Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA): Implementation, task types, and feedback

Abstract

This longitudinal, multi-semester study investigates the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) in university-level communicative Spanish classrooms to find out how instructor feedback affects student performance on IPA assessments, if at all, and in what ways do teachers and students use feedback from the IPAs in their teaching and learning, if at all, to navigate the relationship of assessment and feedback within the IPA framework. A mixed-methods analysis of the effect of instructor (n = 7) feedback on student (n = 103) progress in the performance of oral and written communication revealed that corrective feedback benefitted learners on interpretive and presentational tasks, but hindered their progress on interpersonal tasks. The findings suggest that instructors should provide feedback in a modality that corresponds with the task type.