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Assessment:
Much scholarship has focused on the
importance of
student assessment in teaching and learning in higher
education. Student assessment is a critical aspect of
the teaching and learning process. Whether teaching
at the undergraduate or graduate level, it is important
for instructors to strategically evaluate the
effectiveness of their teaching by measuring the
extent to which students in the classroom are
learning the course material.
Forms and Purposes
Formative assessments include:
- Portfolios
- Group projects
- Progress reports
- Class discussions
- Entry and exit tickets
- Short, regular quizzes
- Virtual classroom tools like Socrative or Kahoot.
- Recording a podcast
- Writing a script for a short play
- Producing an independent study project
No matter what type of summative assessment you give
your students, keep some best practices in mind:
Keep it real-world relevant where you can
Six types of assessments are:
- Diagnostic assessments
- Formative assessments
- Summative assessments
- Ipsative assessments
- Norm-referenced assessments
- Criterion-referenced assessments
Methods OF Assessment
Self-Assessment
The goal of implementing self-assessment in a
course is to enable students to develop their own
judgement. In self-assessment students are
expected to assess both process and product
of their learning.
While the assessment of the product is often
the task of the instructor, implementing student
assessment in the classroom encourages
students to evaluate their own work as well
as the process that led them to the
final outcome.
Things to Keep in Mind about Self-Assessment
Self-assessment is different from self-grading.
According to Brown
and Knight, “Self-assessment
involves the use of evaluative processes in
which
judgement is involved, where self-grading is the
marking of one’s own work against a set of criteria
and potential outcomes provided by a
third person,
usually the instructor.
Peer Assessment
Essays
According to Euan S. Henderson, essays make two
important contributions to learning and assessment:
the development of skills and the cultivation of a
learning style.
Essays are a common form of
writing assignment in courses and can be either a
summative or formative form of assessment
depending on how the instructor utilizes them in
the classroom.
Exams
Examinations have traditionally been viewed as
a gold standard of assessment in education,
particularly in university settings. Like essays they
can be summative or formative forms of assessment.
Exams can make significant demands on students’
factual knowledge and can have the side-effect of
encouraging cramming and surface learning.
On the other hand, they can also facilitate student
demonstration of deep learning if essay questions or
topics are appropriately selected. Different formats
include in-class tests, open-book, take-home exams
and the like.
Assessment is More than Grading
Instructors often conflate assessment with grading.
This is a mistake. It must be understood that student
assessment is more than just grading. Remember that
assessment links student performance to specific
learning objectives in order to provide useful
information to instructors and students about
student achievement.
Traditional grading on the other hand, according to
Stassen et al. does not provide the level of detailed
and specific information essential to link student
performance with improvement.
“Because grades don’t tell you about student
performance on individual (or specific) learning
goals or outcomes, they provide little information
on the overall success of your course in helping
students to attain the specific and distinct learning
objectives of interest.”
Instructors, therefore, must always remember that
grading is an aspect of student assessment but does
not constitute its totality.
Types of Evaluation: