Defining Assessment 8744

An assessment is used to provide students with feedback that can dramatically enhance their learning, especially in the form of a formative assessment. Assessments are the main tools for me, as an instructor, to know exactly how my students are progressing through a unit and provide additional assistance to the students’ learning. One of the most important criteria to consider when developing an assessment is to first create a scale of the learning goal in the unit. If students know how they are progressing, they will have the opportunity to work more efficiently or to ask for assistance. That is why formative assessments provide students with feedback right from the beginning.

Formative assessment can motivate students to study and allows them to gauge their learning and identify areas of weakness. I use several formative assessments in my course, such as in-class small group work for low points, low point homework with two opportunities to submit it, online activities involving simulations, problem solving, etc.

Summative assessment also motivates students to study and learn and provides evaluation and their grade. Sometimes I allow students to do a test-wrap up, which then allows them to take a quiz that I add to their test grade. I usually do this with the second test since it has core chemistry calculations.

I always see assessment as the three-pronged process: teach, have them demonstrate mastery, have them teach someone else. I don't always get that far with every student, but hitting those three markers is the goal. I define assessment as not a cure-all for learning but as the steps in the process to making someone consciously competent of all the steps of their comprehension and usage. There's exceptions to this -- don't want to mess with a juggler or someone who can hear a tune and duplicate it on an instrument -- that's just talent, and being unconsciously competent is fine in those instances. But as a teacher, the goal is always to use assessment, or define assessment, as the steps to making everyone consciously competent. I teach the rules of comma usage, the student shows me the ability to use the rules of comma usage, and the student can teach comma usage to someone else. That's what success with assessment looks like.

For me, assessments measure the students' learning progress in accordance with a set of students learning outcomes such as "students will be able to apply a multi-stage composing and revising process to produce essays." The assessments help me evaluate, measure, and document such progress through formative, summative, and authentic assessments.

In addition, they help me to communicate with my students through feedback, and the students can communicate with me through surveys such as the muddiest point, the 1-minute paper, the exit ticket, and metacognitive surveys so both sides (the students and myself) reflect on the module assessments. I expect my students to communicate with me on what works for them and what doesn't work.

Because I pay especial attention on the process of writing, formative collaborative, and cooperative assessments as well as scaffolding are important at the beginning of each module, so I guide my students and they work collaboratively to check their understanding of the module.

Then summative assessments are left for the final products, that is, the different types of essays and discussions where the students need to use critical thinking, writing skills, and generate analysis of readings.

Authentic assessments are also part of the course as those prepare students to real world scenarios and solving problems that require higher-order thinking skills.

Shauna's definition: Assessment is how an instructor measures student learning. For assessment, you have to establish clear objectives, directions, and rubric criteria. When I assess students, I look chiefly at their analytical skills. Can they find evidence to support their reasoning, and can they explain how their understanding of the evidence helps us understand something about the text (usually a novel) and possibly the larger culture in which the text is situated?

I use formative feedback the most (to learn the steps of writing an essay), summative feedback (essays), and performative based assessment (ex: pretending they are lawyers in a mock trial).

My own working idea of assessment is to gauge where my students are on a skill. I'm expecting the assessment to let me know what I need to change in the upcoming lessons; what I need to add; or, what I need to reteach.

I think my most important criteria is to make sure that I'm not using the same type of assessment, i.e. multiple choice, writing. I want to make sure that I use various ways to assess my students. Because some students sometimes have challenges taking traditional assessments (test shy), I want to give them a variety of assessments so that they can show what they've learned.

The purpose of assessment is to evaluate and measure student learning, understanding, and performance in a specific subject or course.

I believe assessment serves several vital functions, including:

Determining student mastery of course content: Assessment helps educators determine what students have learned and areas for improvement.

Improving teaching and learning: Assessment provides feedback to educators on the effectiveness of their teaching methods and the materials used in the course allowing for opportunities to make improvements and enhance the learning experience for future students.

Promoting student engagement and motivation: Assessment provides a means of measuring progress and setting student goals. It can also encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and stay engaged in the course.

Making informed decisions about student grades and progression: Assessment helps educators make fair and accurate decisions about student grades and advancement in the course and beyond.

Two forms of assessment I employ in my course are both summative and formative assessments. Summative assessments allow students to demonstrate their ability to analyze, synthesize, and communicate their knowledge -for example, in essays and writing assignments. Formative assessments provide ongoing feedback and understanding - for example, class discussions, exam wrappers, and the muddiest points.

For me "Assessment" is a way of knowing if my students are understanding and learning what I'm teaching them. It could be a continuous assessment during class when you asked them about the lesson being taught or it could be at the end of the lesson as an "Exit Ticket". I believe that formative assessments are tremendously important since the student will get immediate feedback and won't get behind. After that, and by using summative assessments you are just assessing the long-term effect of that learning.

My idea of assessment involves feedback and communication from the students. When they understand the material, concepts and can let me know how they apply I feel gratified. However when I see that students do not understand I want to review the material with the class using a different approach or revise the assessment for improved responses. I struggle with the idea of assessment as part of a concern that my students do not understand the material nor completely understand the way to apply the concepts.

Assessment is one way of forming an opinion if there are gaps in learning or if students are learning what they need to learn in alignment with learning goals and assessments. Assessments helps to determine how well students transfer knowledge from previous courses and where learning should begin or be reviewed.

Formative assessments are a great way to assessment the current state, or in the moment learning, and takes different forms- pre/post quizzes, minute papers, muddiest points, and the like, whereas summative assessments are placed at the end-of-course learning to analyze the quality or quantity of learning and if learning objectives were met.

Because of time constraints and intense subject matter, I employ the 15-minute rule by strategizing formative assessments throughout the course. Not only does this technique provides an opportunity to make course correction if needed before scaffolding more complex material but gives the nursing students a break from cognitive overload.

Assessment is how I know that the students are developing throughout our course. I think it is important to begin with an opportunity to assess students standing upon entrance into a class, and then periodically see how they are developing towards our class outcomes.

For me I assess students weekly through discussion posts rooted in empathizing with the material by putting themselves in historical situations we are studying, unit assessments which measure both research ability and writing capability. And, then finally a semester long research project which is designed to hit all of our course outcomes throughout the semester with multiple minor submissions.

Assessment is a process of considering and measuring information about a particular area a person has gained.

The purpose of an assessment is not to be judgemental but the accuracy of information.

For assessments in my class I use the following: First upon entering my class students give me an entrance ticket about prior knowledge on the days topic.

Formative Assessments are an ongoing progress and learning process about a topic or subject. Discussion questions in my class are one way I use formative assessments as well as an Exit ticket.

Summative Assessments are actually completing their 15 hours of observation with reflections about their experience.

Assessment is used to assess a student knowledge of the application of the content taught. Pre-tests are to see what the student already knows about the subject. Short benchmark quizzes are used to help students be successful learning the content in small digestible chunks. Then tests are used for retention of the content . Labs that are interactive and are real world based. This makes the content relevant to the student.

I defined assessment as a way for me as professor to "see" how my students are understanding the concepts in the class. I like to give graded or non-graded assessments to evaluate the overall concepts of the students. I use real world scenarios, and look for the students to apply the concepts in these scenarios. This will help me assist the students more on topics they might have more issues understanding then others. As also as different way I might use to approach the learning experience from my students.

My working definition of assessment would be some sort of check on learning. The hope is that assessment becomes more than a check on knowledge. Rather than simply demonstrate memorization, I’d like to see that a student can take a concept and apply it critically to real-world examples or problems. Also, I learned from this module that it’s crucial to “start with the end in mind.” What do I intend for them to learn from a particular lesson or the course as a whole?

In terms of criteria for determining types and timing of assessments, it seems like the stakes are essential to take into account. I’d imagine using some sort of pre-test or poll to gauge the current understanding of your students prior to a lesson could be an excellent formative assessment technique. Here, from the timing perspective, I could achieve immediate and direct feedback instead of waiting for a particular deadline. I’ve also used think, pair, share activities when introducing a concept by giving students a brief reading or primer on a topic and gauging their thoughts after having read the piece and conferred with their peers. As the stakes increase, I’d use summative or performance-based assessments. I’d utilize summative assessments as milestones in the course. For example, on a midterm exam, I’d be looking to take into account student knowledge against the backdrop of a learning outcome standard. In other words, I’d want to make sure students can demonstrate both knowledge of the concepts we’ve covered and the ability to think critically about the concepts when they are overlaid on a real-world example. For performance-based assessments, at least in the social sciences, having students grapple with case studies and present their findings to the class might be a good way to have students connect their study of a particular case to the class as a whole.

An assessment helps an instructor to gauge the amount of knowledge and understanding that a student has on a particular subject. There are various ways of assessing a student's knowledge, which I believe should be varied to obtain a better holistic view of each student. However, there are also various levels of assessment. A formative assessment enables an instructor to assess smaller sections of a topic or specific skills to ensure that the student is ready to move on, while a summative assessment ensures that the student has been able to progress through a particular chapter or set of skills within the course itself.

- Micah Bellamy

Assessment is a method of checking what knowledge students have gained for a particular learning outcome.

Purpose: The purpose of assessment is to see how well students performed and to understand if your instructions are clear and whether students understand the material or are merely doing the guesswork.

I use the following kinds in my classes.

Pre-assessments: what students already know about the topic. This type of assessment helps to find the gap and design the lecture.

Formative assessments are low stake assessments to check students' understanding of the topic during or after the lecture. I do it in my classes by asking questions, practicing problems, assigning group work, etc. Homework is also a part of the formative assessments as it gives more time to the students to go through the topic and answer.

In both cases, feedback is critical to find students' strengths and challenges and guiding them to improve before the summative assessments. I use multiple kinds of homework assessments that build upon each other and prepare students for summative assessments.

In my courses, summative assessments are high stake assessments like exams or projects. As I teach science courses with lab components, students are also assessed on their practical skills to ensure they are ready for the next challenge. But I don't think these can be called performance-based assessments.

I look forward to understanding more about performance-based assessments and how I can implement those in my courses.

I like the feedforward more than the feedback. Without knowing the name, I use the feedforward method for the weeks-long projects, and in homework assignments I always suggest what they should include to make it better for summative assessment. I took a course a while back where I learned the tone of the message and word choice also matter for effective feedback.

I define an assessment as an assignment that is either graded or non-graded to gauge the students understanding of the material they are learning. This is an opportunity for them to use what they learned and critically apply it to various assignments. My goal for using certain assessments in my courses is to help students understand the relationships between the real-world and the material they are learning. My goal is to help them critically apply various concepts across the board such as their personal lives and/or future classes. When reviewing the assessments used in my class, I analyze the grading metrics. Are the students grasping the material, did majority of them not understand a specific question due to its format, did they learn some interesting etc.

Carolynn Turneur

My own definition of assessment encompasses the core principle of gathering information but also provides me with feedback. Assessment gives both me the instructor an idea of how the class is learning/performing, but also gives the students a sense of feedback towards the expectations of the class rigor.

Assessment is gathered in a variety of modalties, both ongoing and cumulative with the ongoing methods giving structure to the bigger cumulative methods the follow.

Deb's definition: Assessment includes all the opportunities students have within a course or program to "show me the learning."

Important Criteria for Use: I determine the appropriate timing for assessments based on key learning guideposts in class that relate directly to course outcomes (i.e. when should we check in to see what they have learned). In addition, I work to ensure the frequent and regular use of formative assessments that are rich in feedback (either immediate or timely) to ensure learners understand their own progress and I know when I may need to revisit certain content within the course. I also determine "just in time" formative assessments in situations where I recognize that things are not progressing as I would have hoped in a given class.

What I hope to get from students: What I hope for and get is a better understanding of their progress toward mastery of course outcomes. This allows me to reflect on where I have opportunities to improve my instruction and/or adjust the delivery of course content. It also gives students a clear picture of their progress and opportunities they have to spend additional time and effort to master the concepts.

Working Definition of Assessment Activity

There are multiple forms and official definitions of the word assessment, We can break them down in terms of formative (ongoing), summative (final), and performance based - but what is most important is to gain a sense of the role of assessment in your teaching and courses.

For this space, please explain your own working definition of assessment, explain what the most important criteria is for when you decide to use assessment and what you hope to get from your students from using assessment?Just click on the post-it notes at the top right to create a post. Be sure to include your name in the tag field so we know whose excellent thoughts we are reading.