Introduction

Current assessment functions, procedures and techniques are changing to correspond to the new approach to teaching and learning. Assessment must be closely affiliated with the purposes of teaching. In order to accomplish these shared goals; we need to design assessment plans that give us information about student progress towards the development of the desired competencies and attributes. This requires a shift from a single focus on paper and pencil tests at the end of the learning process to a more multi-dimensional approach that will:

During this transition, you will need newer and more relevant assessment techniques, and you’ll need to utilize current techniques in more creative ways.

The teaching techniques and assessment procedure reforms are like a tortoise and hare competition. Teaching improvement has sprinted ahead while assessment has dawdled. We are ready now to close the disparity between what we attempt to teach and what we try to assess.

Assessment is the servant, not the master of the curriculum. The bond between teaching/learning and assessment is inseparable.

Measurement:

The process of collecting or gathering objective information or data through tests, checklists and worksheets, is referred to as measurement. It is descriptive in that it merely describes, very often in the form of a score, grade, or other numerical reading, how well the students have performed or how much students have learned (Cruickshank, Bainer and Metcalf: 1995).

Evaluation:

The process of making a judgement about the "goodness" of a student’s score, by comparing the score obtained through measurement to some standard or to other students’ scores, is referred to as an evaluation (Cruickshank, Bainer and Metcalf: 1995).

Assessment:

Assessment is a broader concept. It involves the professional judgement of the lecturer, based on a variety of data sources such as measurement, your feelings and observations, student performances, and other information you gather from the learning environment.

Assessment documents the course of learning and teaching, i.e. how you get to some end point.

Hence, assessment may be described as

Formative assessment

Its purpose is to improve the quality of student learning, not to provide evidence for evaluating or grading students.

The aims are to provide information on what, how much, and how well students are learning, in order to help them be better prepared to succeed.

In broad terms reviewing and giving feedback involve formative assessment.

Effective lecturers use a variety of means, some formal and others informal, to determine how much and how well their students are learning. For example, to evaluate student learning formally, most lecturers use techniques such as quizzes, tests, or examinations; many also use assignments such as term papers, lab reports, and homework.

Most also have a repertoire of informal techniques. Lecturers pose questions, listen carefully to students’ questions and comments, and monitor body language and facial expressions. These are referred to as "formative" assessment techniques.

Lecturers need to modify and adapt the "feedback devices" to fit the specific demands of their courses and the characteristics of their students.

Summative assessment is the term used to describe assessment conducted after instruction is completed. This type of assessment is used to make final judgements about a student’s learning. Its primary purpose is not to adapt instruction or to remedy learning deficiencies. Rather, it attempts to summarize a students’ achievement or progress, generally in the form of a grade or score. Summative assessment generally involves information gathered from unit examinations, final examinations, or other projects due at the end of the term. It is also known as product assessment.

Authentic Assessment

The term authentic is used to describe a desirable characteristic of a test.

Alternative Assessment

Alternative assessment techniques are varied forms of the traditional techniques used for the assessment of student learning.

The term alternative assessment emphasizes the distinction between this form of assessment and conventional assessment.

Alternative assessment involves both continuous (formative) assessment as well as culminating (summative) assessment. Alternative-assessment practices are developmental and thus characterize the complementary nature of learning and assessment.

Alternative assessment involves imagery stimuli such as metaphors and analogies;

Concept mapping;

Chemical systems;

Discrepant events;

The prediction, observation, and explanation strategy (POE);

Textual reading;

Hypermedia;

Projects;

Performance-based assessment; and

Portfolios.

Performance Assessment

Performance-based assessment involves completing a task or constructing a response that demonstrates a student’s knowledge of a skill, process, or concept.

These tasks are usually hands-on activities, but can also take the form of

open-ended questions,

exhibits,

group projects,

interviews,

oral presentations,

demonstrations,

computer simulations, or

portfolio presentations.

Example:

To illustrate the differences among conventional, performance, and authentic assessment, consider the following example. A teacher is trying to determine whether fourth grade learners know how to use money and make change. A conventional approach to assessment might present the students with a worksheet, which includes problems similar to the following example.

Mark the right answers.

If a "funny-face" cost 15c and you give the lady at the tuck shop R1, how much change should you get back?

To turn this task into a performance test, the teacher could use play money and have students come to his or her desk and purchase objects for which they would receive change. The students would be required to decide if they had received the correct amount of change.

This task would become authentic of the students were given money, taken to a store where they actually purchased a sweet, counted the change they received, and determined if it was correct.

Continuous Assessment

Continuous assessment or formative assessment allows a lecturer to monitor and assess students’ progress in "multiple dimensions of reasoning" (Gardner, 1991) for the purpose of making curriculum and pedagogical decisions.

Culminating Assessment

Culminating or summative assessment take places at the end of a unit of study and assesses students’ ideas about the topic of study.

To summarize we can say that assessment should fulfil four main aims. It should:

Tip

Assessment Tools and/or Recording instruments

Anecdotal Records and Reports

Checklists

Rating Scales

Assessment Grids

COMMENTS:

Signature of Assessor(s):

Activity Component 5 4 3 2 1

Example of a Rating Scale for Cooperative Group Learning

Student Name:

Methods of Organization/Grouping of Pupils and Assessors

Whether you will be assessing students during their ongoing activities or in a quiz or test situation, there are broader organizational decisions to be made. You should determine the match between the most appropriate organizational method and the type of student information to be gathered.

Organizational methods are listed below.

Individual Assessments: Description

Individual assessment is a technique for assessing students who are working individually rather than students collaborating in a group situation.

The focus is on individual student progress. Assessment activities constructed by the teacher are completed individually by the students. Teachers may wish to have students work individually on written assignments, presentations, or performance assessment tasks in order to assess individual progress.

Evaluation Context

A decision must be made whether the student’s progress will be compare to:

Group Assessments : Description

Group assessment is a technique for collecting assessment information on students working in group situations.

Group assessments focus on the progress a group of students has made by cooperating and collaborating to complete assessment activities organized by the teacher.

In order to assess social skills and cooperative learning processes, teachers may decide to have students complete written assignments, presentations, or performance of skills and processes in groups.

In this assessment, either each member of the group or the group as a whole provide an assessment of their effort in the assigned task. List of descriptors can be provided and marks or a rating scale can be provided for the assessment. At times, where the project has been the task, each member of the group may provide a rating for other group members. If presentations involve all members of the class, peer assessments of each presentation may be done.

A decision must be made whether to:

Guidelines for Use

You must decide what approach is most appropriate for the situation and for the teaching aims.

You must decide what approach is most appropriate for the situation and for the teaching aims. There are three types of marks that can be arrived at through decisions made using group assessments: group mark, individual mark, and a combination.

Group work is intended, in part, to foster cooperation among students. Assigning a single mark to the work of the group fosters this trait.

Since the summative product of a group activity is the product of several students' work, group evaluation frees the teacher from distangling the contributions of individuals.

Advantages

The document Instructional Approaches: A Framework for Professional Practice describes the value of cooperative learning, a view that is supported by the following quotation from Johnson and Johnson (1989):

"Cooperative learning experiences, compared to competitive and individualistic ones, promote higher achievement, greater motivation, more positive interpersonal relations among students, more positive attitudes toward the subject area and teacher, greater self- esteem and psychological health, more accurate perspective taking, and greater social skills (p. 8-9)."

Disadvantages

Students have come to expect their progress to be compared against criteria and against each other on an individual basis. There is evidence to suggest that they view individual evaluation as being more fair than group evaluation, at least in the early stages of their experience with cooperative learning.

The group component may foster the spirit of cooperation and the individual component may permit the recognition of individual contributions.

Self Assessment

Self-assessment refers to the students" own assessment of their progress in knowledge, skills, processes, or attitudes.

Forms are used to ask the student to evaluate the resulting product and learning which occurred. Each of the areas can be assigned different weights depending on the objectives and type of task. Some descriptors might include:

Guidelines for Use

In self-assessment the situation should be structured so that the student feels that he/she is truly in control of the evaluation. Developing the evaluation criteria should be part of the exercise. Encouraging the student to become involved in setting criteria for evaluation of his or her work shifts a portion of responsibility to the student. Used sensitively, with more emphasis on student growth and self-understanding than on arriving at a final grade, self-evaluation can contribute to a student's ability to structure his or her learning. It can increase a student's ownership for the learning process

Students, working alone or in groups, make the initial suggestions and these are modified in consultation with the teacher.

Students and teachers perceive self-evaluation very differently. Historically, students have not felt in control of their evaluation. They see the teacher as having far more authority. Consequently, they try to match their evaluation to what they perceive are the teacher's expectations.

A further instructional purpose is served when students help in developing criteria. Students learn the expectations concerning their work in greater depth.

Evaluation Context

Information gathered through self- and peer- assessments can be used by students to make judgments on their learning and on the learning of their peers. Self- and peer-evaluation are designed to allow students to take more responsibility for their learning by reflecting upon it and by receiving feedback from their peers. They are particularly powerful formative evaluation methods. The essential difference between self-evaluation and peer-evaluation is that in self-evaluation the student is learning about learning through reflecting on his or her own activities. In peer- evaluation, the student is learning about learning through reflecting on the activities of other students.

5 = Of very high value/Very little room for improvement

4 = Of a high standard.

3 = Reasonable. Interest shown, but just enough to stay out of trouble.

2 = Not very satisfactory.

1 = Very little. Shows a lack of interest.

NAME:

PROJECT:

DATE:

Peer-Assessment

Peer-assessment refers to student assessment of other students. Peer-assessments can be conducted either individually or collaboratively in groups.

Students may be involved in a variety of self- and peer-assessment activities using their individual efforts, their participatory efforts in a group, their own end products of written assignments and presentations or their performance of skills and processes. Students may also be involved in assessing their efforts on quizzes and tests.

Peer-evaluation can add a further dimension to a student's growth in self-knowledge. Students who are more concerned with "you scratch my back and I'11 scratch yours" considerations than with developing insights into the learning process may experience a shift in attitude. More responsibility for what they do and how they do it will occur when they are in consultation with peers who are providing suggestions for improvement. Great benefits accrue to the students who are doing the evaluation and are forced to think analytically about the nature of their peers' performance. In turn, they are able to extend that thinking to their own performance.

In peer-assessment, the parameters within which the students will evaluate their peers should be narrow and carefully defined. When considering what aspects should be peer-evaluated, the teacher should emphasize those areas where the act of peer-evaluating will help the student doing the evaluation in addition to helping the student being evaluated. Areas to stress are being descriptive rather than judgmental, being consistent, being realistic, being positive, and being reflective.

Caution should be exercised when using peer- and self-assessment in a summative mode. The following points should be considered.

Self- and peer-evaluation should be reserved for those situations where student self-knowledge about the learning process is important. Major projects involving a mix of learning skills such as researching, planning, drafting, and bringing to completion are good examples. This also applies to situations where a high degree of student interaction is encouraged.

Guidelines for Use

In self-assessment, the situation should be structured so that the student feels that he or she is truly in control of the evaluation. A small percentage of the evaluation responsibility totally within the student's control is preferable to a larger percentage ostensibly 'negotiated' between the teacher and the student. Developing the evaluation criteria should be part of the exercise. Students, working alone or in groups, make the initial suggestions and these are modified in consultation with the teacher.

In peer-assessment, the parameters within which the students will evaluate their peers should be narrow and carefully defined. When considering what aspects should be peer-evaluated, the teacher should emphasize those areas where the act of peer-evaluating will help the student doing the evaluation in addition to helping the student being evaluated. Not only will this approach maximize the benefits of the exercise, but it will also reduce the influence of any student bias that might exist. Areas to stress are being descriptive rather than judgmental, being consistent, being realistic, being positive, and being reflective.

Examples

Implementing Assessment

There are many different forms of assessment to choose from to meet the assessment needs of both lecture and students.

Assessment strategies should be chosen based on the type of activity to be assessed, the goal of the assessment, the teacher’s instructional style, the students’ learning styles, and how these elements fit into the unit of study.

References:

Cunningham, George K. (1998) Assessment in the Classroom. Constructing and Interpreting Tests. London: Falmer Press.

Knight, Peter. Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. (1995) London: Kogan Page.