Assessment Technology Review

Much like Ball State’s R-Grade, Taskstream provides us with an online portfolio through which professors can assess student work, and students can create an online portfolio. Stiggins (2004) writes in his article “New Assessment Beliefs for a New School Mission,” “if teachers assess accurately and use the results effectively, then students prosper” (p. 26). As a professor, then, I must model using assessment to influence my instruction. Our department cannot simply base a pre-service teacher’s success on his/her Praxis I or Praxis II scores. While those standardized tests provide important information, they do not provide a full and true picture of the student’s teaching ability. Taskstream will allow our students to submit pieces to their professors who can then comment on the pieces and return the feedback via the web. Students can then correct mistakes, and once the piece is turned in for a final grade, the professor can use the web-based rubric s/he created for that particular assignment. Once graded, the scores from the rubric are stored in Taskstream.

Eventually, the department can examine its data regarding pre-service teacher’s knowledge; they can simply use Taskstream to aggregate the data. For example, one of the INTASC principles used in a lesson which requires pre-service teachers to create a content area WebQuest is principle 4 which indicates “the teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.” The department can access the data compiled through the program to see how many students had met that particular standard and with which assignments.

Another important resource regarding assessment is Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment (2001) in which the editors write “that some of today’s most pressing issues, such as whether current assessments for accountability encourage effective teaching and learning, ultimately rest on an analysis of the fundamental beliefs about how people learn and how to measure such learning that underlie current practices” (p. 21). This indicates that assessment cannot simply occur once or twice a year. Instead, it occurs frequently, but it is also connected to specific outcomes established before the assessment. Taskstream allows this to occur. Students have access to the rubric prior to the assignment, and have the opportunity to receive feedback.

The downside to Taskstream is the cost to students. Each year students must pay a $40 service fee, and if they want to have access to their documents after they graduate, they will have to maintain that fee. Online portfolios that do not have the rubric component don’t have the maintenance fee that Taskstream does. Instead, students simply maintain their documents through their own web presence. The rubric choices are somewhat limited; however, professors can edit and manipulate the rubric to reflect the elements of the assignment.

What I like the most about Taskstream is the ability to create lessons and units and link them with national standards such as INTASC and NETS or tailor them to the department standards which can be put into the choice menu. The other element that I particularly like about Taskstream is the quick aggregation of data. Instead of entering information by hand on spread sheets, or do a lot of the number crunching by hand, Taskstream allows the department to simply look up how students are doing on individual standards. This information will be extremely valuable as we continually review the effectiveness of our program.

Both R-Grade and Taskstream offer users an important data collection service. Both have a rubric wizard that can be linked to standards. Unfortunately, Taskstream has an annual user fee that may detract some institutions from implementing the resource. At Manchester College, though, we have partnered with another small college in order to cut down on training expenses. In the end, R-Grade and Taskstream are both excellent ways of tracking student performance on specific objectives/standards, and will make data collection, analysis, and reporting so much easier on institutions.

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