|
Our main objectives for assessment:
- To explore how assessment provides a driving force for learning
- To work out ways of making better links between assessment and learning
This is an analogue of assessment being the engine that drives learning. It is explored with some of the symptoms of engine-failure being pictured as follows.
The engine is laboring…
- Greater load (for example, larger class sizes)
- Steeper hills (shorter time-spans due to semesterisation, modularization, or both)
- Scary speeds (the need to cover syllabus content more rapidly)
- More traffic-lights (short-term planning, policy changes, funding uncertainties)
- Tired drivers (increased workload, decreased morale)
- More oil needed (funding)
- Better maps needed (continuity and direction need improving)
The drivers are struggling …
- Less training (less time and energy – and funding – for educational development).
- Sudden bends (short-term crisis management in universities)
- Rapid changeovers (new practices being introduced without adequate preparation).
- Greater competition (between institutions, between staff, and between students).
- Fewer prizes (less rewards for best practice in teaching or assessment).
- More unsigned crossroads (greater uncertainty of purpose or rationale).
Recommendations to be implemented:
The process of assessing students.
Pre-Assessment Procedures:
1 - Choosing the activities
2 - Gathering information.
3 - Setting time (Daily basis/weekly basis).
4 - Taking Decisions.
Tools: Portfolio Assessment: Systematic and organized.
Performance Assessment: Assessing on going activities.
However, every teacher should be aware of the following:
- Make explicit the nature and demands of exams from the very beginning of the course.
- Involve students in marking.
- Distribute a marking grid to students, so that they will know how the marks will be distributed.
- Set questions based on realistic problems.
- Write, discus and improve criteria and marking schemes, relating them to each individual question.
- Use written exams to test the ability to write a coherent, sustained, reasoned argument.
- Make exams short enough to enable marking with ample feedback.
- Design questions which examine student's ability to think/ argue/ analyze, rather than recall.
- Provide greater choice of questions, no time limit.
- Use an exam as one form of assessment within a range, rather than the only means of assessment.
Post Assessment Procedures:
- Pinpointing gaps
- Identifying problem areas
- Determining the remedial source
- Finding appropriate solution
- Implementing reinforcement courses
- Follow up through make-up exams
Assessment Data:
- Agenda to set time intervals
- Documentation
- Concrete data for parents
- Meeting with parents
- Follow-up activities
Evaluation:
- Diagnostic Evaluation: Before setting objectives
- Formative Evaluation: Between activities.
- Summative Evaluation: Reaching the objectives.
|
