Instruction & Assessment

As a student, the term “assessment” has always been more or less a scary word. The stigma or anxiety behind assessing or assessments was never explained well enough until I began taking education courses in college. Now, I look at assessments as a tool for seeing progress in learning based on my own instruction. The most beneficial forms of assessment in my opinion, especially in art, are formative. These could range from small assignments for points, to just a verbal check-in to see how much more time students need to work on an assignment. Without assessment, students may not be motivated to complete the step by step processes in order to complete the overall assignment using everything they have learned throughout a span of time. Compared to other subjects, I think these small, formative assessments are more meaningful in art than the summative assessments (final projects) because the formative assessments act as a process portfolio to show a student's overall growth.