Development of project-based historical knowledge assessment instruments

Abstract

The history teacher is quite often using a project-based learning model to improve students’ historical knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, this learning model is not supported by the availability of qualified assessment instruments. The limitations of project assessment instruments make teachers rely more on subjectivity in assessing student projects. Meanwhile, to assess historical knowledge, most teachers still use multiple choice and essay questions. Both types of assessments provide little information about students’ abilities and are not sufficient as a basis for teachers to make decisions in the classroom. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an assessment instrument that can be used in assessing students’ knowledge based on the project that they produce in project-based learning. This study aims to develop a project-based historical knowledge assessment instrument that has good evidence of validity and reliability that can be used to measure students’ historical knowledge more precisely and more accurately. Historical knowledge is assessed based on six indicators: what, who, where, when, why, and how. The six indicators are described in a 12 item Likert scale. Based on these 12 items, students’ historical knowledge was classified into four categories: very high, high, acceptable, and weak. The instrument was tested on 426 10th grade high school students in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The test results data were used to analyze the characteristics of the instrument consisting of validity and reliability. The test results show that the instrument developed is valid and reliable, so it is suitable to be used to assess historical knowledge on a broader scale.