Week 5: Design Complex Tasks

 Week 5: Design Complex Tasks

November 17th, 2023

In Chapter Five of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, Karin Hess discusses the importance of designing complex classroom tasks that involve more than basic-level thinking and recalling facts. Complex learning involves higher-level thinking skills, critical analysis, and problem-solving skills to tackle these tasks, creating engaging assignments or activities to activate these skills and to build upon existing skills. “The point I think he was making is that when we can tackle much more complex, performance-based tasks when we work on them with others than we can if we work on them alone…”(Hess 2023).  Students learn to break down information and take it to the next level. 

 Karin Hess talks about performance-based assessments and how it is essential to student growth and deeper-level thinking. There are three versions of performance-based assessments: PBA 1.0, PBA 2.0, and PBA 3.0. Below are the three types and their descriptions:  

PBA 1.0: Curriculum-related teacher, design, projects with group or individual problem-solving activities. The assessment focus would be participation engagement from students. These are typically not graded or just passing/fail to show completion.

PBA 2.0: Curriculum-embedded with real-world connections. Teacher-designed projects and performance tasks problem-based learning aligned with academic standards. Use student work as an example to describe quality. Using depth of knowledge levels and using scoring rubrics. This focuses on final products with demonstrations of learning to meet academic standards. Usually graded in the constant area.

PBA 3.0: Curriculum embedded with real-world applications that are relevant to students' backgrounds and identities. Teacher, guided, or student-led problem-based, inquiry-based, and project-based learning to transfer academic content knowledge with personal skills and dispositions. Exemplifies student work to describe quality and student voice.  Using depth of knowledge levels to align with the standards and personalize the learning through valid scoring protocols. The assessment focuses on processes and products, demonstrating learning through academic standards. This allows for student reflection in personal learning. Contributes to student evidence or portfolio demonstrating competency in both academic and interpersonal skills. 

 Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment (Figure 5.1)

Another interesting concept in designing performance-based assessments is the eight-step procedure to break down each assessment. Below are the eight different steps on how I interpreted them: 

Step One: Identify what you want the assessment to measure: Using different skills and processes, identify what is to be used in their impact on self or others. How can students use this newfound knowledge and transfer these skills to the final product. 

Step Two: Identify one or more authentic contexts for applying the skills, concepts, and dispositions in the assessment: Exemplify how these students will play these skills and concepts in life. For example, researchers, writers, historians, etc… 

Step Three: Identify appropriate formats for how students will apply their knowledge, skills, and dispositions: Use examples such as case studies, or academic articles for analysis. 

Step Four: Identify which choices, input, or decisions students will make: Give students a wide range of choices about different topics or activities to complete and what tools and resources they can use. 

Step Five: Describe the task: Describe what is to be expected, and how students will use this information to complete the task. 

Step Six: Develop an overview of the PBA with directions and general teacher instructions: An overview of the assessment that includes standards, essential questions, and student prompts with general directions. 

Step Seven: Finalize success criteria: Review the criteria that clearly align with the rubric and intended content. Multiple rubrics may be needed for self-reflection and grading. 

Step Eight: Develop a scoring guide or rubric: A well-written rubric that provides clear and concise expectations of the overall learning. 

Learning more about creating rubrics, I wanted to dive deeper into how to incorporate new ideas and to be as transparent as possible, when creating content rubrics. In the article  “Developing a rubric for assessing pre-service, English teachers struggles with instructional planning,” Muhammad Ansyari discusses it’s effective teaching begins with planning and evaluation. “This paperreports on the development of such a rubric and formative assessment targeting pre-service teacher instructional planning challenges. The rubric created was grounded in and developed from Van den Akker’s ten curricular spider web components as it was developed in the context of an English teacher preparation programme” (Muhammad 2018). 

This image gives a really good representation of how teaching elements relate and connect to each other. Using these elements, create a common goal to reach a rationale for students to reach for the end product.  

Figure 2. Generic model of educational design research McKenney & Reeves, Citation 2012)

 A multi-step for a teacher to develop instructional materials. Noticing that the process can move back and forth and be revised if needed. These images helped clarify the process and sometimes it is trial and error.  

Through my experiences with creating Rubrics, I have a love-hate relationship with them. I find trouble being very specific and clear about what I’m expecting. If students don’t know what I’m looking, for, I will ultimately fail them. Understanding the importance of rubrics and performance-based assessments to grow deeper learning for students is critical to academic success.

Resources: 

Hess, Karin. (2023).  Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment. ASCD ASSN SUPERV CURR DEV, 2023.

Muhammad Fauzan Ansyari | Sammy King Fai HUI (Reviewing editor) (2018) Developing a rubric for assessing pre-service English teacher struggles with instructional planning, Cogent Education, 5:1, DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2018.1507175