Author: Ragena Mize

Faculty ToolBox -Something to consider...

Assessment Newsletter Ragena Mize Ext. 371 rmize@cloud.edu
Director of Assessment, Accreditation & Program Development

December 2014

There is a lot of buzz about assessment these days, assessment itself is nothing new. If you’ve ever
given an exam, led a discussion, or assigned a project – and used what you discovered about student learning to refine your teaching – you’ve engaged in assessment. Assessment is simply the process of collecting information (not data) about student learning and performance to
Improve & Enhance Education.
6 Common Misunderstandings about
Assessment of Learning
(From TeachThought.com)
1. Assessment and evaluation are the same.
Too many people, particularly those not employed in the field of education, conflate these two and too often within the field we evaluate student work and tell ourselves that what we’ve done is assessment. Assessment involves timely, detailed feedback based around clearly defined learning outcomes. Evaluation is “giving a grade” to a piece of work, usually based on normative criteria, but too often in comparison to the work of other students.
2. Most assessment is summative.
As we’ve learned over the past two decades or so assessment can be a very powerful learning tool in and of itself. As research has been saying for years, we need to constantly assess both student work and our own teaching, adjusting as we go, such that by the time we get to the end of a unit of study students have already had an opportunity to rethink and revise their work. There are still far too many teachers who rely too heavily on one single summative assessment at the end of each unit and then move onto another topic no matter the outcomes.
3. Assessment is one way communication, the teacher gives feedback on student work.
The most productive assessment should be a dialogue. In traditional assessment and evaluation models students complete a task, the teacher assesses the work and tells the student how they’ve done and, in formative cases, how to improve the work. But when students engage with the teacher to discuss work, talk about what they’ve done and why, both student and teacher stand to gain far more from the experience. Modern technology makes two way communication between teacher and student much easier and far more ubiquitous, let’s start using it more effectively.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES/EXAMPLES:
This link using the traditional Bloom’s Taxonomy, but it is from a community college on writing objectives and useful in helping instructors write objectives
http://teaching.uncc.edu/sites/teaching.uncc.edu/files/media/files/file/GoalsAndObjectives/BloomWritingObjectives.pdf
This link is great for integrating critical thinking into mathematics
http://www.math.toronto.edu/writing/BloomsTaxonomy.pdf
This link offers college teaching tips using Bloom’s Taxonomy http://collegeteachingtips.com/354/blooms-taxonomy
Crash Course on Bloom’s Taxonomy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fy5MUzdWMg
Explanation of Bloom’s & Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv-cL8dwaA0
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/147590378/How-to-Teach-Critical-Thinking

4. Assessment is for grading purposes.
This is one of the most pervasive and potentially damaging holdovers from bygone eras in education. Yes, final grades should reflect some of what has gone on between student and teacher regarding assessment. But the “collecting of marks” to arrive at the final grade is counterproductive in many ways, here are just two.
First, the collation marks too often includes work which was done before students had mastered the material. As has been said by others, when we redo things like driving tests we don’t “average” the results, why do we do this with school work. Secondly, every teacher, especially in secondary schools, is aware of how the pursuit of ‘marks’ often distracts students’ focus from the work at hand. This is doubly damaging because neuroscience is telling us that brains under stress from external stimuli can have significantly diminished learning capacity.
5. Student work should be given a grade or a mark.
In summative situations, or where grades/marks are necessary, this assertion is true. But too often we put a mark on student work when we’re hoping to use the work formatively, which is a mistake. As soon as students see a grade on a piece of work, be it a letter or number grade, the focus is immediately taken off of any meaningful feedback and, in the student’s mind, that piece of work is complete. It’s time to move on. No matter what the teacher intends grades imply a finality that’s hard to overcome in students’ minds.
6. If assignments are late, a teacher should deduct points.
There is no pedagogically defensible reason for doing this; this is simply trying to modify behavior using coercion through grades. There is nothing wrong with having some consequence for late work, but the assignment of grades (when necessary) should reflect student learning, nothing more. Put another way, if a student hands in work worthy of an A today, is that work somehow different if it were handed in tomorrow?
My experience as an administrator has been that when teachers rethink and reform their views about what assessment is about, and what its primary purposes are, their feedback is invariably positive. When we pry the “grade book” out of the collective hand of those in the teaching profession, and allow individual teachers the freedom to use assessment in more productive ways, we find that assessment becomes far more authentic and fruitful and far less about the drudgery (and judgment) of grading.
http://www.teachthought.com/learning/assessment/6-common-misunderstandings-about-assessment-of-learning/
PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS: Fun for yourself or within your class
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II: www.advisorteam.com/temperament_sorter/register.asp
This assessment is designed for college-bound students and adults. The personality test produces a brief summary of the user's temperament and career options matching the personality.
PERSONALITY PATHWAYS: www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html
This short online version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator gives test takers their 4-letter MBI code and descriptions of the 16 personality types.
The 9 TYPES: www.9types.com/rheti
Sample version of the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator allows users to explore which the 9 diagrams are most prominent in their personality, helping them to decide which work environments fit them best. (You need your 4-letter MBI code)

Assessment is an act of judging a condition, an event or a person. Assessment is carried out in various sectors like health assessment, educational assessment, political assessment, risk assessment etc. There are different types of assessments this article discusses ten types.
Formative assessments - used to monitor and update classroom instruction. There are different types of formative assessments which enable in assessing how students are performing.
Observation - Falls under the category of formative assessment in which students are observed when they work on a particular project. The teacher supports the students by encouraging them in the work. This observation helps to know how the students work individually and in groups.
Written short answer - This method contains small problems, short answers, and diagrams, it enables the students to express their thoughts and ideas.
Worksheets - May be class work or may be homework. This method determines how the student understands the material covered.
Multiple Choice assessment - multiple choice assessments contain a set of multiple choices or, or true / false questions, which help in assessing the understanding of the learners about the subject.
Journals - Is an effective means of formative assessment. In this students are asked to write their feelings and thoughts about how they are performing in the class. Students can also express their likes or dislikes about a particular assignment. This gives the information of how effective a certain lesson plan was.
Verbal questioning - Involves questions and answers on a specific topic, and helps in identifying the verbal skills of the learners.
Diagnostic Tests - Fall under the category of formative assessment that enables the teacher and administration to find out the proper level of instruction for students. Diagnostics may be used almost in any subject to assess the level of proficiency, understanding and mastery of information. Diagnostic tests help in determining their strong and weak areas in a subject.
Research projects - Involved in written explanation and practical work. Work should be analyzed and interpreted in different ways, like graphs and charts to explain what was discovered.
Class test - This is involved in assessing the written skills of the learners through small tests on a particular topic. Using the class test, the student’s subject understanding, and skills can be determined. It allows the teachers to guide the students effectively. http://www.sampleassessments.com/10-different-types-of-assessments.html
LEARNING
And
FEEDBACK

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy / Thinking Category	Sample Operational Verbs
REMEMBER / Retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory (lower level skills)	Articulate, Define, Find, Identify, Label, List, Locate, Name, Quote, Recall, Recognize, Reproduce, Retrieve
UNDERSTAND / Determining the meaning of instructional messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication (lower level)	Associate, Comment, Describe, Differentiate, Discuss, Explain, Express, Extend, Exemplify, Generalize, Illustrate, Interpret, Paraphrase, Predict, Report, Restate, Reword, Summarize, Translate
APPLY / Carrying out or using a procedure in a given situation	Carry out, Conduct, Compute, Dramatize, Employ, Execute, Experiment, Give Examples, Investigate, Use, Implement, Interview, Operate, Practice, Predict, Role-play, Solve, Transfer
ANALYZE / Breaking material into its constituent parts and detecting how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose	Attribute, Classify, Contrast, Compare, Deconstruct, Debate, Deduce, Diagram, Differentiate, Discriminate, Distinguish, Examine, Integrate, Organize, Outline, Relate, Research, Separate, Structure
EVALUATE / Making judgments based upon criteria and standards	Alpha/Beta Test, Appraise, Assess, Check, Conclude, Convince, Critique, Defend, Detect, Judge, Moderate, Monitor, Predict, Rate, Recommend, Support, Test
CREATE / Putting elements together to form a novel, coherent whole or make an original product	Assemble, Compose, Create, Choreograph, Construct, Design, Devise, Formulate, Generate, Invent, Make, Mix, Plan, Produce, Program, Set up, Remix