Nationwide calls for better forms of assessing student achievement raise questions about their relative benefits and drawbacks compared to traditional forms of assessment. There are ever so many alternative methods of assessing student achievement. The new techniques are varied and diverse. The many forms of alternative student assessment methods are relatively new-the oldest being in vogue since the last five years only. Each of these techniques has its own merits and demerits. Research has yet to establish the feasibility of alternate forms of assessment.
Alternative assessment is a form of student performance grading that allows for a more holistic approach to student assessment. The traditional form of student assessment involves the average grading of a cumulative set of work for a given time period. Alternative assessments expect the student to provide their own responses rather than simply selecting from a given list of options. Alternative assessment can also encompass a portfolio of work to represent an entire use of concepts, similar to the way a traditional final examination is intended to be a cumulative demonstration of material learned over a given period. Alternative assessment is based on authentic tasks that demonstrate learners' ability to accomplish communication goals .In these methods both instructor and learners focus on communication, not on right and wrong answers. Learners help to set the criteria for successful completion of communication tasks and have opportunities to assess themselves and their peers.
The formats for alternative assessments are varied unlike the traditional forms. In alternative assessment applications, students create a response to an assignment or examination while in traditional assessment techniques they select a response from a set of choices. There are true and false responses and student’s thought is on the method of eliminating the false response or getting the best possible selection based on the given criteria. The different methods of alternative assessments include essay responses, oral presentations, portfolios of compiled work, short answer questions and demonstrations of a concept or strategy. Alternative assessments are best used at given intervals for grading or at important junctures like final examinations or promotion to the next grade.
Alternative assessments have their own benefits. Traditional assessment techniques often save time in grading compared to alternative assessments which prove the depth and breadth of the student’s learning is more time consuming. It may be called to mind that the whole effort of the student over an entire semester cannot be put in to a nut shell of multiple questions. The portfolio of work presented by the student demonstrates his/her ability, skill and understanding of concepts. Simultaneously it also serves as a resource for the teacher to learn about the pros and cons of the various methods of teaching adopted. Like the traditional assessment methods which can show the paucity of understanding concepts, alternative assessment techniques also help in estimating the student’ caliber.
Alternative assessment methods can be implemented successfully with the help of enlightened teachers who are able to develop the students’s inherent ability. The teacher resources available to assist with the deployment of alternative assessments in the classroom setting should include more than simply testing options. The study skills required to ensure sufficient supporting information prior to an actual alternative assessment event are critical to the success of students. Teacher worksheets and lesson plans will invariably help the students in getting familiar with the alternative assessment model as there happen to be many students. By continuing to foster a sense of ownership and student accountability for their contributions to their own assessment, many of these students will become more effective with their overall assessments.
There are a number of challenges in the implementation of alternative assessments. The assumption that teachers will teach appropriate material in appropriate ways, no matter how they prepare students for a test, is false. Teachers may end up shaping lessons to the test format, without teaching underlying concepts, just as they have done with multiple-choice tests. It is not easy to create valid, reliable, large-scale assessment systems that can be used to hold schools accountable and provide teachers with assessment information that is useful for improving instruction. The very aspects of external testing programs that allow teachers to embed state assessment activities in regular classroom instruction are those that pose the greatest problems for states trying to meet existing standards of test validity and reliability. States can ensure the reliability of their assessments fairly easily with greater standardisation of tasks, revision of rules, and test preparation. These measures tend to isolate assessment tasks from ongoing instruction, lessen the role of classroom teachers, preclude use of the assessment as a direct window on instruction, and lessen teachers' incentives to reform instruction on a daily basis.
Koretz et al. (1994) argues "Despite common rhetoric about `good assessment being good instruction,' we believe that the tension between the instructional and measurement goals is fundamental and will generally arise in performance assessment systems that either embed assessment in instruction, rely on unstandardized tasks, or both. This appears not to be a problem that can be fully resolved by refinements of design; rather, policy-makers and program designers must decide what compromise between these goals they are willing to accept”.
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