1. Diagnostic Assessments
1.1. Definition
1.1.1. This is also known as pre-assessments, It assesses what students already know and difficulties that students might have, which, if undiagnosed or unknown, might limit their engagement in new learning. It is often used before teaching or can be used when a problem is noticed or arises.
1.2. Purpose
1.2.1. The purpose of this assessment is for teachers to pre-asses students on their knowledge when introducing new concepts. It is designed for teachers and is usually a casual assessment, not to determine grades or students ability rather to see starting points of where to begin a lesson or unit.
1.2.2. Assessment Purposes • To reveal the misconceptions students bring as prior knowledge to a class. • To measure the conceptual gains of a class as a whole. • To identify concepts that are weak areas of understanding.
1.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
1.3.1. Advantages:• You can use scores to make up heterogeneous cooperative learning teams. • Such tests are short, involve limited class time, and are easy to score. • These tests are extremely useful for formative and summative assessments over semesters. • If you follow the protocol for a given instrument, you can tap into a large comparative database. • Short, in-class applications are quite revealing in terms of the impact of various facets of instruction. • You can develop your own tests, specifically tailored to your course goals.
1.3.2. Disadvantages: • Limited use of selected items may not be possible. • You must be careful not to misinterpret the results. • Designing your own tests is extremely demanding and will take at least a few semesters for each course; you must do interviews; reliability and validity may be hard to establish. • Your students will declare such questions to be “hard” or “tricky” until they realize that you really mean they are “diagnostic”!
1.4. Examples of Assessments: One example of this is using the KWL chart. What I KNOW, What I WANT to Learn, and What I have LEARNED
2. Summative Assessments
2.1. Definition
2.1.1. Summative assessments demonstrates student’s success in meeting the assessment criteria used to gauge or measure the intended learning outcomes of a specific unit and can contribute a lot to students grades.
2.2. Purpose
2.2.1. Summative assessments are usually given at the end of a unit and covers everything or mostly everything in a unit or multiple units. Summative assessments can be used to measure and reward achievement, to provide data for selection and move students forward. This is generally the reason why the validity and reliability of summative assessments hold high importance. Summative assessment can provide information that has formative/diagnostic value.
2.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
2.3.1. Advantages: Though they aren’t necessarily fun for teachers and students, summative assessments have a lot of advantages. They provide motivation for students to study and pay attention in class, particularly as they get older and grades become a major indicator of success in college or the working world. They also give great insight to teachers: if none of the children in a class score above a 2 or 3 on an AP exam, it is much more likely to be the result of poor or off-topic instruction than a class of students unable to complete the work.
2.3.2. Disadvantages: Precisely because summative assessments reflect so closely on teacher performance, many instructors are accused of “teaching to the test.” In other words, if a state test is known to heavily favor anagrams or analogies, students may be asked to spend hours drilling those exercises instead of reading and writing to grow their vocabularies naturally. Conversely, no assessment is perfect, so even students with excellent knowledge of the material may run into questions that trip them up, especially if they get nervous under pressure. As a result, summative assessment is not always the most accurate reflection of learning.
2.4. Some examples of formative assessments include midterm and final tests, projects, and final papers. Work that is usually evaluated at the end of a unit, term, or semester.
3. High-Stake Assessments
3.1. Definition
3.1.1. High-stake assessments are a test with important consequences for the test taker. Passing high stake assessments usually have important benefits, such as a high school diploma, scholarships, license amongst other things. However, not only is passing important but failing one of these assessments may have some important disadvantages, such as being forced to take remedial classes, not being able to practice or embark on ones next step, not finding a job, and in some cases, not being able to attend college.
3.2. Purpose
3.2.1. These tests were designed to track academic progress for the benefit of your child—if teachers know what areas need work, they can better help each individual in the classroom. Second, to understand that tests aren't an absolute measure of a student's intelligence. Tests measure how well students know how to take tests—and how well test-taking skills are being taught.
3.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
3.3.1. Advantages: High-stakes test results can be used to help teachers create a learning plan based on your kid's needs—helping her in the long run. Look at your child's test results as a tool for progress, not as a judgment on ability or intelligence. Data from statewide testing is almost always publicly available. As a parent, you can look at these results to see how well, or poorly, your child's school is performing. Access to this information will help you make more informed decisions about where and how your child will get the best education. High stakes exams can cause anxiety, but yearly testing and frequent practice tests can help kids improve their test-taking abilities over time. Your child can benefit by learning how to handle pressure, and developing the skills and strategies necessary to meet the school's—and her parents'—expectations.
3.3.2. Disadvantages: High-stakes tests cause any subject that isn't math or language arts to be pushed out of the classroom. Subjects like science, social studies and the arts are sacrificed to make time for more test prep. Lynne Munson, president and executive director of Common Core, says that subjects outside of math and language arts are actually part of the federally mandated core curriculum for public schools. When other subjects are abandoned, Munson says, "We are denying our students the complete education they deserve and the law demands." Pressure on teachers can clamp down on creativity and innovation. Thanks to pressure from the government, teachers often feel compelled to "teach to the test," resulting in less flexibility to tailor lesson plans to individual students or class groups. Less freedom and innovation can also mean unhappier teachers and higher classroom turnover. Increased pressure on parents and students is counter-productive. Munson makes a distinction between constructive pressure—the kind that motivates students to do better—and pressure that stifles learning. "If the pressure isn't clearly linked to student learning" Munson says, "if it's just pressure for pressure's sake and not encouraging students to take their learning seriously — then the pressure is not constructive."
3.4. Examples Some examples of high-stake assessments are generally for higher education such as SAT’s, ACT’s, and other college entrance exams. Other test include intake tests, such as interviews and tests to enter into a private or elite school, obtaining a license, and getting a promotion.
4. Formative Assessments
4.1. Definition
4.1.1. Formative assessments are types of assessment that contribute to learning through providing feedback. It should indicate what is good about a piece of work and why this is good; it should also indicate what is not so good and how the work could be improved. Effective formative feedback will affect what the student and the teacher does next. Formative assessments have a high emphasis on consistent and contingent feedback.
4.2. Purpose
4.2.1. The purpose of formative assessments it to help students consistently by continuously assessing students, giving feedback, and making sure students are not falling behind. If students fall behind and it goes unnoticed or unattended the problem may only get worse making it more difficult for students to play catch up.
4.3. Advantages Vs. Disatvantages
4.3.1. Advantages: -If you’re documenting children’s knowledge, skills, and behaviors every day, you have a greater chance of identifying possible developmental delays. -Data from formative assessments can be used for intentional teaching. -The information you gather is more accurate.
4.3.2. Disadvantages: Some teachers complain about sacrificing time to assess during the lesson and fear that they may not even finish the lesson. Teachers then feel the need to rush through a series of units, which causes students to lack mastery once the assessment is given at the end of the unit. Teachers may lack training or professional development on how to use formative assessments successfully because, historically, assessments are completed at the end. Formative assessment may lack the same weight -- low to no point value -- as a summative assessment, and students may not take the assessments seriously, which may cause teachers to misread feedback from students.
4.4. Some examples of formative assessments are through classwork, group work, teachers observing students in the classroom, homework assignments, and class activities.Some examples of formative assessments are through classwork, group work, teachers observing students in the classroom, homework assignments, and class activities.
5. Performance-Based Assessments
5.1. Definition
5.1.1. Performance-based assessments also known as an authentic assessment uses tasks that require students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and strategies by creating a response or a product. Unlike a traditional standardized test in which students select one of the responses provided, a performance assessment requires students to perform a task or generate their own responses. Performance-based assessments can also be used as a summative and formative assessment.
5.2. Purpose
5.2.1. This provides an alternative to traditional forms of assessments. Performance based assessments are generally designed to measure students ability on a particular subject matter and or unit. However, rather than taking a typical multiple choice test, answering questions, or writing a paper, performance based assessments The idea is to challenge not only the student's depth of knowledge on a subject, but how they correlate multiple concepts taught within the curriculum.
5.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
5.3.1. Advantages: With performance-based testing, a student is enabled and more responsible for the demonstration of their learning. In contrast to a multiple choice test that a student might do poorly on and consequently blame the format of the questions or answers, performance-based testing forces the students to put their knowledge into context that can be understood and explained.
5.3.2. Disadvantages: Performance-based testing can be difficult to implement in a large class setting compared to utilizing a standard multiple question type of format for assessment. Large student populations and limited teacher resources would make the timing and cost of performance-based testing more difficult, but conversely, the overall benefit to students can outweigh those concerns in many cases.
5.4. Some examples of performance based assessments include essays, book reports, projects and presentations, Science experiments, and work that is typically done over a period of time and with groups or outside of the classroom.
6. Portfolio Assessments
6.1. Definition
6.1.1. A portfolio is a collection of work, accumulated over a period of time
6.2. Purpose
6.2.1. In the classroom, a portfolio provides a student with the chance to show off his best work in one place. It also provides a teacher with the chance to keep track of student work samples and assess students individually based on their strengths.
6.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
6.3.1. Individual Talents Every student in a class has individual talents; some students may thrive in the area of composition while others do better with audiovisual presentations. Having a portfolio as an assessment format allows each student to display his strongest work in one place for evaluation. It provides the teacher with a way to differentiate her assessment based on individual student strengths while still assigning one assessment to the whole class. It lets the students choose their very best work to showcase and allows every student a chance to shine. Progressive Assessment Teachers often have to demonstrate student growth in a course. A portfolio provides a way to do this in an easily portable format. A strong portfolio will include work that the student produced early in the course as well as work he produced near the end. By including these two types of work, it can showcase how a student has grown in his knowledge and skills throughout the course. A portfolio provides a cumulative way to show what a student has learned rather than taking a single assignment from one day out of an entire semester or year.
6.3.2. Grading Challenges Grading a portfolio can be difficult since each one is going to be different. A strong rubric helps a teacher grade a portfolio's content, but even then, there is a lot of room for subjectivity when looking at one portfolio versus another, making it difficult to assign grades fairly. Another grading challenge with a portfolio is that it usually lets a student show off her strengths, but often hides her weaknesses, so it provides an incomplete picture of what a student knows or understands. Portfolios usually do not incorporate a student's ability to recall facts either, so they cannot stand alone without other more traditional forms of assessment to go with them. Timing Issues Teachers have so many things to fit into a class schedule that it can be daunting at the best of times. Using portfolios as an assessment is a major time commitment; not only do the students have to have time to work on the individual portfolio assignments, but they also need time to put them together. Teachers need extra time to grade portfolios since each one will include several items as well. The time constraints of fitting these assignments into the class schedule may lead some teachers to assign the portfolio work outside of class for homework, but this opens up several opportunities for academic dishonesty, which can be difficult to identify.
6.3.3. Examples of a portfolio assessment may include a students collection of writing pieces, including rough and final drafts and different types of writing such as descriptive, poetry, story telling, etc.
7. Authentic Assessments
7.1. Definition
7.1.1. A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills.
7.2. Purpose
7.2.1. In response to concerns that standardized measurements are not adequate, proponents argue for the use of more authentic assessments as a means of measuring learning outcomes not easily measured by standardized tests.
7.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
7.3.1. Advantages: Authentic assessments, often ask students to analyze, synthesize and apply what they have learned in a substantial manner, and students create new meaning in the process. Authentic assessments, therefore, offer far more direct evidence of application and construction of knowledge. Authentic assessments focus on the learning process, sound instructional practices and high-level thinking skills and proficiency needed for success in the real world, and, therefore, may offer students who have been exposed to them huge advantages over those who have not.
7.3.2. Disadvantages: Criticism of authentic assessments generally involve both the informal development of the assessments and difficulty in ensuring test validity and reliability given the subjective nature of human scoring rubrics as compared to computers scoring multiple-choice test items. Based on the value of authentic assessments to student outcomes, the advantages of authentic assessments outweigh these concerns.
7.3.3. An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their performance on the task will be evaluated.
8. Self- Assessments
8.1. Definition
8.1.1. Self-assessment is a systematic process of data-driven self-reflection. It is directed towards coherent and clearly articulated goals to inform decision-making and operational practices.
8.2. Purpose
8.2.1. Systematic data gathering Robust data analysis that leads to valid conclusions Reflective processes that involve all people in the organisation Decision-making for ongoing improvement connected to the outcomes of a self-reflective process.
8.3. Advantages Vs. Disadvantages
8.3.1. Advantages: •Encourages student involvement and responsibility. •Encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group work. •Allows students to see and reflect on their peers’ assessment of their contribution. •Focuses on the development of student’s judgment skills. • •helps students gain understanding of the concepts of quality; •provides a foundation for lifelong learning; and •improves learning in the course being studied
8.3.2. Disadvantages: •Potentially increases lecturer workload by needing to brief students on the process as well as on-going guidance on performing self evaluation. •Self evaluation has a risk of being perceived as a process of presenting inflated grades and being unreliable. •Self-assessment assignments can take more time. •Students feel ill equipped to undertake the assessment. •helps students gain understanding of the concepts of quality;
8.3.3. Some examples include 1. Using checklists. Process: Students are asked to check their own work against a checklist developed from the assignment guidelines and to submit it together with the assignment. 2. Using cover sheets Process: Students are asked to respond to a range of self-reflective questions on their assignment, identifying how and where in the assignment they have responded to the list of marking criteria.