Reflection
Before we completely close this professional learning module, please take time to reflect upon your learning. Using the link below, please respond to the open-ended questions regarding what you have learned about assessments. Your responses will be used to influence future professional learning modules on assessment.
(TLMS 3a, 4c)
(TLMS 3a, 4c)
Wrap-up
Key Points
What is assessment?
Although there is a formal definition of assessment, an assessment is any means used to discover what students have learned or what they understand.
What is its purpose?
The purpose of assessing students is not just to determine what students know/understand, but to inform teacher practice. There are three main purposes for using assessment:
1. to support learning
2. to report achievement of individuals for certification, progress, and transfer
3. to satisfy the demands for public accountability.
(Earl, 2013, p. 19)
Formative assessment - The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:
Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:
(Retrieved from: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html)
Summative Assessment
Common Assessments
(Bailey & Jakicic, 2012, p. 13)
Rubrics
What is assessment?
Although there is a formal definition of assessment, an assessment is any means used to discover what students have learned or what they understand.
What is its purpose?
The purpose of assessing students is not just to determine what students know/understand, but to inform teacher practice. There are three main purposes for using assessment:
1. to support learning
2. to report achievement of individuals for certification, progress, and transfer
3. to satisfy the demands for public accountability.
(Earl, 2013, p. 19)
Formative assessment - The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:
- help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
- help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately
Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:
- draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
- submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
- turn in a research proposal for early feedback
(Retrieved from: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html)
Summative Assessment
- These assessments are given at the end of a unit of study, course, or grade.
- Assessment results are often used to grade or make decisions about students.
- Assessment results are often used to make decisions about teachers.
Common Assessments
- There is compelling research that says that frequent formative assessments improve student achievement for all students.
- Common formative assessments do not have to be tests or quizzes.
- Common formative assessments do not have to take a long time to administer or include lengthy student work products.
- If you don't use the results of the common formative assessment to make a difference in student learning, the assessment is summative.
(Bailey & Jakicic, 2012, p. 13)
Rubrics
- Rubrics are scoring guides that provide teachers and students an opportunity to see where improvements or corrections need to be made in addition to what the student did well.
- Rubrics do not need to be elaborate.
- Effective rubrics often contain only 4 to 6 categories.
(TLMS 4c, 7b)