Maryland Fine Arts Education Instructional Tool Kit

Westat produced the Maryland Fine Arts Education Instructional Tool Kit, an innovative online resource that optimizes alternative learning. It provides information on the relationship of assessment to instructional practice and content standards within an arts and education framework.

The web site includes actual student samples in video, audio, and visual formats. It also includes 200 HTML pages and 57 PDF documents. To assist users in using this web site, a Flash overview was developed using screen recordings of the site and a narrative description of the interface.

Audience

The Maryland Fine Arts Education Instructional Tool Kit is a valuable resource for teachers, administrators, educational practitioners, parents, and community members who want to learn about assessment, its relationship to instructional practice, and content standards. Presented within the framework of fine arts education, the Tool Kit is intended for use as an instructional tool and includes four major categories of information:

• Maryland Fine Arts Education, which presents a history of fine arts education in Maryland;
• Developing Fine Arts Assessments, where information on best practice in assessment development is provided;
• Integrating Fine Arts Across the Curriculum, which provides examples of tasks that integrate fine arts content areas with other content areas; and
• Assessment Outcomes and Implications, where information about the pragmatic use of assessment is presented.

Objective

Westat teamed with the Maryland State Department of Education to produce an innovative online resource to help optimize alternative learning in today’s hi-tech world. Its purpose is to promote an understanding of student assessment, and its relationship to content standards and instructional practice—all presented within the framework of fine arts education. The Tool Kit also provides access to the recently developed fine arts content standards, referred to as the Voluntary State Curriculum or the VSC. These standards are provided for each grade level, prekindergarten through grade 8.

Solution

Educators can enhance student learning by creating opportunities for students to make connections between and among the four fine arts content areas and other core curriculum areas. The Tool Kit provides cross-curricula examples of thematically linked item sets that can be used in classrooms as both instructional tools and measures of student learning. It also provides practical information about assessment activities and their outcomes. This includes implications for instructional activities and classroom assessment.

Awards

• 2006-2007 STC Technical Online Competitions: Merit in the category of Tutorials and Training