Assessment has three components:
Instruments for each of these three parts of the program.
Experiencing
media
In experiencing, the media instruments like student logs
and journals, listserv contribution and responses to readings and discussions,
and surveys would be useful, among others.
Interpreting
media
For assessing the interpreting of media, different instruments are needed such
as: reports and reviews; analytical frameworks;
critical/deconstruction exercises; and projects and
investigations.
Making
media products
For assessing the media students make, teachers can use: portfolio
assessment (course work assessment) and/or scales and rubrics.
(Adobe Premiere is software/ medium to produce media. Their knowledge of basic
computer skills are requirement for the course. So that the students' ability
to use the Adobe Premiere software is not going to assessed.)
It is important that in media education assessment teachers make sure that they are not assessing something other than what they intend to assess. Assessment tools that put emphasis on students' ability to write (e.g. essays) may be assessing their writing rather than their media abilities. Instruments that require students to draw (e.g. storyboards, animation exercises) may be assessing artistic ability rather than media ability. Good assessment assesses what the course teaches, not something else.
If our way of assessing does not support the way we prefer to teach, then the assessment instrument should be questioned. For instance, it probably would not be appropriate to administer a group of multiple-choice questions to assess whether our students were able to respond to subtext in a media presentation. On the other hand, if we have taught a short unit on the names of the parts of a video camera, a quick, multiple-choice test might be OK to test this kind of low-level knowledge.