PAPER – XVIII: Assessment for Learning (MAX MARKS 100. EXT 70.
INT30)
SECTION-A
(i) Assessment and Evaluation: meaning of assessment and evaluation ,
purpose; diagnostic, formative and summative evaluation.
(ii) Tools of assessment : assignments, projects, tests: objective and essay type-
their merits and limitations, kinds of test items, oral testing.
(iii) Continuous and comprehensive evaluation: concept, significance, merits
and limitations.
SECTION-B
(i) Statistical tools and techniques: percentage, percentile rank, graphical
presentation of performance, frequency distribution, central tendency
measures- mean, median and mode; normal distribution and standard scores.
(ii) Examination Reforms: flexibility, quality and range of questions, school
based credit, alternative modes of examination.
Assessment and Evaluation: meaning of assessment and evaluation , purpose;
diagnostic, formative and summative evaluation.
Assessment is classroom research to provide useful feedback for the improvement
of teaching and learning. Assessment is feedback from the student to the instructor
about the student’s learning.
Evaluation uses methods and measures to judge student learning and understanding
of the material for purposes of grading and reporting. Evaluation is feedback from
the instructor to the student about the student’s learning.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT: Learner-Centered,
Teacher-Directed, Mutually Beneficial, Formative, Context-Specific, Ongoing,
Builds on Good Teaching Practices.
METHODS OF EVALUATION: • Quizzes • Exams • Worksheets • Clinical
Evaluations • Papers • Projects: Group and Individual • Skills and
Competencies/Practical Exam • Graded Assignments of all formats.
Purpose: Add Blooms taxonomy, different types of developments (Emotional,
Physical, Social, Cognitive, Language, Moral.)
Features of Formative Assessment:
1. diagnostic and remedial.
2. makes the provision for effective feedback.
3. provides the platform for the active involvement of students in their own
learning.
4. enables teachers to adjust teaching to take account of the results of assessment.
5. recognizes the profound influence assessment has on the motivation and self-
esteem of students, both of which are crucial and influences learning.
6. recognizes the need for students to be able to assess themselves and understand
how to improve.
7. builds on students’ prior knowledge and experience in designing what is taught.
8. incorporates varied learning styles into deciding how and what to teach.
9. encourages students to understand the criteria that will be used to judge their
work.
10. offers an opportunity to students to improve their work after feedback.
11. helps students to support their peers, and expect to be supported by them.
Tools of Evaluation(For Formative Evaluation):
1. Day to Day observation.
2. Oral work(Question answer, loud reading, dailogues/conversation, roleplay,
interview, group discussion, etc.).
3. Practical / Experiments.
4. Activity(Individual, Group, Self Study).
5. Projects.
6. Tests(Informal small duration written tests, open book, etc.).
7. Home work/ Class work(Informative, descriptive, essay, report, story, letter,
dailogue, expressing imagination, etc.).
8. Others( Questionnaire, self evaluation, peer evaluation, group work and other
similar tool).
Tools of Assessment : assignments, projects, tests: objective and essay type-
their merits and limitations, kinds of test items, oral testing.
1. Standardized Exams (Commercial)
Advantages: • Convenient • Can be adopted and implemented quickly. • Reduces
or eliminates faculty time demands in instrument development and grading. • Are
scored objectively. • Provide for external validity. • Provide reference group
measures. • Can make longitudinal comparisons. • Can test large numbers of
students.
Disadvantages: • Measures relatively superficial knowledge or learning. • Unlikely
to match the specific goals and objectives of a program/institution • Norm-
referenced data may be less useful than criterion-referenced. • May be cost
prohibitive to administer as a pre- and post-test. • More summative than formative
(may be difficult to isolate what changes are needed). • Norm data may be user
norms rather than true national sample. • May be difficult to receive results in a
timely manner.
2. Locally Developed Exams
Advantage:s • Can be tailored to match program and institutional objectives. •
Specific criteria for performance can be established in relation to the curriculum. •
Can be used to develop locally meaningful norms. • Can obtain results more
quickly. • Cheaper than commercial exams. • Easier to use in a pre- and post-test
approach. • May be embedded in specific course.
Disadvantages: • Complex and time consuming to develop psychometrically valid
exams. • More costly in time and effort. • Requires considerable leadership and
coordination. • May hinder curriculum change if it means that exam would have to
be revised. • Vulnerable to student theft and distribution. • Results not can not be
generalized beyond the program or institution.
3. Performance Measures
Types: • Essays • Oral presentations • Oral exams • Exhibitions • Demonstrations •
Performances • Products • Research papers • Poster presentations • Capstone
experiences • Practical exams • Supervised internships & practicums.
5. Portfolios
Types of Portfolios: • Learning Portfolios • Assessment Portfolios • Marketing
Portfolios • Job Portfolios • Showcase Portfolios • Performance Portfolios •
Personal Portfolios • Proficiency/Competency Portfolios • Process Portfolios •
Developmental Portfolios • Hybrid Portfolios
Qualities of a good test:-
The four characteristics are: 1. Reliability 2. Validity 3. Objectivity 4. Usability.
Continuous and comprehensive evaluation: concept, significance, merits and
limitations.
CCE or Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation is a process of evaluating
the child’s development in all the school-related activities. This proposal was
directed under the Right to Education Act in 2009 by the Central Board of
Secondary Education of India and the state governments in India.Using CCE,
teachers can diagnose learners' deficiencies using a variety of assessment activities.
After completing the assessment activities, learners are given valuable feedback.
The teacher guides and supports them to identify the problems.
Objective
• Cognitive abilities • Affective abilities • Psychomotor abilities.
Aim
• Evaluate and guide the students in all • Encourage regular assessment and
aspects of education constructive criticism
• Improve learning outcomes by • Reduce stress and pressure on
focusing on skills and cognitive students
abilities of students
• Enable the instructors with prolific
teaching
Features
• Enables effective teaching • Creates good attitude and imbibes
good values in students
• Conducts continuous assessment of
student progress • Helps to improve Scholastic as well as
Co-Scholastic growth
• Helps to create teaching-learning
plans for future • Encourages all round development of
the students
Aspects
A) Scholastic Assessment (Blooms Taxonomy)Knowledge, Comprehension,
Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation
B) Co-Scholastic Assessment
Life Skills Attitude Co-Curricular Activities
Self-awareness Self-report inventories Debates
Critical and Creative thinking Attitude scales Sports competition
Decision making Survey Cultural programs
Problem-solving Interview Story writing
Interpersonal relationship skills The biographical and essay methods Drama club
Effective communication Projective tests Yoga
Coping with stress Error-choice techniques Drawing
Coping with emotions Indirect observation
Functions
• Helps in the development of new and effective teaching strategies
• Aids regular assessment to understand student’s progress
• Helps to understand the weaknesses and strengths of students
• Enables the teacher to understand problems faced by students and make changes in
teaching techniques
• Encourages self-assessment among the students
• Helps students to develop good habits, work on their weaknesses and correct the
errors
• It gives an idea about the change in student’s attitudes and values
• It gives reports about student’s progress over a period of time
How Does Continuous And Comprehensive Evaluation Help A Classroom
Teacher?
• Helps the teachers to understand student’s learning style
• Helps them to understand the problems faced by students collectively
• Encourages them to try different teaching techniques for better results
• Offers insights about the patterns in which students are learning
• Enables them to guide the students on exact pain points
Limitation
• The grading system is its biggest disadvantage because students scoring 90 and
99marks are both kept in Grade A+. There is no segregation
• Grouping together of a large number of students is another disadvantage
• A lot of people argue that CCE makes the students take their boards lightly
• Students are forced to study all round the year, which in a way, is like giving no
rest to them. Each and every activity is monitored constantly
• The internal exam papers are evaluated by school teachers, which means that there
is a huge possibility of favoritism
• Endless projects and students’ dependency on the Internet is hampering their
creativity in a way, with no outside knowledge
• The students have a casual approach towards re-evaluation as this option is readily
available for them
• There has been an introduction of language labs for conducting listening and
speaking classes in Hindi and English. However, a lot of schools do not have the
infrastructure and facility for the same
Statistical tools and techniques: percentage, percentile rank, graphical
presentation of performance, frequency distribution, central tendency
measures- mean, median and mode; normal distribution and standard scores.
Examination Reforms: flexibility, quality and range of questions, school based
credit, alternative modes of examination.
Exam Reform: Why is it needed?
a) Because Indian school board exams are largely inappropriate for the ‘knowledge
society’ of the 21st century and its need for innovative problem-solvers.
b) Because they do not serve the needs of social justice.
c) Because the quality of question papers is low. They usually call for rote
memorization and fail to test higher-order skills like reasoning and analysis, let
alone lateral thinking, creativity, and judgment.
d) Because they are inflexible. Based on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ principle, they make
no allowance for different types of learners and learning environments.
e) Because they induce an inordinate level of anxiety and stress. In addition to
widespread trauma, mass media and psychological counselors report a growing
number of exam-induced suicides and nervous breakdowns.
f) Because while a number of boards use good practices in pre-exam and exam
management there remain several glaring shortfalls at several boards.
g) Because there is often a lack of full disclosure and transparency in grading and
mark/grade reporting.
h) Because there is need for a functional and reliable system of school-based
evaluation.
THE LONG-TERM VISION FOR EXAM REFORM
Finally, it should be noted that what we recommend below are short-term and
medium-term improvements to an exam system whose roots lie in nineteenth
century colonialism1 . Ironing out its flaws will bring us, belatedly, into the mid or
latetwentieth century, but hardly into the twenty-first. In the long term (about a
decade), we envision a vastly different system built upon entirely new foundations.
This system would not just pay lip service to teacher empowerment but actually
trust him/her to be the primary evaluator of her students (while building in
safeguards such as external moderation and scaling by boards). This would also not
be a one-shot measure but a continuous process. It would extend beyond the
cognitive domain and beyond pen and paper, and, hopefully, be seen by all not as a
burden but as a tool for diagnosis and further learning. In this system, the primary
role of boards would change radically—from direct testing at present to careful and
rigorous validation of school-based, teacher-conducted, assessment. If any direct
testing by boards were still to be needed, it would be of a very different type—
optional, open-book, and on-demand. Implementing this vision will require a lot of
education of all stakeholders, and a lot of re-training. It will need time, and above
all it will need strong political will—there are several entrenched interests for
which such learner-oriented change would be fatal.
The short-term and medium-term reforms outlined below, therefore, should be
seen as important not so much in themselves as for laying some of the groundwork
for this more radical longterm change. We recognize that conventional exams can
only be dropped when tested alternatives are in place, and we propose, at the end
of this paper, some pilot projects for testing these alternatives. Meanwhile, it is
imperative that conventional board exams do not extend themselves to other
grades. Under no circumstances should board exams be extended to other grades
such as the 11th, 8th, and 5th —and news that some state boards have initiated
such exams cause us grave apprehension. Indeed, it is our view that the tenth grade
board exam be made optional forthwith. Tenth-graders who intend to continue in
the eleventh grade at the same school, and do not need the board certificate for any
immediate purpose, should be free to take a schoolconducted exam instead of the
board exam.
What do Board Exams Test?
1) Repetition of identical (or very similar) questions from year to year (hence
playing into the hands of coaching classes)
2) Ambiguous phrasing of questions or questions phrased as ‘Write a note on…’
(both of which require students to pour out all they remember from the textbook on
that topic)
3) Inordinately lengthy (perhaps in an attempt, usually vain, to ‘cover’ all chapters
of the textbook), hence allowing little time for actual thought, and discriminating
against thoughtful reflection
4) Designed to test a detailed knowledge of the textbook (including trivia and/or
errors within it) rather than competencies and core concepts
Solutions
1. There should be more varied modes of assessment, including oral testing and
group work evaluation.
2. Do not expect everything of everybody in every subject.
3. Flexibility in when exams are taken.
4. Enhanced reporting of performance.
5. Choice of exam centers.
6. Exams should never be postponed.
7. Paper setting.
