Effective assessment starts with clear understanding goals. Understanding goals are different from learning objectives. They are much more specific. Consider the learning objective: "Students will understand what density is." What does it really aim for? It could aim for any of the following understanding goals:
- Density can be inferred by knowing the relationship between mass and volume.
- Atomic Mass is one variable that contributes to density.
- If you know the mass of something, you can figure out its density by dividing the mass by the volume (D = M/V).
Knowing which understanding goal you are aiming for focuses instruction and clarifies what to assess.
Actionable or performance-based understanding goals lead very directly to what students will be able to do in order to demonstrate understanding. For instance, consider the following understanding goal:
- Students will be able to infer density by knowing the relationship between mass and volume.
The related assessment would ask students to demonstrate how changes in mass or volume impact changes in density. Know what you want students to understand, what they should be able to do to demonstrate that understanding, and what you should be assessing clearly follows.
