Internal assessment tasks: guidance for centres. Internal assessment tasks: guidance for centres

Transcription

1 Internal assessment tasks:

2 Contents Introduction Page 3 Setting the scenario Page 4 Writing the tasks Page 5 Synoptic assessment tasks Page 8 Opportunities for stretch and challenge Page 9 Use of command words Page 10 Quantity Page 11 Demonstrating fitness for purpose Page 12 2

3 Introduction Technical Awards are designed to give students the opportunity to learn practical skills which are valued by employers. There are 4 essential elements in the production of successful internal assessment tasks to meet the requirements. These are: a valid and engaging context or scenario meaningful assessment tasks with clear, assessable outcomes sufficient opportunities for stretch and challenge for higher attainers appropriate coverage of the content and assessment criteria. The following guidance will help you to create valid and reliable internal assessment tasks. 3

4 Setting the scenario The key requirement in setting the scenario is that it needs to be valid. It must present a task or context which is realistic for the industry or sector. The scenario should also: allow for the generation of a range of assessment tasks with a minimum of additional information be accessible to year olds be free from obvious bias (gender, race, ethnicity etc) allow for the scene to be set in around 150 words. A You have been asked to produce a professional portfolio that will be on display during an open day the school intends to hold. Your school will invite influential guests from a range of engineering companies, from the local community and from the media. The aim of the day is to develop links with the engineering sector, developing future work experience placements and raising awareness of engineering in the local community. You are expected to produce a portfolio that is professional and interesting and that you can explain at the open day. B Having an understanding about diet and motivation can help you and others lead a more healthy life. This knowledge can also help tackle health issues within society. As a result of this, your teacher has asked you to put together a range of resources about diet, nutrition and motivation. In these examples, A is more successful than B because: It gives a context and purpose to the tasks which have been linked to the needs of an industry: produce a professional portfolio to develop links with the engineering sector and raise awareness in the local community. Scenario B gives only a very general reason for doing the task and the teacher request is much weaker than the professional portfolio as a motivator. 4

5 It gives a context in which the tasks are to be carried out - the need to produce a professional portfolio to raise awareness - which allows students to interpret the work they are doing and demonstrate application skills. Scenario B is undeveloped, making it more difficult for students to demonstrate interpretation and application. It sets a broad scenario from which a number of different assessment tasks can be generated and which provides a central, unifying theme. Scenario B is more specific in its requirements put together resources about diet, nutrition and motivation and by linking the scenario and task so closely is less successful as a central theme and making it more likely that further activities will be disparate and relying on additional information. Writing the tasks The key requirement for writing tasks is that they must be meaningful and have clear, assessable outcomes. The tasks should also: be valid and relevant be practicable for school-based learners be open-ended and not stepped unless the assessment criteria require it, avoid mandating the way in which the task is to be carried out not confuse teaching and learning tasks with assessment be stated separately from any scene-setting information. C D Describe the overall use and purpose of a recipe, describing the main stages, the function of the ingredient and the cooking skills needed to make this dish. Get into teams of at least 3 and not more than 6. Decide on a name for your team. Decide as a team what market research you will carry out. Carry out your own market research. 5

6 In these examples, C is more successful than D because it s clear what is going to be assessed. There are 4 activities, each of which has assessable outcomes. it s not at all clear what will be assessed from task D. Whilst it s probably safe to assume that naming the team is not part of the assessment, deciding the focus of the market research could be, depending on the assessment criteria. The difficulty with task D is that it s not clear what s going to contribute to the assessment. An assessment task shouldn t include an activity which isn t going to be assessed. task D is confusing teaching and learning with assessment: getting into teams isn t an assessment task. task D is also unnecessarily mandating the way in which the task is to be carried out - in teams. It s better to leave the methods of selecting appropriate market research open in order to allow candidates to apply their knowledge and understanding. E Select an idea for a business enterprise, stating why you have chosen it. Identify aims and objectives for the chosen business enterprise. Decide what market research you will carry out for the project. Carry out your market research. Record your findings. Assess your findings against the aims and objectives. Task E has too many discrete steps which doesn t allow for stretch and challenge, making it more difficult for candidates to show the sort of synthesis required for the higher grades. F Produce a newsletter which outlines how a business uses different sources of finance and documents to support its financial activities. G Interview 3 local entrepreneurs to find out what they do and what skills and characteristics they have. Both of these examples struggle to meet the criteria for validity and practicability. Task F is not a valid task because no business organisation would use a newsletter for the purpose of describing how it uses documents to support its financial activities. There is no need to specify the production of a newsletter because that is not an assessment criterion. 6

7 Task G is a valid task, but not very practical for year olds. Apart from the organisational demands of setting up so many interviews, it s unlikely that the entrepreneurs would welcome the demands on their time. Task G also runs the risk of bias: there are likely to be local and regional differences in the availability of entrepreneurs. 7

8 Synoptic assessment tasks Technical Awards must include tasks which provide candidates with the opportunity to identify and use effectively (in an integrated way) an appropriate selection of skills, techniques, concepts, theories and knowledge from across the whole vocational area. Such tasks: require the demonstration of a relevant practical skill focus on the end-to-end planning and production of an artefact, product or process signal clearly the relationship with skills and knowledge from other units. H Participate in a business enterprise project. I Develop a personal health and fitness programme. Both of these examples meet the key criteria of breadth and relevance and it s easy to see how candidates would have to use skills and knowledge gained previously to complete the tasks. 8

9 Opportunities for stretch and challenge At the qualification level, Technical Awards must have at least 4 grades, not yet achieved, pass, merit and distinction. The key requirement is to ensure that the tasks allow the learner to generate sufficient evidence to justify the award of the higher grades. The assessment tasks must support: accurate discrimination in attainment across all grades the opportunity for high performing students to demonstrate sufficient evidence of distinction quality to be awarded that grade. J Describe the advantages and disadvantages that engineering products have on society. K Describe 2 fixed and 2 variable costs of a business. In these examples, both use the same command word describe but example J is more successful than example K because: there isn t much opportunity for description in task K. Various fixed and variable costs can be identified or stated and perhaps an explanation given as to the difference between them, but it s difficult to think of 4 different levels (not yet achieved, pass, merit, distinction) to grade a description task task J offers much more opportunity for the demonstration of a wide range of higher level skills, from interpretation and application through to evaluation. task K is asking about facts and has a limited range of acceptable (accurate) responses. The focus in task J is not on fact but on opinion or inference and will produce a wider range of acceptable responses with clear differentiation. 9

10 L Compare 3 different sources of business funding and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each source. M Evaluate the 2 courses of your meal by explaining the strengths and weaknesses of the following: the menu; planning and preparation; the final meal. Both of tasks L and M use command words that are more usually associated with the demonstration of higher level skills. In each case there is a clear signal that some sort of manipulation of ideas is needed. At the same time, the tasks are open to the less complex responses required for the lower levels. Use of command words Whilst all tasks should allow access to all grades through the grade criteria, some command words are more closely associated with tasks likely to provide the opportunity for stretch and challenge. Pass Merit Distinction Demonstrate Carry out Assess Describe Create Compare Identify Explain Contrast Participate Produce Evaluate Present Research Justify Select 10

11 Quantity Unless it s a test of recall, a task does not become more difficult, or stretch the candidate, by increasing the number of occasions on which it has to be carried out. N O Choose at least 3 different entrepreneurs to find out about. Describe the contracts of 3 different employees. In both of these tasks, students are essentially being asked to do the same task, and demonstrate the same skills, 3 times. In task N, the assessable outcome is the research. Since the only condition is that there should be 3 different people, there is no assessment gain from performing the same task more than once. There is a similar problem with task O because there is no assessment gain in describing, as opposed to evaluating or comparing and contrasting 3 contracts. 11

12 Demonstrating fitness for purpose All assessments must be fit for purpose, appropriate for the method of assessment chosen and consistent with the specification. Key requirement The key requirement is to produce an assessment grid. Writers must also ensure that: there is an appropriate balance between assessment criteria and tasks that the assessment criteria are weighted in accordance with the specification if the criteria are equally weighted, the amount of assessable evidence produced for each assessment criteria is roughly similar. It s also good practice to draft outline responses for each grade to check that candidates are likely to produce outcomes in line with the grade descriptors and that the tasks will discriminate effectively. 12

13 Table 1 Assessment Tasks criteria Task 1 Task 2 Task Table 2 Assessment Tasks criteria Task 1 Task 2 Task Tables 1 and 2 show the relationships between assessment criteria and tasks for 2 different units in 2 different specifications. 13

14 Table 1 shows that the assessment tasks for that unit need to be revised: Assessment criteria 2.3 is not addressed by any of the tasks Task 1 is addressing too many assessment criteria; task 3 is addressing too few Because of the number of criteria being addressed by task 1, it s likely that there will be insufficient assessable evidence and/or the criteria will not be equally weighted. 14