Open-Ended, Selected-Response, or Performance?

Educators use various forms of assessment to measure students' performance. Assessments help teachers to understand performance and mastery levels. Some assessment types minimize students' demonstration of content mastery, while others help students show teachers how well they grasp content through application. Students participate in open-ended, selected-responses or performance assessments. While all assessment types have benefits and drawbacks, some are more beneficial in helping students to demonstrate content mastery. When given open-response questions or performance-based assessments, students in the K–12 school system sometimes refuse to finish the task since they are used to multiple-choice assessment questions on standardized tests.

Students get four options in multiple choice questions, which reduces the likelihood that they will select the correct response by 25% and prevents them from using the work as an opportunity to express themselves. Students can express themselves while sharing their grasp of the material through performance and open-response questions. Although open-ended questions and performance assessments provide students the chance to express themselves, as a teacher, I prefer performance evaluation over all other assessment formats. Students can be authentic thanks to performance assessments. Through projects, lab investigations, and portfolios, performance assessments demonstrate how to engage learners, offer to learn meaning and purpose, and underline the need for practice (Stiggins, 2018).

Reference

Stiggins, R. (2018). Better assessments require better assessment literacy. Educational Leadership, 75(5), 18-19.