What is Exhibitions

The need for effective assessments has been recognized since the earliest days of public education. Student testing provides rationales and support for many activities, including instructional feedback, system monitoring, appropriate selection and placement of students, and certification of skills (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1992). With the growing recognition that learning is an individual accomplishment and that learning takes place in context, traditional testing methods need to be supplemented to accurately assess achievement (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Eisner, 1999). Authentic assessments are designed to accurately reflect the real world situations in which the skills and knowledge that students developed would be applied. Although there are a variety of authentic assessment methods, each method encourages linkages between the classroom experience and real world applications. This does not mean that traditional forms of testing are obsolete, rather that these methods should be supplemented by information gathered from more situational methods.