Assessment

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a.      Understanding the varieties of assessment

Assessment purposes

The purposes of assessment are to provide feedback to students and to serve as a diagnostic and monitoring tool for instruction. Assessment is not a thing that is done to students but a process that can lead to improved learning. And then the result of the assessment is shared with both the students and the teacher.

In this case there are assessment and evaluation. Assessment is the act of collecting information about individuals or groups in order to better understand. Evaluation is a judgment (based on multiple sources of assessment information) regarding the quality or worth of the assessment result.

In evaluation is both formative and summative. Formative assessment sets targets for students and provides feedback on progress toward those targets in ways that foster more progress. In the classroom, teachers use formative assessment on a daily basis.

The characteristics of formative assessment:

• It is part of teaching and promotes learning in a positive intention.
• It is not referenced by criteria and considers the progress efforts showed by each individual as well as other aspects uncovered in the curriculum.
• It provides diagnostic information on inconsistencies that would be taken into account as “error” in summative assessment.
• It provides validity and usefulness and proceeds over concerns for reliability.
• It accommodates students to be central and active in their own learning and understands their strengths and weaknesses, and how to deal with them (Harlen and James; 1997).

Use summative assessments as a culminating experience, which give information on students’ mastery of content, knowledge, or skills. Summative assessment would be scored events that are placed in a teacher’s grade book. These grades are evaluated into final grades for the end of a marking period, course of study, or mastery of standards, and are reported for student achievement.

The characteristics of summative assessment:

• It has to be done when achievement is to be reported.
• It used public criteria to relate the progression in learning.
• It may combine results of different students for different purposes.
• It attempts to avoid endangering validity by employing reliable methods.
• It allows the use of quality assurance procedures.
•  It requires evidence of performance to meet the used criteria (Harlen and James; 1997).   

Assessment Language

There are formative, diagnostic, and summative. Over the years, numerous other terms, such as traditional, non-traditional, alternative, authentic, performance, and sound assessment.

Selected versus constructed response

Both classroom and large-scale assessment have traditionally relied heavily on this assessment type. Such as selected-response assessments include the standard true-false quiz and the multiple-choice test so familiar to students. Assessments seeking selected responses have a place, especially in assessing certain types of understanding, but not to be the only measure of student achievement of learning targets. In contrast, assessment may also be designed; students must create or constructs, a response to a question or prompt. Assessment requiring a constructed response includes stock classroom assessment such as short-answer and essay question (to respond to a question by using their own ideas and their own words).

Performance and product assessment methods

Performances are musical recitals and dramas, for instance. Products are essay and posters. Both of these assessment methods require that students obtain mastery of learning targets outlined in the curriculum. Products are student creations and performances that show what students can do.  Both assessments must align to the learning targets. An understanding of the influence performance assessment has on the learning process requires a broader view of this type of assessment.

Classroom activities and these assessment methods have one differentiation. That is the harder concepts to convey to teachers-perhaps because teachers may enjoy doing a particular activity with their students and believe the lesson has merit simply because it is so enjoyable.

Authentic Assessment

Some assessments elicit demonstrations of knowledge and skills in ways that prepare students for life, not just take test. An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated. Authentic assessment refers to assessment tasks that resemble reading and writing in the real world and in school.

 Quality assessment

When teachers are clear in their expectations for students regarding an assessment, consider bias and purposes of the assessment, and share those expectation in advance of the assessment, they are practicing quality assessment. Quality assessment also necessitates providing good feedback to students, using assessment data to improve instruction, and using a variety of assessment methods. Quality classroom assessment is to view assessment as an ongoing, student-participatory activity, nor just as something the teacher does to students.

Test

Test is using a method or instrument to measure skills, knowledge, performance, capacities, intelligence, or aptitude of an individual or group. One piece of classroom assessment information is generally test. Constructed by test is to meet a specific need or purpose, such as individual diagnosis, summative assessment of individual achievement, or school accountability for teaching a curriculum.

Standardized and high-stakes test

Standardized test can include multiple choice test, oral examinations, essay writing, and performance-based assessments. In general use, the term standardized test usually refers to a multiple-choice type of exam. Standardized tests are high stakes when the results are used to mandate actions that affect stakeholders in education or simply when the public perceives the test to be of high importance.

Conventional classroom tests

This is typical tests used or created by teacher. Many ready-made tests can also be found online or in textbook resources. Problem with alignment to instructional learning targets may arise, however, if such ready-made tests are used.

Norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced tests

Norm-referenced assessment compares student performance to the performance of a normal group of students, either national or local.

Criterion-referenced assessment tells the teacher how well students are performing in terms of specific goals or standards.

Relevance, reliability, and validity

Relevant are closely tied to classroom instruction. Reliable is show consistency of scores across evaluators, over time, or across different versions of a test. Valid is measure that they are intended to measure, rather than extraneous features.

b.      The Role of Assessment in Supporting Teaching and learning

a.      assessment

Assessment is collecting and interpreting all information about students, covering everything from informal classroom observations to achievement tests. Assessment helps the teacher make judgments and decisions to improve student and classroom learning.

In the assessment there are element of classroom assessment (by McMillan, 2007, there are purpose, measurement, evaluation and use are four essential elements in the implementation of classroom assessment as illustrated in the following figure) and domains of classroom assessment (there are cognitive, affective, psychomotor).

b.      Models of Instruction and Assessment – Assessment in the Context of Instruction

The classroom assessments include: after instruction for checking student progress and helping make decisions for the next instructions and before instruction for making influences to the nature of instruction and during instruction for providing feedback and getting students stayed on task. There are two figures of models instruction and assessment. Those are conventional models and standards-based model.

c.       Assessment Purposes and Processes

From Airasian, 2008:

Assessment Purposes	Assessment Tools		Assessment Processes
Planning for Instruction	Quizzes, essays, o bservational checklists	Free writes, think aloud, concept maps	Pre-assessment of students’ status related to knowledge and skills to be taught in an instructional unit
Adjusting Instruction	Homework, assignments, quizzes, journals, lab notebooks	Worksheets, drafts of written work, observational checklist, anecdotal records	Ongoing formative assessment of students’ work to see whether instruction is successful and, if not, where students still need work
Diagnosis	Homework assignments, read aloud, individually administered math problems, worksheets	Observational checklists, anecdotal records, interviews	Close examination of the work of students to specifically diagnose individual students’ strengths and weaknesses
Expertise Evaluating	Research papers, unit or course tests, literacy essays, short stories/poetry	Formal presentations, formal debates, demonstrations, reports of scientific investigations	Determine level of expertise and assign scores and/or course grade. Determine whether students will graduate or be promoted.
Comparison	Norm referenced tests, screening tests	Admission tests, contests	Rank or sort students based on scores. Use scores based to select students for programs/schools

d.      Effects of Classroom-Based Assessments on Students

Student learning motivations and goals are impacted by classroom-based assessment.  Teachers provide informative, meaningful feedback for students to define their goals of learning towards enhancing their self factors in learning, which are considered as the determinants of motivation.

e.      Influencing Motivation through Instruction and Assessment

There are ego involvement (refers to situations accommodating ego factors such as social prestige), extrinsic motivation (behaviorists link the performance of a behavior to the nature of the behavior itself) and task involvement (necessary for a teacher to provide a wide range of in-class student assignments to obtain multiple perspective of feedback from students) that influencing by motivation through Instruction and Assessment.