University Students' Assessment Strategies Prof.Dr.Dawood A.Al-Hidabi President of UST,Yemen.

University Students' Assessment

Strategies

Prof.Dr.Dawood A.Al-Hidabi

President of UST,Yemen.

Workshop Targets

At the end of the workshop participants will be able to:

Explain the key concepts relevant to assessment' strategies.

State some of the learning targets at different levels.

Draft assessment items for some learning targets.

Learning Targets and Assessment

You need to: State objectives clearly. Conduct teaching and learning

effectively. Assess the quality of students’

achievement of objectives.

Learning objectives

A learning objective (target) specifies what you would like students to achieve at the completion of an instructional segment.

Learning targets help direct the instructional process.

Instruction is the process that you use to provide students with the conditions that help them achieve the learning targets.

They communicate the intent of instruction to all stakeholders.

They help teachers to construct learning activities.

Importance of specifying objectives

Importance of specifying objective (cont.)

They help lecturers to evaluate the success of their instruction.

They motivate students. Help lecturers to select assessment

procedures.

Learning targets are:

Cognitive: they deal primarily with intellectual knowledge and thinking skills.

Affective: They deal with how students should feel or what hey should value.

Psychomotor: they deal primarily with motor skills and physical perception.

Instruction involves:

Deciding what students are to learn (plan teaching effectively),

carrying out actual instruction (conduct teaching effectively)

and evaluating the learning (assess student outcomes validity).

Learning Goals:

They are stated in broad terms. They give directions and purpose to

planning overall educational activities. e. g

Every student should acquire skills in using scientific measurement.

General learning target:

They are derived from goals. They are more relevant to course

planning. e. g Acquire the skills needed to use

common instruments to measure length, volume, and mass in metric units.

Activity (1)

Write three course learning targets (objectives).

Specific learning target It is a clear statement about what students are

to achieve at the end of a unit of instruction. e. g

Measure the volume of liquids to the nearest tenth of a liter using a cylinder.

There is a danger in overly specific learning targets.

Activity (2)Write two unit learning targets.

Bloom's Taxonomies of learning targets:Cognitive learning targets1. Knowledge: recall.2. Comprehension: lowest understanding.3. Application: the use of abstractions in

concrete situations.4. Analysis: the break down of the topic into

elements.5. Synthesis: the putting of parts into a whole.6. Evaluation: judgment about the value.

Activity (3)

Write down an example for each type of cognitive objectives.

Taxonomies of Learning Targets:

1. Cognitive domain: focuses on knowledge and abilities requiring memory , thinking, and reasoning processes.

2. Affective domain: focuses on feelings, interests, attitudes, dispositions, and emotional states.

3. Psychomotor domain: focuses on motor skills.

Cognitive Domain Taxonomies

Bloom's Taxonomy:1. Knowledge: involves the recall. e g .

Concepts, principles, patterns, processes etc. e. g list….., recall…

2. Comprehension: the lowest level of understanding. e. g explain…,

3. Application: the use of abstraction in particular and concrete situations. e.g. relate the problems of the characters in the short stories you read to problems that real people face

Cognitive Domain Taxonomies (cont.)

4.Analysis: the breakdown of a communication in to its constituent parts.

5.Syntheses: the putting together of parts.

6.Evaluation: judgments about the value of material and methods for a given purposes. e. g develop 3 criteria for evaluating the quality of a story.

Assessment

Assessment is a broad term defined as a process for obtaining information that is used for making decision about students, curriculum and programs

When we say we are assessing a student's competence, we mean we are collecting information to help us to decide the degree to which the student has achieved the learning targets.

Assessment (cont.)

A large number of assessment techniques may be used to collect this information. These include formal and informal observation of students; paper and pencil tests; a student's performance on lab work, research papers, projects, and during oral questioning; and analysis of student's records.

Assessment (cont.)

Guidelines for Selecting and using Assessment:

Be clear about the learning targets you want to assess.

Be sure that the assessment techniques you select match each learning target.

Be sure to use multiple indicators of performance for each learning target.

Guidelines for Selecting and using Assessment: (cont.)

Make sure that you provide students with feedback.

Make sure to take into account the limitations of each technique.

A test

It is defined as an instrument for observing and describing one or more characteristics of a student using either a numerical scale or a classification scheme (narrower than assessment).

Measurement

It is defined as a procedure for assigning numbers (scores) to a specified attribute or characteristic of a person in such a way that the numbers describe the degree to which the person possesses the attribute.

Evaluation

It is defined as the process of making a value judgment about the student's product or performance .Evaluation may or may not be based on measurement or test results.

Why do we use assessment?

To make decisions about: Managing instruction: It involves

planning instructional activities, monitoring students' progress, diagnosing students' difficulties, giving feedback to students, deciding on one's own teaching effectiveness.

Why do we use assessment? (cont.)

Selecting decisions: e. g accepting or rejecting students.

Counseling and guidance decisions: helping students.

Certification decisions.

Authentic Assessment

Authentic Assessment is used to describe assessments that directly measure student's performance through real life tasks such as solving a problem or working in teams to solve a problem-based case.

Authentic assessment is also used to assess students' thinking.

Systematic observation

It requires lecturers to specify criteria in terms of the processes they are assigning and take notes based on the criteria.

By gathering data systematically while students are engaged in authentic learning activities, lecturers in a better position to assess students' strengths and weaknesses, and provide feedback.

Checklists

Teachers' can make their assessments of students' thinking systematic by using checklists.

Checklists are written descriptions of dimensions that must be present in an acceptable performance.

When checklists are used, the desired performances are typically checked off rather than described in notes.

For example

Directions: place a check in the blank for each step performed.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ

……..1.writes problem at the top of the report.

……..2.states hypothesis (es).

……..3.spysifies values for controlled variables.

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Rating scales

Rating scales are written descriptions of evaluative dimensions and contain scales of values on which each dimension is rated.

For example:

Directions: rate each of the following items by circling 4 for an excellent performance,3 for a good performance,2 for fair, 1 for poor, and 0 for nonexistent.

______________________________________________

4 3 2 1 0 1. States problem or question clearly and accurately.

4 3 2 1 0 2. States hypothesis that clearly answers the question.

______________________________________________ A case could be used as a tool to assess student's thinking.

Lecturers could also use different tools to assess students’ achievement of learning targets.

1. Completion and true- false items.

2. Multiple-choice and matching exercises.

3. Essay assessment.

4. Performance, portfolio and authentic assessment.

Classification of assessment

Based on timing:

1. Formative assessment: It is usually carried out during instruction in

order to assess student's progress and learning.

It should be used thought the entire instructional period to guide students learning and provide continuous feedback to help students shape their own behavior and improve heir learning.

2. Summative assessment:It is the final phase in an assessment program. It assesses the overall achievement.

Based on comparison:1. Norm-Referenced assessments:

They are used to discriminate among individuals. they rank and compare students on academic attainment.

Classification of assessment (cont.)

Classification of assessment (cont.)

2. Criterion-Referenced assessment: it assesses how well a particular student is achieving the objectives in a course. Standards are set in advance by the lecturer.

Performance Assessment

Assessment could be based on either Selected-Response Tests (require students to select the correct options from some provided options) or Constructed-Response Tests (students are required to construct their answers e.g. short answer or essay tests).

Performance assessment is defined as a procedure in which a lecturer uses work assignments or tasks to obtain information about how well a student has learned.

PA presents a hands-on task requiring students to do an activity that requires applying their knowledge and skills , and uses clearly defined criteria to evaluate how well the student has achieved this application.

PA is characterized by: Students construct rather than

select responses. Measuring both process and

product. Presenting authentic or real world

problems.

PA Components:1. Performance Task.2. Rubric for scoring.The performance task is an assessment

activity that requires a student to demonstrate his achievement by producing an extended written or spoken answer ,by engaging in group or individual activities or by creating a specific product.

A Scoring rubric is a coherent set of rules you use to assess the quality of student’s performance. The rules may be in the form of a rating scale or a checklist.

Types of Scoring rubrics:A general scoring rubric: guidelines for scoring

that apply across many different tasks not just one specific task (fast in scoring but limited feedback).

A specific scoring rubric: scoring scale that applies the general scoring framework to a particular task.( slower, construction is time consuming but good feedback).

Types of performance assessment

1. Structured ,on Demand tasks: The lecturer decide what and when materials should be used.a. paper-and-pencil tasks e.g solve this arithmetic story problem and explain how you solved it.b. Tasks requiring other equipment and resources e. g talk on this telephone to ask about the job and to request a job application.

2.Naturally Occurring performance task: it require a lecturer to observe and assess students in natural settings. eg. observe student’s way of dealing with conflicts on the play ground.

3.Long-term individual and group projects: long term activity that result in a student or students product. e.g collect and classify newspaper and magazine advertisements in the months before each holiday during the semester.

4.Portfolios: a limited collection of student’s work used either to present the student’s best work (s) or to demonstrate the student’s educational growth over a given time.a. Best work portfolio: student’s best works are selected to provide convincing evidence that the student has achieved learning target.

b.Growth and learning-progress portfolio: contains examples of a student’s work along with comments that demonstrate how well the student’s learning has progressed over a given period.

5.Demonstration: students show they can use knowledge and skills to complete a well-defined task. e. g demonstrate how to set up the microscope for viewing stained slides.

6.Experiments: students plans, conduct, and interprets the results of an empirical research study.

7.Oral presentation and dramatization.

Advantages of performance assessment

1. PA match complex learning targets.

2. PA assess the ability to do.3. PA linked to students’ centered

approaches in teaching and learning.

4. PA assess process and product.

Disadvantages of PA

1. Performance tasks are difficult to construct.

2. Scoring rubrics are difficult to draft.3. It takes long time to do the tasks

from students.4. Marking scoring rubrics take time

from the teacher.5. PA tasks don't assess all learning

targets.

Teams' Activities:

1. State three learning targets (objectives) for one of the courses you teach.

2. Select the most suitable assessment tools/strategies for your objectives.

3. Write down questions or tasks to assess these objectives.

4. Present your results to your participants.