Practice+6

Factor 6: Encourage self-assessment and goal setting. McTighe and O'Connor state that students that review their own work against a list of explicit criteria improve the overall quality of their work. By offering a teacher model of self-assessment, students are able to follow what criteria the teacher finds important to assessment (or self-assessment). When related to Payne's general characteristics of modern assessment, I find that there are three characteristics that come into play. Student constructed response is how a student or product is observed and evaluated; observing a student in a self-assessment is a second layer of this assessment. Realistic focus, showing the student that they are involved in "Meaningful" learning corresponds to self-assessment as students are able to revise and refocus their work in order to meet the instructor's expectations. A third general characteristic is Payne,'s multiple approaches. With self assessment, the student may have "some Latitude" in how the assessment is documented. These three general characteristics are directly related to self-assessment as the authors McTighe and O'Connor have presented in the article.