Christopher Lapish

Research Proposal

How can alternative modes of assessment be employed in the classroom to

facilitate learning and guide students to a better understanding and ultimately the

application of material? Are these methods more or less efficient than traditional testing

paradigms? Can the tactful nature of redirection upon failing to learn/misunderstanding a

concept be more effective at facilitating the students' ultimate grasp of the material than

traditional testing paradigms?

Reasoning and Hypothesis

Alternative modes of assessment that allow for an ongoing dialogue between the

teacher and student allow the teacher to constantly monitor the student for

misconceptions and gauge his or her level of understanding. This allows for a teacher to

allocate their time where it is needed more or less. This also affords the student a way to

recapitulate material with immediate feedback from teacher and piers to create a learning

environment that offers many resources rather than being heavily dependent on the

teacher and books alone. The ability for the student to receive immediate feedback as to

his or her progress diminishes the likelihood that misconceptions will be formed, in that

you are assessing the student as they are integrating the given information. In short I

think that students would tend to integrate concepts better if you assessed them as they

were learning them rather than after they have all ready learned something and need to be

"rewired". This would also open students up to questions more due to the fact the

assessment process is interactive. When students actively question it facilitates

discussion, which in turn facilitates interest.

Methods

1. Create a rubric for an alternative mode of assessment

2. Employ this rubric and compare its effectiveness versus established rubrics.

3. The lesson in which this rubric is employed must integrate a way for the student

and teacher to interact individually at key points. This could be through an

informal presentation or simply the teacher asking the student to explain the

concept to another student or group of students.

4. Compare and contrast standardized test scores to students using these types of

learning paradigms to those not. More importantly compare the students scoring

to his or her scoring patterns pre alternative modes.

Limitations and Caveats

It seems counterintuitive to use established methods to gauge the effectiveness of

an alternative assessment mode. This is the only way to truly control for how successful

these paradigms are especially as compared to the status quo. The open dialogue method

alluded to in this proposal may not work well for every teachers classroom "culture".

Administrators may want harder data, and these kinds of method can be unpalatable for

some. Studies such as this in order to be truly representative must be carrier out over

years and the students followed and assessed for years.