Performance Testing
A performance test at the end of each clinic would be benificial to determine each students true abilities.
In my area of instruction, we have skills tests all the time. In the skills test, the student is required to score on 80 in order to pass the skill. If the student should fail, they are required to retest. The student receives a review of the area they had failed and the opportunity to practice. The student is then retested...but this time starting with a 90 instead of a 100. Therefore the student must "know" the information because they have less room for failure. All skills tests are mandatory in order to complete the course and must be a score of 80 in order to be able to go out on externship.
Is the fact that the student did not pass the performance test due to the student unable to take any kind of test or is it that they just do not know how to do the test task? I do understand what you are asking but we have to look at the ability of the student in normal labs as well as during the performance test. Is the studnet lost or nervous, during the test. If lost, then the student road the shirt tail of another student during regular labs and really did not learn anything as the lab partner did all the work. So I would have to say the studnet should not move on and should take the cousre over, doing all the work without a lab partner.
a performance test is needed to asses the students knowledge obtained from the course
you must always remember not every body is a test taker. test should be used with there hands on (lab sheet) to make an accuarte assesment of there abilities.
i agree, each student should have time to practice the subject task and then have testing at the end of the course before passing
Performance based testing in my opinion is a great way for an isnstructor to evaluate students. Not all students are good at taking written tests. By using performance base tests an instructor can get a true idea of a students ability in a particular area.
Giving the students a hands on test shows the instructor the students weakness in the course. At this time, the instructor can go over what the student wasn,t clear about in the lab.
My question is. Should we allow a student to move on if they don't pass a performance test.
This is true because a student can be book smart and not have the ability to do the actual task at hand.
I would have to ask what you mean by a clinic. In the music world when an instructor or guest lecturer does a "clinic" there may be over 100 students in the audience. The only test will be the future of their careers to see if they have applied the information they received.
I believe this to be true. In the technical field execution of critical tasks is a very key element to evaluating a students abilities to transfer learned information into meaningful results.
