Orchestra Outreach

Assessment

Harvard Project Zero Research

At Harvard Project Zero  (HPZ), much of their current research is about ways to see, demonstrate, and evaluate the kinds of learning not represented by IQ, linguistic, or mathematical measures.  The discussion of possible options includes different variations on the theme of a portfolio.  Students can assemble samples of their work in some kind of collection for exhibition or evaluation based around a subject area or theme.  For musicians, that could include a collection of recordings, journal entries reflecting the kinds of learning they are pursuing, reports on research about a composer or piece of music, compositions, or written work in music theory.  Modes of display include both traditional book-like and electronic multi-media forms.  It is possible using the Power Point program to design presentations that include digitized video and audio media, slides of work on paper (scanned, photographed, or typed), and slides of written student reflections about their work.  Such electronic exhibitions can also be displayed to a wide audience on the Internet.

One of the recent areas of research at HPZ was Project Co-Arts .  Principal Investigator and Professor Jessica Davis and colleagues developed an assessment plan for community arts centers that might be helpful for organizations to use in both planning and evaluation stages of project implementation.  Their model calls for a portfolio of documents, pictures, and other objects that represent the organization or project, its mission, and its effectiveness.  Some organizations have used the format exactly, and many others use the principals to establish their own variations.  Such a collection could be used internally to measure an institution’s effectiveness or externally to support efforts to solicit funding.

HPZ’s current director, Steve Seidel, is deeply involved with the issues of assessing individual student work and the ways that group work allows a different kind of learning.  He is looking at the ways that students demonstrate their learning, but also the ways in which student work reflects the environment in which it was created.  Through that assumption, close examination of student work becomes a reflective practice for educators.  Combining the work of many schools with the co-investigators Seidel and Howard Gardner, Project Zero has published the volume, Making Teaching Visible: Documenting Individual and Group Learning as Professional Development.  Perhaps this form of documentation could be a way to capture more of the richness of the arts learning experience.