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In the summer of 2020, I was invited back to U.Penn GSE Project Based Learning Certificate Program to lead a workshop on assessing PBL. As a participant of the program the summer before, I presented a brief pitch about how developing a system of assessing PBL in the context of Haverford would be my "Big Bet" for the upcoming year. During the subsequent 19/20 academic year, I focused my energy in that direction and developed a Criterion-Based Grading system of assessment that worked for me and my students as evidence the range of learning tasks I was able to assign and by mid-year and end of the year surveys I collected from the students. So this past summer, I was asked to lead a workshop for interested current participants of the U.Penn PBL program on how to develop a system of grading (not necessarily Criterion-Based) that would recognize the pillars of the PBL program, Authenticity, Collaboration, Iteration, and Disciplinary Practices while being flexible enough to fit within the participants' school contexts. My target audience weren't those teachers already teaching at schools whose assessment philosophies reflected project based learning. My intention was never to challenge those schools on the work they were already doing. Rather, my audience were teachers who taught in relatively traditional assessment contexts, but who wanted to integrate the principles of PBL into their classrooms. I learned so much from the U.Penn PBL program, but we didn't get much guidance in the way of assessment and grading, so that was an area that I felt I could step forward into and utilize some of my own experiences from past teaching contexts. I hope by attending my workshop, the participants in U.Penn PBL this year were able to achieve some direction and structure as to how they will integrate PBL pedagogy into their classrooms with a focus on how they will assess and provide feedback on the rich and authentic tasks they are creating.
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