In education, the term exhibition refers to projects, presentations, or products through which students exhibit what they have learned, usually as a way of demonstrating whether and to what degree they have achieved expected learning standards or learning objectives. An exhibition is typically both a learning experience in itself and a means of evaluating academic progress and achievement.
Defining exhibition is complicated by the fact that educators use many different terms when referring to the general concept, and the terms may or may not be used synonymously from place to place. For example, the terms capstone exhibition, culminating exhibition, learning exhibition, exhibition of learning, performance exhibition, senior exhibition, or student exhibition may be used, in addition to capstone, capstone experience, capstone project, demonstration of learning, performance demonstration, and many others. Educators may also create any number of homegrown terms for exhibitions far too many to catalog here.
In contrast to worksheets, quizzes, tests, and other more traditional approaches to assessment, an exhibition may take a wide variety of forms in schools:
- Oral presentations, speeches, or spoken-word poems
- Video documentaries, multimedia presentations, audio recordings, or podcasts
- Works of art, illustration, music, drama, dance, or performance
- Print or online publications, including websites or blogs
- Essays, poems, short stories, or plays
- Galleries of print or digital photography
- Scientific experiments, studies, and reports
- Physical products such as a models, sculptures, dioramas, musical instruments, or robots
- Portfolios of work samples and academic accomplishments that students collect over time
Generally speaking, there are two primary forms of exhibition:
A multifaceted assignment that serves as a culminating academic and intellectual experience for students, typically during their final year of high school or middle school, or at the
