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Monday, September 25, 2023

Define Classroom Assessment | Characteristics of Classroom Assessment | Educational Assessment and Evaluation

 QUESTION  

What is classroom assessment? What are the characteristics of classroom assessment

CourseEducational Assessment and Evaluation

Course code 8602

Level: B.Ed Solved Assignment 

ANSWER 

Classroom Assessment

Kizlik (2011) defines assessment as a process by which information is obtained relative to some known objective or goal. Assessment is a broad term that includes testing. For example, a teacher may assess the knowledge of the English language through a test and assess the language proficiency of the students through any other instrument for example oral quiz or presentation. Based upon this view, we can say that every test is an assessment but every assessment is not the test. The term ‘assessment’ is derived from the Latin word ‘assidere’ which means ‘to sit beside’. In contrast to testing, the tone of the term assessment is non-threatening indicating a partnership based on mutual trust and understanding. This emphasizes that there should be a positive rather than a negative association between assessment and the process of teaching and learning in schools. In the broadest sense assessment is concerned with children’s progress and achievement. In a comprehensive and specific way, classroom assessment may be defined as the process of gathering, recording, interpreting, using, and communicating information about a child’s progress and achievement during the development of knowledge, concepts, skills, and attitudes. (NCCA, 2004) In short, we can say that assessment entails much more than testing. It is an ongoing process that includes many formal and informal activities designed to monitor and improve teaching and learning.

 

Characteristics of Classroom Assessment

1. Effective assessment of student learning begins with educational goals.

Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve. Educational values/ goals should drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.

 

2.  Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.

 Learning is a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but also values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance beyond the classroom. Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate picture of learning, and therefore, a firm base for improving our students' educational experience.

 

3. Assessment works best when it has clear, explicitly stated purposes.

Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations -- those derived from the institution's mission, from faculty intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus towards clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful.


4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.

Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students "end up" matters greatly. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way -- about the curricula, teaching, and kind of student effort that leads to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.

 

5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not episodic.

Assessment is a process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, a "one-shot" assessment can be better than none, improvement is best fostered when assessment entails a linked series of activities undertaken over time. This may mean tracking the process of individual students, or of cohorts of students; it may mean collecting the same examples of student performance or using the same instrument semester after semester. The point is to monitor progress toward intended goals in a spirit of continuous improvement. Along the way, the assessment process itself should be evaluated and refined in light of emerging insights.

 

6. Assessment is effective when representatives from across the educational community are involved.

Student education is a campus-wide liability, and assessment is a way of acting out that responsibility. Thus, while assessment attempts may start small, the aim over time is to involve people from across the educational community. Faculty plays an important role, but assessment questions can't be fully addressed without participation by educators, librarians, administrators, and students. Assessment may also involve individuals from beyond the campus (alumni/ae, trustees, employers) whose experience can enrich the sense of appropriate aims and standards for learning. Thus understood, assessment is not a task for small groups of experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider, better[1]informed attention to student learning by all parties with a stake in its improvement.

 

7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.

Assessment recognizes the value of information in the process of improvement. But to be useful, information must be connected to issues or questions that people really care about. This implies assessment approaches that produce evidence that relevant parties will find credible, suggestive, and applicable to decisions that need to be made. It means thinking in advance about how the information will be used, and by whom. The point of assessment is not to collect data and return "results"; it is a process that starts with the questions of decision-makers, involves them in the gathering and interpreting of data, and informs and helps guide continuous improvement.

 

8. Through effective assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.

 There is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a responsibility to the public that supports or depends on us to provide information about the ways in which our students meet goals and expectations. But that responsibility goes beyond the reporting of such information; our deeper obligation -- to ourselves, our students, and society -- is to improve. Those to whom educators are accountable have a corresponding obligation to support such attempts at improvement. (American Association for Higher Education; 2003)


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