The BuckLER Center offers language assessment design
As a comprehensive language resource center, we work with our partners to provide professional development for the design and implementation of classroom-based language assessments, as well as proficiency assessment development. Below are some sample descriptions to illustrate some of the work that we do. Please contact us at buckler@osu.edu to learn more!
Principles of Language Assessment
This series explores relationships of assessment to instruction, data driven instruction, consequences of assessments, test score interpretation, state and federal assessment policies, and those assessments unique for emergent bilinguals and other language learners. Participants learn how to develop assessment instruments aligned with local learning goal (i.e., standards, other desired outcomes), as well as develop a conceptual understanding of basic assessment concepts and how best to apply these concepts in their work with their language learners. In our work, we position the world/foreign/bilingual/ESL teacher as developer of locally based tests and assessment tools for their own classroom.
Designing Language Performance Assessments
In this workshop series, participants will learn the tenets of performance assessment design for the language classroom. Framed within a backward design approach, we will examine the process of task design, rubric creation, feedback on performance, and linking performance to the development of language abilities over time.
Language Assessment with Can-Do Statements
As assessment frameworks, the Can-Do Statements (ACTFL, 2015; CEFR, 2020; WIDA, 2012) have helped teachers to shift instruction and assessment toward functional ability in language use. Informed by the recent work on contextualized, task-based performance assessment and instruction of languages, this workshop series introduces participants to a genre theory and pedagogy that views spoken and written texts—all instances of communication—as genres that can be made visible and systematically taught to students. Participants will learn how to integrate genre into a backward design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) approach for the assessment and instruction of language and content that is centered on the development of the learner’s ability to communicate in written and spoken genres.