Assessing PBL
Author: Arlene Vinion Dubiel
When students are engaged in project-based learning, the classroom becomes an active community. Students are using mathematics practices, talking, and working together to solve problems and complete complex tasks. Students often think of PBL as fun, unaware of the intense learning that’s taking place. It’s necessary to purposely assess this learning during PBL instead of using traditional testing. By doing so, evidence can be evaluated by rubrics through PBL.
As math and science teachers, we like the certainty found in these subjects; answers are either correct or incorrect, and we provide tests, marking them objectively. Gray areas of perspective or opinion often occur in other subjects. But with PBL and the use of messy, real-world situations and data, assessment evidence like a physical product, presentation, or in-depth explanation need to be evaluated subjectively. We need rubrics to objectively evaluate this evidence that can be subjective. This blog will share how to assess PBL and go in-depth on how to identify and create rubrics.
Objectives
Writing clear objectives is the first and most crucial part of any planning process. Objectives must have active and measurable verbs for which evidence can be generated. They don’t contain the verbs “learn,” “understand,” or other synonyms that cannot be directly measured. You may have conditions for meeting the objectives or a degree to which the goals are met. Ideally, lesson objectives are short enough to be memorized. It’s easy to go off on tangents in an active classroom, but keeping the learning objectives in mind helps stay on track.
To write great objectives, start with the standards and identify the verbs within them. Many standards are written similar to objectives with active and measurable verbs. For example, CCSS HSF.LE.A.2 reads, “Construct linear and exponential functions…given a graph, a description of a relationship, or two input-output pairs.” The actions students will display are clear from this standard – students will construct functions given some information. In contrast, the following standard, CCSS HSF.LE.A3 is “Observe…that a quantity increasing exponentially eventually exceeds a quantity…” We cannot measure whether students observe. Still, we can have students explain or demonstrate this phenomenon through a graph or table.
Once you have the verbs for your objectives established, you can identify what kinds of evidence you may need from students to demonstrate that the objective has been met. For the former objective, you may have some written functions. For the latter, you may have a student explaining a situation that involves an exponential function during a presentation.
Establishing objectives is the most critical part of instructional planning. When you have clear objectives, you can focus your instruction on what’s truly important, limiting tangents and distractions. When you have good course objectives, you create room in your course schedule to explore and engage students in more PBL experiences. If you want more information and practice on writing course objectives, and if you are a member of yourSTEM, check out Dr. Maria Andersen’s training on how to write great course objectives.
Formative assessments
Most of the assessment during a PBL lesson is informal, with no physical evidence of learning that you can share with an outside observer. Informal assessment is intricately linked with instruction. The teacher hears students talking, analyzes what they are saying, decides to respond, and provides feedback to keep students on track and think about the project. This is where the talk moves for teachers mentioned in a previous blog comes into play. Teachers are informally redirecting or furthering students’ learning.
Other formative assessments like exit tickets, a checkbric, or teacher notes can be formal with reminders of where students are in the process or whether a particular student or group of students made a profound discovery or error. Lee DeWitt talks about managing this kind of assessment in her series of training for the yourSTEM community on Differentiated STEM Instruction. The critical thing with formative assessment, regardless of whether it is formal or informal, ensures that students progress towards the objectives.
Rubric criteria
A good PBL task does not have a single correct answer, so the assessment of PBL cannot be a straightforward correct/incorrect. With the variation in evidence, the evaluation is subjective. This is where we need rubrics that evaluate subjective evidence as objectively as possible. All rubrics have three essential components: the criteria, levels, and descriptors. The requirements are the easiest to identify and establish.
Most transitional math curriculums use standards-based or competency-based grading practices that evaluate evidence with rubrics. The criteria for these kinds of rubrics are simply the standards or the competencies. Examples of competency rubrics for each pathway of transitional math in Illinois can be found with the state resources. Standards and key performance indicators related to those standards are the rubric criteria. For example, one measure in the quantitative literacy rubric is QL-FM2.B “Build a function that models a relationship between two quantities.”
Competency and standards-based rubrics help evaluate a lot of evidence generated through a course. Still, for single PBL units, you need a smaller and more specific rubric that will fit the evidence that will be generated. Identify the criteria for these smaller rubrics by starting with your own learning objectives. Sometimes, you can use the objectives themselves as criteria. For example, “students will graph linear and exponential equations.” Your evidence would be a couple of graphs, and you can evaluate them with data points, titles, axis labels, etc. Other times, you will have to consider the type of evidence generated through the PBL. Many PBL tasks conclude with sharing project results through a presentation.
Presentations have many different components that can be evaluated, from the content to the mechanics and delivery. If you find generic presentation rubrics, they will have categories like “neatness,” “slide transition,” or “presentation skill,” including eye contact and clear speech. While you want the presentation to be good, having these kinds of criteria that evaluate mechanics and delivery is problematic because they are not being taught. Instead, focus on your learning objectives. When you do this, you find that content is the essential part of the presentation.
Some of you might argue that you should evaluate the mechanics and delivery of a presentation to maintain the quality. But you can provide feedback on the quality of the presentation without giving a formal grade. If your content-based learning objectives have been achieved, why give the student a poor evaluation because their slides were messy or their delivery was not polished? Also, please take into consideration those students for whom English is their second language. Suppose you grade them on presentation delivery with reading slides, eye contact, and clear speech. In that case, you are automatically putting these students at a disadvantage, and they are likely to receive lower grades than their native English-speaking peers. Instead, evaluate whether or not the content-based learning objectives have been achieved.
Rubric levels and descriptors
Once you have your criteria established, you’ll need to decide the degree to which you will evaluate the requirements. We, as math and science educators, like the certainty of point values. We can award points for good work, take away points for poor work, or add them up. We can also make it a percentage and then equate that percentage to letter grades. While we can certainly give the levels and criteria in our rubrics a point value, we can also assign levels.
The competency-based rubrics found within the Illinois Transitional Math curriculum have five levels from 1-No Evidence to 5-Exceeding Expectations. The goal is for all students to achieve a Level 4-Meets Expectations. When students don’t achieve the highest level of rubric, it challenges what we often do in education. When we create numbers-based rubrics, we expect, or hope, for students to receive the maximum points possible. The highest level is reserved for students who fulfill all requirements. With any creative project, we know that some students will meet the requirements, and others will exceed expectations. The question is, do the levels of your rubric allow for excellence while not penalizing those who only meet expectations?
The descriptors are what allow rubrics to be as objective as possible for subjective evaluations. When writing descriptors, start with the highest level. If a project was genuinely excellent, what would it look like regarding that criterion? Make the descriptor simple with either one concept or multiple concepts related enough so that they cannot be separated. For example, the Level 5 descriptor for the QL-FM2.B criterion is “Identify and model relationships between two quantities in a variety of functions, build new functions, and justify their choice of function.” Note that students must be able to do all of these to demonstrate they have exceeded this key performance indicator. After you have written the descriptor for the highest level, write descriptors for the other levels, making sure they are clear.
“We need to remember the purpose of a rubric is to evaluate subjective evidence objectively. ”
Once you have the rubric written, the next step is to make sure it works with authentic student evidence. As you evaluate the evidence, you will likely find that the rubric will need some modifications, usually to the descriptors, to make sure it is effective. After all this, we need to remember the purpose of a rubric is to evaluate subjective evidence objectively.
Rubric writing tools
If you do write your own rubrics, some online tools can help. Rubistar has been around for a while and has many rubrics already created. You can also create your own from established criteria and descriptors. It is free, but there are ads on the site. Rubric Maker is also suitable for creating rubrics. With the free version, you can create and then print the PDF copies. For $2 a month, you can also get a personal account with more rubric creation features. ForAllRubrics is free for teachers and is much more sophisticated in that you can use it as a grade book. If you want to use standards-based grading or plan to use rubrics on a very regular basis, sign up for a free account to view and use the features. With any of these tools, the basic rules of rubric-writing still apply:
Establish your objectives first.
Identify the criteria based upon the objectives and establish the levels.
With all of these tools, check the descriptors carefully as they are not always well-written or incrementally leveled.
As project-based learning is an active process, the same can be said about the assessment of PBL. From informal formative assessments (to ensure students are on track) to subjective products produced after the project, assessment is ongoing. It requires more than a summative test with responses that are evaluated as correct/incorrect. Using well-designed rubrics that address your learning objectives can benefit both you and your students.
When engaging in PBL, establish your objectives and determine what evidence will be generated. As PBL tasks are complex and address skills and content, your assessments must manage both. Use the tips in this blog to create your own rubrics for your project-based lessons.