Assessment Evaluation

Assessment Evaluation

What is assessment / what types are there /validity and reliability

Assessment is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), the institution, or the educational system as a whole. According to the Academic Exchange Quarterly: "Studies of a theoretical or empirical nature (including case studies, portfolio studies, exploratory, or experimental work) addressing the assessment of learner aptitude and preparation, motivation and learning styles, learning outcomes in achievement and satisfaction in different educational contexts are all welcome, as are studies addressing issues of measurable standards and benchmarks".

It is important to notice that the final purposes and assessment practices in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human mind, the origin of knowledge and the process of learning.

The following table summarizes the main theoretical frameworks behind almost all the theoretical and research work, and the instructional practices in education (one them being, of course, the practice of assessment). This different frameworks have given rise to interesting debates among scholars.

Alternate meanings

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary the word assessment comes from the root word assess which is defined as:

to determine the rate or amount of (as a tax)

to impose (as a tax) according to an established rate b: to subject to a tax, charge, or levy

to make an official valuation of (property) for the purposes of taxation

to determine the importance, size, or value of (assess a problem)

to charge (a player or team) with a foul or penalty

Assessment in education is best described as an action "to determine the importance, size, or value of."

Types

The term assessment is generally used to refer to all activities teachers use to help students learn and to gauge student progress. Though the notion of assessment is generally more complicated than the following categories suggest, assessment is often divided for the sake of convenience using the following distinctions:

formative and summative

objective and subjective

referencing (criterion-referenced, norm-referenced, and ipsative)

informal and formal.

Reliability

Reliability relates to the consistency of an assessment. A reliable assessment is one which consistently achieves the same results with the same (or similar) cohort of students. Various factors affect reliability - including ambiguous questions, too many options within a question paper, vague marking instructions and poorly trained markers. Traditionally, the reliability of an assessment is based on the following:

Temporal stability: Performance on a test is comparable on two or more separate occasions.

Form equivalence: Performance among examinees is equivalent on different forms of a test based on the same content.

Internal consistency: Responses on a test are consistent across questions. For example: In a survey that asks respondents to rate attitudes toward technology, consistency would be expected in responses to the following questions:

"I feel very negative about computers in general."

"I enjoy using computers."

Validity

A valid assessment is one which measures what it is intended to measure. For example, it would not be valid to assess driving skills through ...