1. Assessment for Learning
1.1. Diagnostic
1.1.1. Diagnostic assessments are also known as pre- assessments, typically preceding an instruction( McTighe & O'Connor, 2005). It is intended to diagnose student's understanding or gaps in skills (Education Week, 2015).
1.1.2. It measures what students know and can do prior to instruction and it provides data on student's baseline understanding after instruction is completed (SERC.n.d.).
1.1.3. Advantages – use to check students' prior knowledge and skill levels, identify student misconceptions, profile learners' interests, and reveal learning-style preferences. It provides information to assist teacher planning and guide differentiated instruction (McTighe & O'Connor, 2005).It can be tailored to certain curriculum and the purpose of evaluation. It can be designed as less or more rigorous based on requirements.(EDUDPS, n.d.)
1.1.4. Its disadvantages can be that test designers may not have the expertise for formal standardized and diagnostic tests which can cause substantial oversight regarding test items, procedures, and goals, and results that student is not properly tested according to all grade level requirements (EDUDPS, n.d.)
1.1.5. Examples of diagnostic assessments for ESL students - placement test, basic literacy skills inventory and language proficiency test in 4 domains (Alberta Education, n.d.)
1.2. Formative
1.2.1. Formative assessments are varied form of formal or informal procedures conducted by teachers during instructional time to adjust teaching or learning activities to enhance learning (Crooks, 2001).
1.2.2. Formative Assessments serve several purposes. 1) for teachers can get feedback to modify learning activities and experiences; 2)To identify individual students or group who will need remediation (Hutta in Patel, 2012); 3) to put the focus on learning than on making grades and lessen the influence of extrinsic motivation; [Shepard, in Patel, 2012). 4) to improve student's metacognition (Shepard, in Patel, 2012).
1.2.3. Advantages - the purposes listed in the box above are also its advantages; it also help teachers decides and plan for the next step in learning to assist students to progress in learning (Exeter University, n.d.).
1.2.4. Disadvantages: it maybe difficult to motivate students in low stake assignments; the process and the time to provide effective feedback could be time consuming;it requires consistency and dedication to continue with on going assessment; it can be selective and impractical to do in large classes (Sasser, 2016)
1.2.5. Examples of strategies that can be used with ELLs - Rubrics and written or oral test questions, and observation protocols designed to identify specific problem areas or misconceptions in learning the concept or performing the skill (Education Week, 2015)
1.3. Self Assessment
1.3.1. Self-assessment is the process of letting students deliberately reflect on what they are learning and how they are learning it (NCLRC, 2004).
1.3.2. The purpose is to let students step back from the learning process and to think about their strategies and progress in learning. This is to encourage them to be independent learners and increase their motivation in learning (NCLRC, 2004).
1.3.3. Advantages- encourages student involvement and responsibility; encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group wok; allows students to see and focuses on the development of student’s judgment skills (Sydney.edu, n.d.)
1.3.4. Disadvantages – briefing students on the process and ongoing guidance on performing self-evaluation may demand extra time and add to teacher’s workload; the risk of student’s inflating their grades then it becomes unreliable; students may not be equipped to undertake self-assessments (Sydney.edu. ,n.d.).
1.3.5. Activity examples that can be used for ELLs – Using portfolios to encourage students to self-assess their development over time and showcase their performance; provide ELLs with self-access resources such as spell check or grammar check or online dictionaries to aid learning (Jabr, 2011).
1.4. Peer Assessment
1.4.1. Peer assessment - Students learn as they assess each other's work using a rubric or list of criteria.
1.4.2. The purpose – is to involve all students in learning by increasing student’s responsibility and autonomy; encourage deeper understanding, involve students in critical reflections and develop own judgments (Sydney.edu, n.d.).
1.4.3. Advantages - encourages student involvement and responsibility; encourage cooperative work, develop judgment skills, take ownership of assessment process, students will be all involved reducing ‘free rider’ problem.
1.4.4. Disadvantages – additional briefing time will increase teacher’s workload; peer pressure may render grading to be unreliable; or students with mutually award the same grades or can discriminate against other students; students may not be equipped to do appropriate assessments (Sydney.edu., n.d.)
1.4.5. Example for ESL – use of rubrics or checklists to guide assessments; peer editing; using set of questions or question prompts to guide assessments and learning.
1.5. Authentic
1.5.1. Authentic assessment is an approach to measure student’s performance in direct and relevant way using learning objectives (Concordia, 2012).
1.5.2. Purpose – to develop productive citizens and use evaluation to design learning and enable students to acquire essential knowledge and skills to perform a task.
1.5.3. Advantages – it encourages students to be active participants in learning; exercise learning on relevant tasks; it helps teachers to reflect on the relevance of what they teach; provide results useful to improve instructions; develops high order thinking skills; develop proficiencies needed in the real world (Donges, 2016).
1.5.4. Disadvantages – informal assessments may result to unreliable and invalid evaluations.
1.5.5. Examples for ESL students - hands-on projects; real world applications of learning; journal projects, interviews.
1.6. Portfolio
1.6.1. Portfolio are collection of student work used as assessment tool to evaluate student learning through a collection of student-developed artifacts (Feinsten, 2009).
1.6.2. The purpose is to help students put together a portfolios that illustrate their talents, their abilities and capabilities, and tell their stories of school achievements (Venn, 2000, in Valenzuela, 2002).
1.6.3. There are 2 types of portfolios – the process and product portfolios. The process portfolio documents the process of learning overtime. Teachers use process portfolios to help students identify learning goals, document progress over time, and demonstrate learning mastery (Venn, 2000, in Valenzuela, 2002).
1.6.4. Advantages of Portfolio Assessment – promotes student self-evaluation, reflection, and critical thinking; measures performance based on actual student work; provides flexibility for students to accomplish learning goals; enable sharing of responsibility between teacher and students for setting learning goals and evaluating progress; provide students extensive input into the learning process; may promote cooperative learning activities and peer conferencing.
1.6.5. Disadvantages – requires extra planning and assessment system; bulky portfolios maybe difficult to manage; coming up with a systematic management system could be difficult, especially when dealing with random student samples; scoring could be subjective and unreliable, setting conference time to interface with instruction maybe difficult. (Venn, 2000).
1.6.6. Example for ESL Portfolio – language portfolio containing learner’s information; narrative of learning experiences; self-assessment materials; learner’s goal checklist; sample of coursework representing the learner’s language ability – homework, tests, exams etc. (BBC. 2010)
1.7. Diagnostics, formative, authentic, self and peers assessments and portdolio assessments are classified under assessments for learning because these assessments are used to gather information of student's understanding and needs to inform or modify instructions so students will progress in learning.
1.8. References
1.8.1. Types of Assessments - References Alberta Edu. (n.d.) Classroom assessments theory into practice. Wikispaces. Retrieved from https://classroom-assessment-theory-into-practice.wikispaces.com/Assessment+and+English+Language+Learners Coffey, H. (n.d.). Benchmark assessments. Learn NC. Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/5317 Coffey, H. (n.d.) Summative assessment. Learn NC, Retrieved from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/5233 Concordia. (2012). Advice on Using Authentic Assessment in Teaching. Retrieved from http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/curriculum-instruction/tips-on-how-to-use-authentic-assessment-as-a-teaching-strategy/ Crooks, T. (n.d.). The validity of formative assessments. Retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001862.htm Donges, C. (2015). What are the advantages of authentic assessment over standardized testing? Retrieved from http://education.seattlepi.com/advantages-authentic-assessment-over-standardized-testing-2893.html Education Reform. (2014). High-stakes tests. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/high-stakes-testing/ Education Week. (2015). Understanding formative assessment: a special report. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/types-of-assessments-a-head-to-head-comparison.html EDUDPS. (n.d.) Understadning testing and test. Retrieved from http://www.edudps.com/understandingtestingandtests.html Fernsten, l. (2009). Portfolio Assessment. Retrieved from http://www.education.com/reference/article/portfolio-assessment/ Jabr, R.K. (2011). Introducing the skills of self-assessment and peer feedback. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2 (1). 26-31. Retrieved from https://sisaljournal.org/archives/mar11/jabr/ McTighe, J, & O'Connor, K. (2005). Seven practices for effective learning. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov05/vol63/num03/Seven-Practices-for-Effective-Learning.aspx Mueller, J. (2014). Authentic assessment toolbox. Retrieved from http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm#authentic NCLRC. (n.d.) Assessing Learning. Peer and Self. The Essentials of Language Teachings. Retrieved from http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/assessing/peereval.htm Patel, R.S. (2012). Formative assessments: concept and understanding. Voice of Research. Retrieved from http://www.voiceofresearch.org/doc/sep-2012/Sep-2012_8.pdf Project Appleseed. (n.d.). Performance based assessments. Retrieved from http://www.projectappleseed.org/#!assessment/cwvf Sasser, N. (2016). What are the advantages & disadvantages of formative assessment? Retrieved from http://oureverydaylife.com/advantages-disadvantages-formative-assessment-28407.html SERC. (n.d.) Diagnostic and formative assessments. Retrieved from http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/assessment/formative.html Sydney.edu. (n.d.) Self and peer assessment – advantages and disadvantages [Pdf document]. Retrieved from https://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/groupwork/docs/SelfPeerAssessment.pdf Venn, J.J. (2000). Defining Portfolio Assessment. Retrieved from http://www.unm.edu/~devalenz/handouts/portfolio.html University of Exeter. (n.d.). Principles of assessments. Retrieved from http://www.exeter.ac.uk/staff/development/academic/assessmentandfeedback/principlesofassessment/typesofassessment-definitions/
2. Assessment of Learning
2.1. Summative
2.1.1. What is it? Summative assessment is measuring student's performance or learning against a set of uniform standards.
2.1.2. Purpose - to measure student growth after instruction and are generally given at the end of a course in order to determine whether long term learning goals have been met (Coffey, n.d.).
2.1.3. Advantages - provide motivation for students to study and pay attention to make the grades; results give great insight to teachers about student’s learning (Concordia, 2016).
2.1.4. Disadvantages – teachers may teach to the test; they are not always the most accurate reflection of learning.
2.1.5. Examples for ELL s – State-mandated assessments; District benchmark or interim assessments ; End-of-unit or -chapter tests; End-of-term or -semester exams; methods could be - Selected response items; Multiple choice; True/false; Matching; Short answer; Fill in the blank; One or two sentence response; Extended written response; Performance assessment
2.2. Performance Based
2.2.1. Performance-based assessment is a test that requires a student to create an answer or a product that demonstrates his or her knowledge or skills (Project Applessed, n.d.).
2.2.2. Purpose – to measure student’s skills such as the ability to integrate knowledge across disciplines, contribute to the work of a group, and develop a plan of action when confronted with a new situation. Performance assessments are also appropriate for determining if students are achieving the higher standards set by states for all students (Project Appleseed, n.d.).
2.2.3. Advantages – taps into student’s high order thinking skills, encourage students to create products or complete a process, require students to be active participants, allows students to demonstrate how they arrive at their answers .
2.2.4. Disadvantages – critiques argue that it will not improve schooling and teacher will teach to the test, might disenfranchised students with disability .
2.2.5. Examples for ESL – Projects and Presentations; writing task – essay, summary, analysis
2.3. High Stakes
2.3.1. High-stakes tests are any test used for accountability decisions about students, educators, schools, or districts, —i.e., the attempt by federal, state, or local government agencies and school administrators to ensure that students are enrolled in effective schools and being taught by effective teachers (Education Reform, 2014).
2.3.2. Purpose - test scores are used to determine accolades, advancement, compensation, or sanctions/consequences.
2.3.3. Advantages – Motivates students to work harder, learn more, and take the tests more seriously, which can promote higher student achievement; establishes high expectations for both educators and students; . the promise of rewards or threat of punishment will motivate and incentivize educators to improve school performance, teaching effectiveness, and student achievement; scores can be used to hold schools and teachers accountable, making education equitable to all students regardless of race and economic status; scores which are made public will inform parents about school standing and learning accountability (Education Reform, 2014).
2.3.4. Disadvantage – forces educators to teach to the test; promotes narrow academic program – cutting out what is not included in the test; may contribute to higher rates of cheating among educators and students; exacerbates negative stereotypes about the intelligence and academic ability of minority and disadvantaged students (Education Reform, 2014).
2.4. Benchmark
2.4.1. Benchmark assessments are short tests administered throughout the school year that give teachers immediate feedback on how students are meeting academic standards.
2.4.2. Purpose - regular use of benchmark assessments is seen by many as a tool to measure student growth and design curriculum to meet individual learning needs ( Coffey,n.d.)
2.4.3. Advantages - with appropriate use, tests can provide specific feedback on individual students needing assistance; when benchmarks are aligned with state standards, it gauge student’s performance accurately against district standards (Coffey, n.d.)
2.4.4. Disadvantages - encourage “teaching to the test.”
2.4.5. Examples - State-aligned benchmark assessments are generally created for and distributed to school districts by test preparation companies like Edison Schools, Pearson, Princeton Review and ETS. For ELLs - WIDA Model Language Assessments - used as interim language assessments.