A New Look at Products
by Audrey Conant, MEMA Information Skills Chair
Picture the traditional product: a student's written report based on library books and structured by, written for, and graded by a teacher for content and language arts components. It was divorced from process, unrelated to student interest or experience.

Picture the evolution: an explosion of formats - dioramas, puppet shows, posters, videos and cassette tapes. 'A student' became at times 'some students.' Parents got to see group projects on parents' night. Students were more interested and used a wider variety of skills.

What was optimistic about this picture? Students adapting information to another format, higher level thinking skills, different audiences, motivation, use of several learning styles, and some collaboration.

What was missing in this picture? Enough to make alternative products seem peripheral and not be taken seriously:

* Importance and status: relegated to 'extra-credit' image. Their supervision and structure was minimal, used as keep-busy until peers finished required work. Students AND educators perceived these as add-ons, not substitutes for essential assignments. Written reports and paper-and-pencil tests still THE measurements. * Aid for matching content to appropriate formats or skill in creating alternative formats given tangential attention

* Hand-made timelines and graphs turned out to be time-consuming, and creditable appearance was difficult to achieve. This often resulted in poory constructed or no-show products.

* Assessment: how were videos and posters to be graded? Contents and language arts were no longer routine or sufficient as grade regulators. No models, standard, tools across the board for guidance. Perhaps a plus was added to a grade, or 'this project matches or exceeds the general ability of the student,' or even 'student finished activity'.

Picture the recent transformation of products as influenced by educational reform and the rapid expansion of technology. The evolutuon expanded into a revolution, and moved alternative products from the bench to the playing field. Many factors have contributed. Perhaps the most important change has been that learners' products have become part of the larger process of an area or skill. They comprise the 'communication' part of a process, reflecting what students can accomplish or apply. This required another change, that of evaluating not ony a product but how the student got there. Innovative assessment tools have proven capable of measuring educational outcomes as well or better than traditional testing, not only because they are process-oriented and descriptive, but because they have made it possible to adequately evaluate non-traditional products.

Student collaboration has also gained in importance, allowing more complex and extensive projects to be entertained. Classes, grades, even schools study common themes for a time - up to a year - sharing the results (such as local geology). Collaborators may even be a global group of individuals or classes. Technology has expanded product formats and audience options exponentially. It has also facilitated the efficiency and effectiveness of product components - graphics of all kinds as well as multimedia and other non-linear means of communication. Desktop publishing has also enhanced text reports, including easing the insertion of explanatory or amplifying visuals. Finally, technology has made it possible (through its capacity to store, organize and manipulate vast amouts of data simply and quickly) for final products to be quite sophisticated This same feature coincides with an increased emphasis on 'making information' - students collecting raw data to analyze and interpret. Inputting this data into spreadsheets aand databases invites testing of hypotheses using numerous variables. Students' interviews, surveys, experiments, statistics can become information resources in their own right. The uniqueness of their information, combined with sophisticated examination, can result in products of value beyond the school.

QUALITY PERFORMANCE PRODUCT CHECKLIST

Much of this last picture is still a vision. Librarians have the opportunity and challenge to expedite this into reality. Their expertise in planning, skills development, and production of a multiplicity of formats is of value to teachers and students alike. The more expertise they have in alternative assessment the more they can help teachers and students design and apply rubrics that will sustain the validity of those products and upgrade the quality of individual student efforts. Look for examples of the concepts described in this section throughout the publication.

August 1997
Maine Educational Media Associaton

Previous Section . . . . SPRINGBOARD's Table of Contents. . . . Next Section