Assessments play an important role in providing meaningful feedback to students, teachers, administrators, and PLTW. Through assessments, students identify what they are doing well and what they need help with, and teachers are able to provide individualized direction and guidance to each student.
Student-centered Balanced Assessment
PLTW supports a balanced approach to assessment for all programs, integrating both formative and summative assessments. Through a balanced approach, assessment is an ongoing activity. Students demonstrate their knowledge throughout the course by completing activities, projects, and problems using a variety of assessment tools, such as performance rubrics and reflective questioning, to deepen and expand their knowledge and skills.
Decision Making Using Valid and Reliable Scores
PLTW’s assessment experts apply industry best practices and methods to design, test, and implement End of Course (EoC) assessments for our network of schools. We report valid and reliable scores on overall student performance within the course. The End of Course assessment gives students an objective evaluation of their achievement, and stakeholders obtain data to make informed decisions.
End of Course assessments are available for all PLTW Engineering courses except the capstone course, Engineering Design and Development (EDD).
The EDD capstone course uses a portfolio assessment hosted through the Innovation Portal. Students can document and demonstrate their learning in an online portfolio and have their work evaluated using the research-based Engineering Design Project Portfolio Scoring Rubric (EDPPSR).
Many colleges, universities, and other organizations use students’ EoC scores for student recognition opportunities.