What Should Be Inside Of A Portfolio In Assessment Of Student Learning

Student Assessment in Educational activity and Learning

By Michael R. Fisher, Jr.

Much scholarship has focused on the importance of student assessment in teaching and learning in college pedagogy. Student assessment is a critical aspect of the teaching and learning procedure. Whether teaching at the undergraduate or graduate level, it is of import for instructors to strategically evaluate the effectiveness of their pedagogy by measuring the extent to which students in the classroom are learning the course material.

This didactics guide addresses the post-obit: i) defines educatee assessment and why it is important, 2) identifies the forms and purposes of student assessment in the educational activity and learning procedure, 3) discusses methods in pupil cess, and four) makes an important stardom between assessment and grading.

What is student assessment and why is it Important?

In their handbook for form-based review and assessment, Martha 50. A. Stassen et al. ascertain cess as "the systematic collection and assay of information to improve student learning." (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. 5) This definition captures the essential chore of student assessment in the teaching and learning process. Student assessment enables instructors to measure the effectiveness of their teaching by linking educatee performance to specific learning objectives. Equally a result, teachers are able to institutionalize constructive pedagogy choices and revise ineffective ones in their pedagogy.

The measurement of student learning through assessment is of import considering it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students nearly the extent to which students are successfully meeting course learning objectives. In their book Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe offer a framework for classroom instruction—what they phone call "Backward Design"—that emphasizes the critical role of assessment. For Wiggens and McTighe, assessment enables instructors to decide the metrics of measurement for educatee understanding of and proficiency in course learning objectives. They argue that cess provides the bear witness needed to document and validate that meaningful learning has occurred in the classroom. Assessment is so vital in their pedagogical design that their arroyo "encourages teachers and curriculum planners to outset 'think like an assessor' before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider up front how they will decide if students take attained the desired understandings." (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, pg. 18)

For more on Wiggins and McTighe'southward "Astern Design" model, run into our Agreement by Design pedagogy guide.

Student assessment also buttresses critical reflective pedagogy. Stephen Brookfield, in Becoming a Critically Reflective Instructor, contends that disquisitional reflection on one's teaching is an essential part of developing every bit an educator and enhancing the learning experience of students. Disquisitional reflection on one's teaching has a multitude of benefits for instructors, including the development of rationale for teaching practices. Co-ordinate to Brookfield, "A critically reflective instructor is much meliorate placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well every bit to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment." (Brookfield, 1995, pg. 17) Student assessment, and then, not only enables teachers to measure the effectiveness of their teaching, merely is likewise useful in developing the rationale for pedagogical choices in the classroom.

Forms and Purposes of Pupil Assessment

At that place are generally two forms of student assessment that are most ofttimes discussed in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The get-go, summative assessment, is assessment that is implemented at the end of the grade of study. Its master purpose is to produce a measure out that "sums upwards" student learning. Summative assessment is comprehensive in nature and is fundamentally concerned with learning outcomes. While summative assessment is often useful to provide data about patterns of student achievement, it does then without providing the opportunity for students to reflect on and demonstrate growth in identified areas for comeback and does not provide an artery for the teacher to modify teaching strategy during the teaching and learning process. (Maki, 2002) Examples of summative assessment include comprehensive final exams or papers.

The second form, determinative assessment, involves the evaluation of educatee learning over the course of time. Its fundamental purpose is to estimate students' level of achievement in order to enhance student learning during the learning process. Past interpreting students' performance through determinative cess and sharing the results with them, instructors help students to "understand their strengths and weaknesses and to reverberate on how they need to improve over the form of their remaining studies." (Maki, 2002, pg. 11) Pat Hutchings refers to this grade of assessment as assessment behind outcomes. She states, "the promise of assessment—mandated or otherwise—is improved student learning, and improvement requires attention non only to final results but as well to how results occur. Assessment behind outcomes means looking more carefully at the procedure and conditions that lead to the learning nosotros care about…" (Hutchings, 1992, pg. six, original emphasis). Formative assessment includes course work—where students receive feedback that identifies strengths, weaknesses, and other things to go along in mind for hereafter assignments—discussions between instructors and students, and end-of-unit of measurement examinations that provide an opportunity for students to identify important areas for necessary growth and evolution for themselves. (Brownish and Knight, 1994)

It is of import to recognize that both summative and formative assessment indicate the purpose of cess, not the method. Different methods of assessment (discussed in the next section) can either exist summative or formative in orientation depending on how the instructor implements them. Sally Brown and Peter Knight in their book, Assessing Learners in College Teaching, caution against a conflation of the purposes of assessment its method. "Often the mistake is made of assuming that it is the method which is summative or formative, and not the purpose. This, we suggest, is a serious mistake because information technology turns the assessor'due south attention abroad from the crucial result of feedback." (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 17) If an instructor believes that a particular method is formative, he or she may fall into the trap of using the method without taking the requisite time to review the implications of the feedback with students. In such cases, the method in question finer functions as a class of summative assessment despite the instructor'due south intentions. (Dark-brown and Knight, 1994) Indeed, feedback and word is the critical cistron that distinguishes between determinative and summative assessment.

Methods in Pupil Assessment

Beneath are a few mutual methods of assessment identified past Brown and Knight that can exist implemented in the classroom.[1] It should be noted that these methods work best when learning objectives have been identified, shared, and clearly articulated to students.

Self-Assessment

The goal of implementing self-assessment in a course is to enable students to develop their own judgement. In self-assessment students are expected to assess both procedure and product of their learning. While the cess of the product is often the job of the instructor, implementing student assessment in the classroom encourages students to evaluate their ain work as well as the process that led them to the concluding event. Moreover, self-cess facilitates a sense of ownership of one'south learning and tin lead to greater investment by the student. Information technology enables students to develop transferable skills in other areas of learning that involve group projects and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as leadership roles in the teaching and learning procedure.

Things to Keep in Mind well-nigh Self-Assessment

Self-assessment is different from self-grading. Co-ordinate to Brown and Knight, "Self-assessment involves the use of evaluative processes in which judgement is involved, where self-grading is the marking of one's own work confronting a ready of criteria and potential outcomes provided past a 3rd person, commonly the [instructor]." (Pg. 52)
Students may initially resist attempts to involve them in the assessment process. This is usually due to insecurities or lack of confidence in their power to objectively evaluate their ain work. Dark-brown and Knight note, even so, that when students are asked to evaluate their work, frequently student-determined outcomes are very like to those of instructors, peculiarly when the criteria and expectations take been made explicit in advance.
Methods of cocky-cess vary widely and can be as eclectic as the instructor. Common forms of self-assessment include the portfolio, reflection logs, instructor-educatee interviews, learner diaries and dialog journals, and the like.

Peer Assessment

Peer cess is a type of collaborative learning technique where students evaluate the piece of work of their peers and have their own evaluated past peers. This dimension of cess is significantly grounded in theoretical approaches to active learning and adult learning. Like self-assessment, peer assessment gives learners ownership of learning and focuses on the process of learning as students are able to "share with one another the experiences that they have undertaken." (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 52)

Things to Continue in Listen nigh Peer Assessment

Students can use peer cess equally a tactic of antagonism or conflict with other students past giving unmerited low evaluations. Conversely, students can likewise provide overly favorable evaluations of their friends.
Students can occasionally apply unsophisticated judgements to their peers. For example, students who are bouncy and loquacious may receive higher grades than those who are quieter, reserved, and shy.
Instructors should implement systems of evaluation in social club to ensure valid peer assessment is based on bear witness and identifiable criteria.

Essays

According to Euan Southward. Henderson, essays brand 2 important contributions to learning and cess: the evolution of skills and the cultivation of a learning style. (Henderson, 1980) Essays are a common form of writing assignment in courses and tin can exist either a summative or determinative course of assessment depending on how the instructor utilizes them in the classroom.

Things to Keep in Heed nigh Essays

A common challenge of the essay is that students can use them simply to regurgitate rather than clarify and synthesize information to make arguments.
Instructors commonly assume that students know how to write essays and can encounter disappointment or frustration when they discover that this is non the example for some students. For this reason, it is of import for instructors to make their expectations clear and exist prepared to assist or betrayal students to resource that will heighten their writing skills.

Exams and time-constrained, private cess

Examinations have traditionally been viewed as a gold standard of assessment in education, peculiarly in university settings. Like essays they tin can exist summative or formative forms of assessment.

Things to Go on in Heed nigh Exams

Exams can make pregnant demands on students' factual knowledge and tin can have the side-effect of encouraging cramming and surface learning. On the other mitt, they can too facilitate student sit-in of deep learning if essay questions or topics are appropriately selected. Dissimilar formats include in-class tests, open-book, accept-home exams and the like.
In the procedure of designing an examination, instructors should consider the following questions. What are the learning objectives that the test seeks to evaluate? Have students been adequately prepared to meet exam expectations? What are the skills and abilities that students need to do well? How will this exam be utilized to raise the student learning process?

As Chocolate-brown and Knight affirm, utilizing multiple methods of assessment, including more than one assessor, improves the reliability of data. Yet, a primary challenge to the multiple methods approach is how to counterbalance the scores produced past multiple methods of assessment. When particular methods produce higher range of marks than others, instructors can potentially misinterpret their cess of overall student performance. When multiple methods produce dissimilar letters nearly the same student, instructors should be mindful that the methods are likely assessing different forms of achievement. (Brown and Knight, 1994).

For additional methods of cess non listed here, meet "Assessment on the Page" and "Cess Off the Page" in Assessing Learners in College Education.

In addition to the various methods of assessment listed above, classroom assessment techniques also provide a useful way to evaluate student understanding of course cloth in the instruction and learning process. For more than on these, see our Classroom Assessment Techniques teaching guide.

Assessment is More than Grading

Instructors oft conflate assessment with grading. This is a fault. It must be understood that student assessment is more than than but grading. Call up that assessment links student performance to specific learning objectives in order to provide useful data to instructors and students about educatee achievement. Traditional grading on the other hand, according to Stassen et al. does not provide the level of detailed and specific information essential to link pupil performance with improvement. "Because grades don't tell you about student performance on individual (or specific) learning goals or outcomes, they provide little information on the overall success of your class in helping students to achieve the specific and singled-out learning objectives of involvement." (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. six) Instructors, therefore, must e'er recall that grading is an aspect of student cess but does not establish its totality.

Teaching Guides Related to Student Assessment

Beneath is a list of other CFT educational activity guides that supplement this one. They include:

Active Learning
An Introduction to Lecturing
Beyond the Essay: Making Pupil Thinking Visible in the Humanities
Bloom'south Taxonomy
How People Acquire
Syllabus Construction

References and Boosted Resources

This teaching guide draws upon a number of resource listed below. These sources should prove useful for instructors seeking to heighten their education and effectiveness as teachers.

Angelo, Thomas A., and Thou. Patricia Cross. Classroom Cess Techniques: A Handbook for
Higher Teachers. 2^nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Print.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a Critically Cogitating Teacher. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print.

Brown, Emerge, and Peter Knight. Assessing Learners in College Education. 1 edition. London ;
Philadelphia: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Cameron, Jeanne et al. "Assessment as Critical Praxis: A Customs College Feel."
Instruction Folklore xxx.iv (2002): 414–429. JSTOR. Web.

Gibbs, Graham and Claire Simpson. "Weather condition under which Assessment Supports Student Learning. Learning and Education in Higher Education 1 (2004): 3-31.

Henderson, Euan S. "The Essay in Continuous Assessment." Studies in Higher Pedagogy 5.2 (1980): 197–203. Taylor and Francis+NEJM. Web.

Maki, Peggy L. "Developing an Assessment Programme to Larn about Educatee Learning." The Periodical of Academic Librarianship 28.one (2002): 8–xiii. ScienceDirect. Spider web. The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Sharkey, Stephen, and William Southward. Johnson. Assessing Undergraduate Learning in Sociology. ASA Education Resource Centre, 1992. Print.

Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding By Design. second Expanded edition. Alexandria, VA: Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005. Impress.

[1] Brownish and Night discuss the commencement two in their chapter entitled "Dimensions of Assessment." However, because this chapter begins the second part of the book that outlines assessment methods, I have collapsed the two under the category of methods for the purposes of continuity.