Assessment
In PBL, you should determine your assessment plan during the design stages of the project. When you design the project you will ask yourself, "What should each student be able to do, know, and understand by completing this project?" and the assessment tool should then test how well the student has met these objectives. The key to assessment in PBL is that you will use authentic assessment where the manner in which the student is assessed is similar to how the student learned. For example, the objective of WWM is for students to develop, engineer, and market an electrical device for the public. In order to assess how well the students have been able to accomplish this, they give a presentation (or a pitch) to a panel of venture capitalists and the public at the end of the project. They are assessed with a presentation rubric specific to the project and they receive feedback from the panel and public. Another key to assessment in PBL is to constantly stay in touch with student progress. Formative, on-going assessment is critical. You will find yourself using a variety of assessment tools on a regular basis. In this project, examples of ongoing assessment are prototype reviews, mini-presentations, interim portfolio checks and evaluations of individual components as they are completed. See Appendix II.4 for a sample set of rubrics.