If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Anonymous
That’s worth keeping in mind, but let’s back up a little bit and not judge the goldfish (who happens to be named Duffin).
Duffin has absolutely no desire to climb trees, but he IS interested in receiving our assessment-based feedback on a performance HE selects.
One of the first questions we should ask is, “What performance do you want us to assess?”
Duffin says, “I want to work on blowing bubbles, so give me feedback about that.”
That’s important information but what, specifically, will we focus on as we watch him perform bubble blowing? Just knowing the performance in general terms isn’t enough. We need to know more; we need enough detail so we can determine criteria that will best isolate the areas of quality he wants to improve. Does he want to improve how many bubbles he can blow (one possible criterion) or does he want to increase the size of the bubbles he blows (another possible criterion)?
“I want to blow lots of bubbles because it annoys the cat,” says Duffin.
OK, we can work with that! A good measure for that criterion is bubbles per minute. We get our stopwatch ready and can measure how many bubbles he blows in a minute. That data will then inform the feedback we give.
Having criteria determined and agreed upon prior to starting the assessment process allows both the performer and assessor to focus on quality in this area—the performer by producing it and the assessor by observing, measuring, and basing feedback on it.
Go, Duffin!
