The Functions of Assessment
Varieties of Assessment
It's been said that in life, timing is everything. As in life, assessments performed at crucial times in the learning process can spell the difference between gathering data to evaluate students and using assessments to enhance learning. Based on timing and purpose, four functions of assessment data are:
- Formative assessment provides diagnostic feedback to students and instructors at short-term intervals (e.g., during a class or on a weekly basis)
- Summative assessment provides a description of students' level of attainment upon completion of an activity, module, or course
- Evaluative assessment provides instructors with curricular feedback (e.g., the value of a field trip or oral presentation technique)
- Educative assessment Integrated within learning activities themselves, educative assessment builds student (and faculty) insight and understandings about their own learning and teaching. In short, assessment IS a form of learning NRC, 1996 , p. 76)
At its most useful, educative assessment (sometimes termed active assessment) is an episode in the learning process; part of reflection and autobiographical understanding of student progress. Click on the following hotlink to learn more about assessment strategies you can use in your introductory geoscience courses, laboratories, field based activities and projects.
How to Use Assessment Strategies
Assessment need not take time away from learning; assessments can be learning experiences in themselves. Active assessment strategies enhance student content understanding and promote skills that will be beneficial to students throughout their lives. The ability to see the big picture, develop effective oral and written reports and the ability to work cooperatively with their peers are skills that are promoted by active assessment. In this module you can access the following Assessment strategies:
- Scoring Rubrics help students focus on content and Instructional Rubrics to guide them in developing presentations, written and oral reports.
- Concept Maps assist students in "seeing the big picture".
- Portfolios document student learning and improve student metacognition.
- Rebecca Teed's Starting Point module Co-operative Learning: Assessment contains strategies that encourage peer-to-peer learning, individual and group grading.
The SERC Cutting Edge Assessment site also includes information on the following assessment strategies:
- ConcepTests - Conceptual multiple-choice questions useful in large classes.
- Knowledge Survey - Students answer whether they could answer a survey of course content questions.
- Exams - Find tips on how to make exams better assessment instruments.
- Oral Presentations - Tips for evaluating student presentations.
- Peer Review - Having student assess themselves and each other.
- Written Reports - Tips for assessing written reports.
- Other Assessment Types including concept sketches, case studies, seminar-style courses, mathmatical thinking and performance assessments.
Developing Scoring Rubrics
"Learning increases when learners have a sense of what they are setting out to learn, a statement of explicit standards they must meet and a way of seeing what they have learned." Loaker, Cromwell and O'Brien (1986) pg.47One of the timeless verities of student psychology is that students will focus on learning material that will impact their grade. Rubrics are a way to make explicit our expectations of what students will need to know and be able to do in order to receive a given grade. Rubrics help instructors to develop clear and attainable learning objectives for their students and if provided to students prior to the activity, serve to guide their efforts.Scoring Rubrics Focus and Promote Learning
Assessment sometimes carries a sense of the mysterious for students. They may be told to take notes in class, read the chapter and answer the questions at the end, but they may get few specifics regarding what material will be assessed, and at what depth. In contrast, rubrics given to students before the learning activity starts helps them get a clear sense of what knowledge and skills they need in order to achieve a given grade. In their book Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses, Hubba and Freed (2000) point out that Scoring rubrics usually contain the following elements:- Clear statements of the level of knowledge you expect the student to achieve for them to receive a given grade.
- The dimensions of the quality of work you expect the student to achieve.
- Commentaries describing your expectations of knowledge and quality that distinguishes each grade band (e.g. ABCDF).
- What are the essential elements of high quality work?
- How many levels of achievement are to be described?
- Are the criteria for each level clearly described?
Developing Portfolios to Assess Student Learning
Metacognition is an awareness of one's own thought processes. As such, it involves an almost simultaneous, concious degree of self-awareness. "This is how I approach or think about a situation"; "this is how I might best approach this particular concept in order to more fully understand it"; "this is how I am thinking about this issue and it is or is not effective"; "these are other possible approaches I might take instead" (Courts and McInerney, 1993 p.57)
Portfolios Defined
Portfolios are personalized long term documentation of student mastery of course material. An essential element of portfolios are student reflections on their own learning and progression towards the mastery of the material documented in the portfolio. As such, portfolios are windows on the metacognitive process of students.
Types of Portfolios
In order to be useful as assessment tools the portfolio should include entries that demonstrate a progression of student understandings and ultimately mastery of the concepts. Huba and Freed (2000) identify two different portfolio types.
- All-Inclusive Portfolios that contain a complete record of all work done by a student in a course or program.
- Selection Portfolios that are focused on documenting the achievement of mastery of specific course goals/objectives set by the course instructor.
Assessment Using Portfolios
Because portfolios are by their nature long term records of student progress and achievement they can be used to assess programs, courses or projects. Although the aspect of long-term change in student content content knowledge and metacognition may not be as marked when portfolios are used to assess courses, the process of portfolio development tends to focus students on deciding what the essential elements of learning are and what samples of their work best display these elements. In Chapter 5 of [Palomba and Banta, 1999]they discuss three critical elements of student portfolios in promoting and supporting student learning. These are:
- Student involvement in the selection of entries
- Student preparation of written reflections about learning
- Continuing discussion with faculty regarding written reflections
Timothy Slater's portfolio website (more info) provides an in depth discussion of the use of portfolios in introductory science courses, including an example for an Introductory Environmental Science course.Click on the following link to learn how portfolios are used in an on-line Earth Systems Science course, or see the resources below for more on portfolios and other assessment tools.
Before Administering Tests
During your teaching career, you may be called upon to proctor or state standardized examinations. Although schools and school systems have different facilities for test administration, here are some general suggestions for preparing to proctor or administer a standardize test.Some schools require proctors or test administrators to stand during the duration of the examination. This means that you may be required to stand for several hours straight. In assembly-style testing areas, you will need to pace among rows of testing students. It’s important that you wear your most comfortable shoes. On testing day, go for comfort over style.
Some schools require proctors or test administrators to stand during the duration of the examination. This means that you may be required to stand for several hours straight. In assembly-style testing areas, you will need to pace among rows of testing students. It’s important that you wear your most comfortable shoes. On testing day, go for comfort over style.
The school is likely to supply you with sharpened pencils, but it pays to make sure that you have enough #2 sharpened pencils before the exam. Make sure that your pencils have good erasers. For some reason, pencil erasers smear when students try to erase their completed bubbles.
Read the manual before the test, even if you are simply serving as a proctor. Reading the manual will help eliminate any apprehension that you feel in the testing area. You will have a better idea of what to do in the most common situations, and you will have a handle on the testing rules. In fact, it’s a good idea to keep a copy of your testing manual nearby, just in case. Do not discard your manual. You may be required to turn it in after the test.
The correlation between two variables reflects the degree to which the variables are related. The most common measure of correlation is the Pearson Product Moment Correlation (called Pearson's correlation for short). When measured in a population the Pearson Product Moment correlation is designated by the Greek letter rho (ρ).
When computed in a sample, it is designated by the letter "r" and is sometimes called "Pearson's r." Pearson's correlation reflects the degree of linear relationship between two variables. It ranges from +1 to -1. A correlation of +1 means that there is a perfect positive linear relationship between variables. The scatter plot shown on this page depicts such a relationship. It is a positive relationship because high scores on the X-axis are associated with high scores on the Y-axis.
A correlation of -1 means that there is a perfect negative linear relationship between variables. The scatter plot shown below depicts a negative relationship. It is a negative relationship because high scores on the X-axis are associated with low scores on the Y-axis.
Assessment of Learning in Cognitive Domain
This topic is focused on acquainting future teachers with methods and techniques of measuring learning in cognitive domain. According to Bloom, 1956, “the cognitive domain deals w/ the recall or recognition knowledge and the development of intellectual activities and skills.”
This topic is very important and helpful for the teachers on how to measure and assess the learning levels of their students. By this, the teachers themselves may calculate the knowledge and the development of the students by assessing their intellectual abilities and skills in school.
This topic also helps the teacher on how to prepare their assessment in cognitive learning, in which the teacher will prepare his/her test for the student in whatever type of the test his/her student are fitted.
There’s an advantage and disadvantage of this topic. The advantage is that, the teacher will know immediately after the test will improve with his teaching strategy and the disadvantage, for the part of the teacher, it’s a hassle to check all the papers for the result of the test, but if they loved their profession they can be done it well w/ no bias at all.
T test
The t-test is a statistical test whether two sample means or proportions are equal. The t-test (or student's t-test) gives an indication of the separateness of two sets of measurements, and is thus used to check whether two sets of measures are essentially different (and usually that an experimental effect has been demonstrated). The typical way of doing this is with the null hypothesis that means of the two sets of measures are equal. The t-test was developed by “Student”, whose actual name was Williams Sealy Gossett, but the company he was working for, Guiness Brewery, wouldn’t let him publish under his own name.
It is used when there is random assignment and only two sets of measurement to compare.
There are two main types of t-test:
- Independent-measures t-test: when samples are not matched.
- Matched-pair t-test: When samples appear in pairs
Independent mean test is used when we have two different groups of subjects, one group performing one condition in the experiment, and the other group performing the other condition.
In both cases, we have one independent variable, with two levels. We have one dependent variable.
The matched pair t-test or dependent means test is used when the same subjects participate in both conditions of the experiment.
The value of t may be calculated using packages such as SPSS. The actual calculation for two groups is:
t = experimental effect / variability
= difference between group means /
standard error of difference between group means
standard error of difference between group means
= Dg / SEg
Dg = AVERAGE(Xt) - AVERAGE(Xc)
where Xt are the measures in the treatment group and Xc are the measures in the control group. Note that any minus sign is removed, so that 't' remains positive.
SEg = SQRT( VAR(Xt)/nt + VAR(Xc)/nc)
where n is the number of people in the group and VAR(X) is the variance of X.
VAR(X) = SUM((X-AVERAGE(X))2)/(n-1)
The t-value will be positive if the first mean is larger than the second and negative if it is smaller. Once you compute the t-value you have to look it up in a table of significance to test whether the ratio is large enough to say that the difference between the groups is not likely to have been a chance finding. To test the significance, you need to set a risk level (called the alpha level). In most social research, the "rule of thumb" is to set the alpha level at .05. This means that five times out of a hundred you would find a statistically significant difference between the means even if there was none (i.e., by "chance"). You also need to determine the degrees of freedom (df) for the test. In the t-test, the degrees of freedom is the sum of the persons in both groups minus 2. Given the alpha level, the df, and the t-value, you can look the t-value up in a standard table of significance (available as an appendix in the back of most statistics texts) to determine whether the t-value is large enough to be significant. If it is, you can conclude that the difference between the means for the two groups is different (even given the variability). Fortunately, statistical computer programs routinely print the significance test results and save you the trouble of looking them up in a table.
Chapter 20 Essential Elements of a Portfolio
A comprehensive portfolio includes the following good elements.
1. The Cover Letter. This element tells about the author of the portfolio and what the portfolio shows about the author’s progress as a learner. It summarizes the evidence of the student’s learning and progress.
2. Table of Contents. Shown in this element are the detailed contents in the portfolio.
3. Entries. Entries in the student portfolio can either be core or optional. Core entries are items the student have to include, while optional are entries of student choice. The core elements provide a common base from which to make decisions on assessment. The optional items permit each student to represent his or her uniqueness.
4. Dates. Specific dates have to be included for all entries to facilitate evidence of growth overtime.
5. Drafts. Drafts of oral, aural, and written products and revised versions have to be included in the portfolio.
6. Reflections. It can appear in the different stages in the learning process. Through reflections students can express their feelings regarding their progress and or themselves as learners.
Questions that student have to consider in making reflections for each item in the portfolio follows.
· What did I learn from it?
· What did I do well?
· Why did I choose this item?
· What do I want to improve in the item?
· How do I feel about my performance?
· What were the problem areas or difficulties encountered?
Portfolios are collections of students’ work overtime. A portfolio often documents a student’s best work and may include other types of process information, such as drafts of the student’s work, the student self-assessment of the work, and the parent’s assessment. Portfolio may be used for evaluation of the student’s abilities and improvement.
Grosvenor (1993) list three basic models of what portfolio should contain:
- Showcase Model
Consist of work samples chosen by the student.
- Descriptive Model
Consist of representative work of the student, with no attempt at evaluation.
- Evaluative Model
Consist of representative products that have been evaluated by criteria.
De Fina (1992) list the following assumptions about portfolio assessment:
v Portfolios are systematic, purposeful and meaningful collections of student’s works in one or more subject areas.
v Students of any age or grade level can learn not only to select pieces to be placed into their portfolio but can also learn to establish criteria for their selection.
v Portfolio collections may include input by the teachers, parents, peers, and school administrators.
v Portfolios should reflect the actual day to day learning activities of the student.
v Portfolio should be on going so that they show the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements over a period of time.
v Portfolios may contain several compartments or sub-folders.
v Selected works in portfolios may be in variety of media and maybe multidimensional.
Stages in Implementing Portfolio Assessment
Stage 1. Identifying Teaching Goals to Assess Through the Portfolio.
To do this, you need to ask your self “What do I want my students to learn?” and choose several goals to focus on. Teachers have to know what are their goals in terms of what the students able to do.
Stage 2. Introducing the Idea of Portfolio to the Class.
Teachers should explain to the class patiently what a portfolio is and what is the purpose of having it. Your students should realize that a portfolio is simply a selection of their work that can showcase their progress in different learning areas. Make them know that portfolio is an assessment tool and explain the weight of the portfolio in their final grade.
Stage 3. Specifying Portfolio Content.
There are many forms of portfolio entries like written, audio and video recorded items, artifacts, dialogue, and journals. Students should be aware of the scoring guidelines that will be used before performing the task.
Stage 4. Giving Clear and Detailed Guidelines for Portfolio Presentation.
The presentation must be clear and attractive. Dated drafts and attached reflections or comment cards is in need.
Stage 5. Notifying Other Interested Parties.
Make sure that the school principal is aware of your new assessment procedure. Do inform also the parents and involve them in commenting in the work of their children.
Stage 6. Preparing the Portfolio.
Support and encouragement are necessary for both the teacher and the student at this stage. Students can get this from a patient and understanding teacher.
Teachers will get it by doing portfolio assessment as teamwork or a support group.
- To practice self-assessment and reflections.
2. To give guiding feedback.
3. To ensure that the portfolio represents the students own work.
Stage 7. Assessing the Portfolio and Giving Feedback.
Assessing the portfolio is not difficult. Self and peer assessment can be used as a tool for formative evaluation. In the process students are able to internalize the criteria of quality work.
Teacher’s feedback is more than just a grade. One way is by writing a letter about the portfolio identifying its det5ailed strengths and weaknesses and at that same time generating a profile of the student’s ability. Still another option is by preparing certificates commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the portfolio and suggesting future goals.
Stage 8. Holding Student-Teacher Conferences.
Teachers should have short individual meetings with each student, wherein progress is discussed and the goals are set for future meetings. Student-teacher conferences play an important role in the formative evaluation of a student progress. It can also be used in the summative evaluation when the student presents his final portfolio product together with the teacher’s final grade.
Stage 9. Follow-Up.
It is when the portfolio are then presented to the student’s parents.
Distinguishing Characteristics Essential to the Development of Any Type
Ø Multi-sourced (allowing for the opportunity to evaluate a variety of specific evidence). It includes statements and observations of the participant and artifacts like test scores to photos, drawings, journals, and audio and videotapes of performances.
Ø Authentic (context and evidence are directly linked to the author). For example, if child’s musical performance skills were gained through piano lessons, an audio tape would be relevant.
Ø Dynamic (Captures Growth and Change). Aside from including best work in the portfolio, different stages of mastery can also be included.
Ø Explicit (purpose and goals are clearly define). The students should know in advance what is expected of them, so that they can take responsibilities for developing their evidence.
Ø Integrated (evidence should establish correspondence between program activities and life experiences). Students should be ask to demonstrate how they can apply their skills or knowledge to real life situations.
Ø Based on Ownership (student helps determine evidence to include and goals to be met). Participants must engage in some reflection and self evaluation as they select the evidence to include and set their goals.
Ø Multi-purposed (allowing the assessment of the curriculum while assessing the performance of the students). A well done portfolio not only assess the student learning but also the prevailing existing curriculum. It can also be passed on to other teacher as the student moves from one grade level to another.
References
Wolf, K. (1991). The school teacher’s portfolio: Issues in design, implementation and evaluation. Phi Delta Kappan, October, 129-136.
Barton J. & A. Collins (1997). Portfolio Assessment: A handbook for Educators. Menlo Park, CA: Addison- Wesley Publishing Co.
Campbell, D. et. al (2000). Portfolio and Performance Assessment and adult learning: Purpose and Strategies. Chicago: Council for Adult and Experiential Learning.
Chapter 12 Summarizing Test Scores: Measures of Central Tendency
The Mean
Measures of central tendency provide a single summary figure that best describes the central location of an entire distribution of test scores. The mean, however, is the most popular among the measures of central tendency. This oftentimes called arithmetic average.
Mean for Ungrouped Test Scores. When test scores are ungrouped that is N is 30 or less, mean is computed following the formula
M=Sx/N
Where: M= mean
Sx= Sum of test scores
N= total number of test scores or cases
Let us illustrate the computation of the mean for ungrouped test scores. For instance the following scores were obtained by Grade VI pupils in a spelling test: 12, 11, 10,9, 7, 15, 8, 6, 14, 13. What is the mean score of the pupils in the aforementioned spelling test? To compute the mean, we first have to add the scores (Sx=105) and count the number of scores (N=10). Let us plug in the obtained values into our computational formula.
M=Sx/N
= 105/10
=10.5
Mean for Grouped Test Scores. When test scores are more than 30, the abovementioned computational formula is no longer applicable. There are two ways of computing the mean grouped test scores: frequency-class mark method; and the deviation method.
To compute the mean using the frequency-class marked method, the following steps have to observed:
1. Calculate the class mark or midpoint of each class interval.
2. Multiply each class mark by its corresponding frequency
3. Sum up the cross products of the class mark and frequency of each class.
4. Count the number of cases or total number of scores.
5. Plug into the computation formula the values obtained in steps 3 and 4. The formula to be applied is given below:
M= Sfcm/N
Where: M= the mean
f= frequency of a class
cm= class mark or midpoint of a class
N= total number of scores or cases
Sfcm= sum of the cross products of the frequency and class mark.
Table 12.1 shows how the mean for grouped data is computed using the frequency-class mark method.
Table 12.1
Computation of the Mean Via the Frequency-Midpoint Method
Classes | Frequency(f) | Class Mark(cm) | fcm |
46-50 41-45 36-40 31-35 26-30 21-25 16-20 11-15 | 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 4 | 48 43 38 33 28 23 18 13 | 240 301 342 330 224 138 72 52 |
N=53 | Sfcm=1699 |
Going over Table 12.1 it can be seen that the frequency of each class is shown in the second column. Class mark is shown in column 3 and is obtained by adding the lower and upper limits of each class and dividing the sum by 2. On the last column are the cross products of each frequency and class mark. The sum of the cross products is 1,699. Let us substitute the values into our computational formula to obtain the mean.
M=Sfcm/N
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