Portfolio Tasks

Portfolio Tasks

Portfolio Task 2

In order to explain the significance of different assessment types, there is need to first understand the importance of student assessment and its connection to academic achievement. Assessment can be described as the task of systematically gathering, reviewing, and using information for the purpose of enhancing development and learning among students. By utilizing a wide range of measures, students can be comprehensively assessed and this helps teachers to determine whether they have made sufficient progress to earn a grade promotion (Mazur, 2009, pp 50-51). Hence, assessment serves as a tool that determines whether students have effectively achieved learning outcomes highlighted in the curriculum. Assessment is highly essential since it is connected to a lot of critical decisions regarding students. Teachers have to make a lot of difficult decisions regarding their students on a regular basis. While some of these decisions do not warrant thorough assessment of student performance, other decisions are so important that they cannot be taken without first assessing the academic progress and performance of students (Marzano et al., 2001). This is because these assessment decisions can make a significant difference in the lives of students.

There are numerous other reasons why assessment is important for students, teachers and schools. For example, the results of assessment provide the teacher with qualitative information. This aids them in determining the ways through which they can bring about improvements in the courses and programs being offered. Moreover, they can also make required changes to the curriculum, course material and teaching methodologies. After it is successfully integrated into the planning cycle, the results of the assessment can be used as a powerful rationale to secure support for changes in the curriculum. Assessment also provides students with comparative data teachers with comparative data (Mazur, 2009, pp 50-51). This data can easily be used to gather useful information on whether students are successfully meeting the learning outcomes outlined for the course or program and how well they are doing it. As a result, teachers area able to measure the performance of their students since they can simply compare it with the benchmark that they have set for a particular course (Mazur, 2009, pp 50-51). In addition, they can also assess the performance of the students by evaluating how effectively they have achieved the learning outcomes outlined for the course. Lastly, assessment is the ideal tool for encouraging the practice of continuous improvement among teachers as well as learners.

Early learning theories were rather complex as they involved higher-order thinking skills that were obtained in smaller pieces. Hence, they had to be broken down into comprehensive learning theories using a set of prerequisite skills. Following the memorization of these skills, learners would follow by assembling them into a coherent picture. Today, learning techniques have evolved into complex tasks that require learners to actively engage in multifaceted problem-solving and also devise mental models of the same (Graf, 2012). As a result, in order to attain knowledge, simply receiving information is not sufficient and it is ...