify the goals to be addressed in the portfolio

• Knowing the primary audience for the portfolio

• Identify the resources available for electronic portfolio development (hardware/software)

• Determine the assessment context

Assessment Context - What is the purpose?

• Show growth over time

• Document ongoing learning and professional development

• Assessment – achievement of standards or goals

Stage 2: The Working Portfolio – Archive Creation and Digital Conversion

• Collect Artifacts - "Become a digital packrat."

• Select the software development tools most appropriate for the portfolio context and the resources available.

• Set up electronic folders to organize the artifacts

• Save word processed documents, database, spreadsheets, hypermedia programs, Powerpoint presentations, etc.

• You will be converting some of this material into linked files (html webpages or Adobe Reader pdf files)

• Microsoft Office is an integrated software application which includes Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. Most of your textual material can be copied and pasted from one of these programs directly in to PowerPoint.

"Portfolio: A purposeful collection of students' work that illustrates efforts, progress, and achievement"

Art Portfolio Assignment Description

1. Line

• Topic – Line

• California Visual Arts Standard Met

• Materials for Art Production

• Key Steps

• Connection to Famous Artist or Work of Art

  • Optional: You may wish to insert a new slide with a graphic of the famous work of art.

2. Shape or Form

• Topic – Shape or Form

• California Visual Arts Standard Met

• Materials for Art Production

• Key Steps

• Connection to Famous Artist or Work of Art

  • Optional: You may wish to insert a new slide with a graphic of the famous work of art.

3. Color or Value

• Topic – Color or Value

• California Visual Arts Standard Met

• Materials for Art Production

• Key Steps

• Connection to Famous Artist or Work of Art

  • Optional: You may wish to insert a new slide with a graphic of the famous work of art.

4. Space

• Topic – Space

• California Visual Arts Standard Met

• Materials for Art Production

• Key Steps

• Connection to Famous Artist or Work of Art

  • Optional: You may wish to insert a new slide with a graphic of the famous work of art.

5. Texture or Pattern

• Topic – Texture or Pattern

• California Visual Arts Standard Met

• California Language Arts Standard Met

• Materials for Art Production

• Key Steps

• Connection to Famous Artist or Work of Art

  • Optional: You may wish to insert a new slide with a graphic of the famous work of art.

6. Poem and Self Portrait (or Book Cover or other project for integrating visual/language arts using texture/pattern)

7. Art Museum or Gallery Visit - Add a summary of your art gallery or museum visit. Insert images of artwork examples. Insert new slides and edit text size if you need more space.

8. Art Teacher Classroom Observation – Add a summary of your art teacher classroom observation. Insert photos if possible. Insert new slides and edit text size if you need more space.

9. Visual Arts Reflection What have you learned about the visual arts? How will you teach visual arts in your classroom? How will you further your understanding of visual arts instruction? You may want to use a threaded discussion response, your reflection from you’re your museum gallery visit, or your classroom observation, etc.

Alternatives to PowerPoint for your Final Electronic Portfolio Project

• Try creating your portfolio on a free blog or a wiki of your choice.

  • Blogger – http://www.blogger.com

  • PbWorks – http://pbworks.com

• If you have a LiveText account, you may wish to create your final portfolio in LiveText. See the ARTU 450 tutorial at https://sites.google.com/site/livetexttutorials/.

• If you prefer Prezi for your portfolio, go to the Prezi tutorials - https://sites.google.com/site/studentspresent/prezi

• Other alternatives - https://sites.google.com/site/studentspresent/home