When well-designed, these assessments allow for the students to actively participate in the assessment of their work; this both helps them refine the meaning they make of what they studied and it provided them with opportunities to accurately self-assess their work. Because the work is intended for authentic audiences, the students are motivated to seek feedback to improve the work, are purposeful in the feedback they seek, and practice judgment and evaluation of emerging work and understanding (Molloy & Boud, 2014)
According to Ackerman (2017), a comprehensive assessment plan will answer three questions: a) How do students compare to students in similar courses? b) What are student’s emerging learning skills? and c) Can students create polished projects? Each of these is demonstrated through different types of tools and demonstrations. This can include standardized and standards-based tests, course grades, and projects. While that work was designed for k-12 students, the idea of including multiple and diverse types of work through which students demonstrate their emerging understanding is appropriate for all students.
References
Ackerman, G. (2017). Technology in support of diverse assessment. In M. Simonson & D. Seepersaud (Eds.). Proceedings of the 40th Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Paper presented at AECT Conference, Jacksonville, FL.
Molloy, E. K., & Boud, D. (2014). Feedback models for learning, teaching and performance. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 413-424). Springer.