PRELIMINARY CONCEPTS  AND TRENDS

UNIT I - Preliminary Concepts and Recent Trends

A. What is education assessment?

1. Basic Principles -  “Assessment is the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development”. (T. Marchese, 1987)

• Educational assessment is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs.

2. Types of Assessments

• Assessment of Learning -  It assists teachers in using evidence of students learning to assess achievements against outcomes and standards. Sometimes it is known as summative assessment. This assessment helps for assigning grades & ranks. It compares one student’s achievement with standards.

• Assessment for Learning -  it involves teachers uses information about student’s knowledge, understanding and skills to inform their teaching. It occurs throughout the teaching learning process to clarify student’s learning and understanding. This type of assessment can be based on a variety of information sources (e.g., portfolios, works in progress, teach observation, conversation). Verbal or written feedback given to the student after this assessment is primarily descriptive and emphasizes strengths, identifies challenges, and points to next steps.

• Assessment as Learning -  It occurs when students act as their own assessors. Students monitor their own learning, ask questions and use a range of strategies to decide what they know and can do for learning. It begins as students become aware of the goals of instruction and the criteria for performance. It encourages to take responsibility for their own learning.

3. Users of educational assessment 

B. Common terminologies

1. Measurement -   According to Stevens, “Measurement is the assignment of numerals to objects , or events, according to rules.” According to Stufflebeam, “Measurement as the assignment of numerals to entities according to rules.”

• Measurement is the process by which we ascertain the quantity of something. It is merely the assignment of a numerical index to the thing or phenomenon we measure.

2. Testing - Standardized testing - High stakes testing 

3. Evaluation -  Evaluation is the process by which we judge the quality of a something. It refers to the processes of determining the extent to which an objective is achieved or the thing evaluated possess the qualities envisaged. When we evaluate, we are saying that the process will produce or yield information regarding the worthiness, appropriateness, goodness, validity, legality, etc., of something for which a reliable measurement or assessment has been made.

4. Types and distinctions of tests 

C. High Quality Assessment Components -  In order to make use of assessment data — i.e., the insights students leave behind about their learning after they take a test — teachers need powerful assessment instruments. That data is only useful if the assessment forms (tests) and items (questions) are of high quality, in both content and construction. (McGraw Hill, 2017)

1. Clear purpose

• Clarity in assessment produces data that accurately reflects what an educator is looking to test

• At the form and item level — each question should measure the skill or standard to which it correlates

• What is the content and design of assessment?

• Which can be proven and backed by research and experts, and is the result of rigorous evaluation

2. Clear and appropriate target

• Learning targets ensure that students: know what they are supposed to learn during the lesson; without a clear learning target, students are left guessing what they are expected to learn and what their teacher will accept as evidence of success.

• Teachers use learning targets to determine what behavior they should be looking for students to demonstrate their level of knowledge and skill. Therefore, teachers need to write learning targets in clear and measurable ways.

3. Appropriate Methods

•  Written-Response Instruments. This includes objective tests (multiple-choice, true or false, matching type or short answer test), essays, examinations, and checklists.

Examples:

Objective test – appropriate for the various levels of the hierarchy of educational objectives.

Essay – when properly planned, can test the students’ grasp of high-level cognitive skills particularly in areas of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

• Product-Rating Scale. Scales measure products that are frequently rated in education such as book reports, maps, charts, diagram, notebook, essay and creative endeavor of all sorts.

Example:

Showcase Portfolio. Have students to compile their opinionated articles as feature of editorial writing in an English class, best sketch works in an art class, or experiment documentation in a science class.

•  Performance Test. One of these is the performance checklist which consists of the list of behaviors that makes up a certain type of performance. It is used to determine whether or not an individual behaves in a certain way when asked to complete a particular task.

Example: Performance Checklist in Solving a Mathematics Problem Behavior

4. Adequate Sampling -  Sampling facilitates the assessment process when it is not feasible to assess all students—for example when a class has a large number of students The portion evaluated is the sample of the entire population.

• Sampling is used to keep the assessment process manageable when the program has large numbers of students. It is also keeps the process manageable where there are multiple or lengthy artifacts to review.

5. Objectivity - Objective means making an unbiased, balanced observation based on facts which can be verified. A statement or assessment is said to be objective when it can be verified and it does not have any interpretations based on emotions of a person.

•  The degree to which a test’s results are obtained the same by scoring different scorers without influences of their biases or beliefs on scoring is known as objectivity. Most standardized tests of aptitude and achievement tests are high in objectivity. In essay-type tests requiring judgmental scoring, different persons get different results or even the same person can get different results at different times (Linn & Gronlund, 2000).

For example, a student writes an answer involving all required information to a particular question using different headings and subheadings. Two persons check that response. One person likes the answer in headings and subheadings and another person likes the answers in essay form without headings.

Objective-type tests such as true/false, multiple-choice, and so on are developed to overcome the lack of objectivity in tests. In essay-type tests, objectivity may be increased by careful phrasing of questions and by a standard set of rules for scoring (Swain et al, 2000).

D. Recent Trends and Focus - Consistent with 21st Century learning and the benefits brought on by better assessment tools, assessment is becoming more student-centric, offering educators the insights that will help them determine the best instructional next steps and how to make learning more personal for the individual student.

1. Accountabilty and fairness - refers to the consideration of learner's needs and characteristics, and any reasonable adjustments that. need to be applied to take account of them.

2. Standards-based education - is a broad concept referring to systems of instruction, assessment, grading, and academic reporting based on students' unveiling the expected mastery of the knowledge and skills as they proceed through their education.

3. Outcome-based education (OBE) - is education in which an emphasis is placed on a clearly articulated idea of what students are expected to know and be able to do, that is, what skills and knowledge they need to have, when they leave the school system.

4. Item-response theory - Item response theory (IRT) was first proposed in the field of psychometrics for the purpose of ability assessment. It is widely used in education to calibrate and evaluate items in tests, questionnaires, and other instruments and to score subjects on their abilities, attitudes, or other latent traits.