Assessment vs. Evaluation

 

 

 

 

1. What are the types of assessment?

There are several types of assessment in education. All assessment methods have different purposes during and after instruction. This article will tell you what types of assessment are most important during developing and implementing your instruction.

Pre-assessment or diagnostic assessment

Before creating the instruction, it’s necessary to know for what kind of students you’re creating the instruction. Your goal is to get to know your student’s strengths, weaknesses and the skills and knowledge the posses before taking the instruction. Based on the data you’ve collected, you can create your instruction.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is used in the first attempt of developing instruction. The goal is to monitor student learning to provide feedback. It helps identifying the first gaps in your instruction. Based on this feedback you’ll know what to focus on for further expansion for your instruction.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment is aimed at assessing the extent to which the most important outcomes at the end of the instruction have been reached. But it measures more: the effectiveness of learning, reactions on the instruction and the benefits on a long-term base. The long-term benefits can be determined by following students who attend your course, or test. You are able to see whether and how they use the learned knowledge, skills and attitudes.

Confirmative assessment

When your instruction has been implemented in your classroom, it’s still necessary to take assessment. Your goal with confirmative assessments is to find out if the instruction is still a success after a year, for example, and if the way you're teaching is still on point. You could say that a confirmative assessment is an extensive form of a summative assessment.

Norm-referenced assessment

This compares a student’s performance against an average norm. This could be the average national norm for the subject History, for example. Other example is when the teacher compares the average grade of his or her students against the average grade of the entire school.

Criterion-referenced assessment

It measures student’s performances against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards. It checks what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Criterion-referenced tests are used to evaluate a specific body of knowledge or skill set, it’s  a test to evaluate the curriculum taught in a course.

Ipsative assessment

It measures the performance of a student against previous performances from that student. With this method you’re trying to improve yourself by comparing previous results. You’re not comparing yourself against other students, which may be not so good for your self-confidence.

2. Are quizzes formative or summative?

Quizzes are a way to test the knowledge of students. But are quizzes formative or summative? This article will give you a definition of formative and summative and when it’s better to use formative or summative assessment. After that, it will tell what our tool can do for you, if want choose for formative or summative assessment.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment gives an insight into the knowledge people possess for taking a test. Formative assessment is most valuable during the development of try-outs. The goal is to monitor student learning to provide feedback. A formative assessment checks the quality of your material. Furthermore it helps identifying the strengths and weakness of your students. After you’ve taken formative assessment, you’re able to edit whole instruction of your test and the final exam. Formative assessment is a pre-test to find out where you can improve your instruction material.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment is aimed at assessing the extent to which the most important outcomes at the end of the instruction have been reached. But it measures more: the effectiveness of learning, reactions on the instruction and the benefits on a long-term base. The long-term benefits can be determined by following students who attend your course, or test. You are able to see whether and how they use the learned knowledge, skills and attitudes. Depending on the time frame, this process can also be called confirmatory evaluation. This is an extensive form of summative evaluation.

Formative assessment and our tool

Formative assessment could be seen as a pre-test to know what kind of knowledge students have to attend the instruction. A nice way to test this knowledge is by creating a quiz. Formative assessment is a small test and a quiz is simple method to get to know your students better. You’re able to test with several types of questions; multiple choice question (with up to 10 answer options), fill in the blanks and image answer question. The handiest thing is that you can track progress and have a direct access into the statistics. This saves a massive amount of time!

Summative assessment and our tool

For summative assessment it’s better to use another system than a quiz. You measure the whole instruction students have been taken. A great way to test this is by taken an exam. This allows you to test more than just knowledge on a basic level. There are several types of questions: multiple choice, fill in the blanks, free text and image answer questions. Free text allows you to even ask more and test if students really have an understanding of your instruction. An exam allows the creator to track progress and have an insight into the statistics of his or her students.

Conclusion

Quizzes are a formative way of assessment. Summative assessment is better to test with an exam, because you’re testing what students have learned during the entire instruction. Formative assessment measures small parts of the instruction and quizzes are a good way to test that

3. Why assessment is important in education

Assessment is a common tool used is education. Why do teachers need to take assessment to improve their instruction? This article will tell you why assessment is important in education.

When you start creating instruction (lesson material) for your students, you will have to evaluate your instruction. The teacher set goals to achieve at the end of each chapter or/and at the end of instruction. Assessment determines whether or not the goals of education are being met. Continuous questions that come to your mind when taking assessment are: “Are we teaching what we are supposed to be teaching?” “Are we reaching the goals we set for the instruction?” “Is there a way to improve your instruction, and promote better learning?” These questions don’t have to be asked at a certain stage of developing your instruction. You have to ask these questions throughout the whole instruction and even after you have implemented it. Assessment affects decisions on different domains:  grades, advancement, instructional needs, placement and curriculum.
First, you need to identify which assessment type you need. There are three types: needs driven assessment, goal oriented assessment and performance assessment.

Needs driven assessment

What does a needs driven assessment exactly mean? A needs driven assessment is used to identify deficiencies in the performance. Once these are identified, you can think of ways to solve those with an intervention.

Kinds of needs driven assessment

Normative need

Identified by comparing the target group with a national standard. There is a normative need when the performance of the target group is below the national standard.

Comparative need

Identified by comparing the target group with an equivalent peer group. There is a comparative need, if there is a gap between these two groups.

Felt need

When an individual has the desire or feeling that it's necessary to improve his or her own performance or the performance of the audience. There is a gap between the current situation and the desired situation.

Expressed need

A felt need that has been expressed.

Expected need or future need

A way to identify changes that will/can occur in the future.

Important incidental need

Rare incidents, which could have significant consequences. These are potential problems that could occur.

Goal analysis/assessment

Sometimes a needs driven assessment is not always feasible. An alternative approach is a goal analysis/assessment that starts with an identified problem and addresses a solution. A goal analysis can also use data from a needs driven assessment to determine which are the priorities.

Performance analysis/ assessment

Before starting an instructional design process, it is important to determine whether doing training will actually solve the problem. Training is effective if it focuses not only on the symptoms of the problem but also on the problem itself. A performance analysis is a way to identify performance issues. This process can be described as finding the source of the problem. If the cause of the problem is known, the best solution can be determined. Examples of causes of performance problems are lack of knowledge or skills, lack of motivation, environmental factors, management factors and interpersonal relationships.

4. Assessment vs Testing: what's the difference?

Assessment and testing are often used interchangeably. What’s the difference between assessment and testing? When developing instruction, it’s important to know what the difference is between assessment and testing. This article will give the answer, so keep on reading!

What is an assessment?

Assessment is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. By taking the assessment, teachers try to improve student learning. This is a short definition of assessment.

What is testing?

Almost everybody has experienced testing during his or her life. Grammar tests, driving license test etc. A test is used to examine someone’s knowledge of something to determine what that person knows or has learned. It measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached. An evaluative device or procedure in which a sample of an examinee’s behavior in a specified domain is obtained and subsequently evaluated and scored using a standardized process (The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, 1999)

So, what’s the difference?

Test and assessment are used interchangeably, but they do mean something different. A test is a “product” that measures a particular behavior or set of objectives. Meanwhile assessment is seen as a procedure instead of a product. Assessment is used during and after the instruction has taken place. After you’ve received the results of your assessment, you can interpret the results and in case needed alter the instruction. Tests are done after the instruction has taken place, it’s a way to complete the instruction and get the results. The results of the tests don’t have to be interpreted, unlike assessment.

5. Assessment vs Evaluation: what's the difference?

Assessment and evaluation are not the same. But what are the differences between assessment and evaluation. This article will give you description of both of these terms and will eventually tell you the differences between them. 

What is an assessment?

Assessment is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. By taking the assessment, teachers try to improve student learning. This is a short definition of assessment. If you want to read more about assessment, click on this link.

What is evaluation?

Evaluation focuses on grades and may reflect classroom components other than course content and mastery level. Evaluation is a final review on your instruction to gauge the quality. It’s product-oriented. This means that the main question is: “What’s been learned?”. Finally, evaluation is judgmental.

Example:

You’re gifted a flower.

Evaluation: “The flower is purple and is too short with not enough leaves.”

Evaluation is judgmental

Assessment: “I’ll give the flower some water to improve its growth.”

Assessment increases the quality

Similarities

Besides the differences, there are also some similarities between assessment and evaluation. The both require criteria, use measures and are evidence-driven.

So, what’s the difference?

Assessment                       Evaluation

Is ongoing                                 Provides closure
Improves quality                       Judges quality
Individualized                           Applied against standards
Not graded                                Graded
Provides feedback                     Shows shortfalls
Process-oriented                        Product-oriented

 6. Assessment methods and strategies

You want to create assessment for your instruction. This article will tell you some methods and strategies to improve your assessment.

There are several types of assessment methods which can be used for different goals. First, you have to know what kind of assessment should be used for your instruction. To make is easy for you to choose what kind of assessment is needed for your instruction, click on this link.
Writing assessment could be difficult. Here are some tips and tricks that will help you to improve your assessment and get the best feedback from your students as you can get.

Avoid terms like “always” and “never”

These terms are more often the incorrect options. And yes, participants do know this trick. You don’t want to test if participants know these tricks. Instead you want to test their knowledge, of course.

Avoid double negatives in one sentence

“Which of the following answers are NOT incorrect?” After reading this question three times, you finally understand what the meaning is of the question. Instead, you can also ask “Which of the following answers are correct?” It’s the same meaning, but much easier to understand!

State the question positively instead of negatively

A negatively worded question challenges even the intelligent readers to understand the question. By avoiding this, you erase the amount of stress. Less confusing and less stressful :)

Give four or five answer options

Experts recommend to give four or five answer options. And you do what experts say, right?

Open-ended questions

In some cases it’s easier to ask yes/no questions. In other cases it’s not very convenient to ask yes/no questions. You may have some questions about understanding the instruction. If the student says that he didn’t understand the instruction, you want to know why he or she didn’t understand that question. An open question may be a solution to solve that problem.

8. How classroom assessment improve learning

Assessments check whether your goals meet the instructional needs. Assessments in the classroom are something necessary, because a lot of teachers partially develop their own instruction. In this article we'll talk about the importance of assessments in the classroom and how they can improve learning.

“Improving” is a key element when talking about assessment in the classroom. Assessment is important for the development of your instruction. However, teachers often use assessments the wrong way. Assessments are about improving and with that said, it’s not the same as an evaluation. An evaluation is about showing the shortfalls and is judgmental while an assessment is about providing feedback and it is positive.

You have been studying for a whole week to pass your exam. When you’re taking the exam, it examines something way different than you’ve had been learning. This shows that instruction hasn’t met its goals. When a problem like this occurs after you’ve taken the assessment, it’s time to solve this problem. Assessing is an ongoing process during your instruction.
When a classroom assessment has taken place, students won’t be surprised anymore, because the instruction is meeting their needs. Teaching and learning must be meaningful and meet the needs of the particular communities of students. There are different kinds of assessment. The most popular kinds of assessment are formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment takes place during the beginning of your instruction. It gives the creator feedback of the strengths and weaknesses of your instruction, so you know where to improve more. Summative assessment takes place when the instruction is implemented. Summative assessment is aimed at assessing the extent to which the most important outcomes at the end of the instruction have been reached.

Conclusion

Assessment in classroom is really important. With the different kinds of assessment, the teacher is able to evaluate in an ongoing process with the aim to provide feedback for developing better instruction.

Your Brain Matters is a programme in AIA that assess learners' quick critical thinking

The interaction between the examiner and the examinee is shown by a kind attention and a good listening skill

Reference:

https://www.onlineassessmenttool.com/knowledge-center/assessment-knowledge-center/item10148