The Purpose of Assessment

Purposes of Assessment
■ Diagnose students strengths and needs
■ Provide feedback on student learning
■ Provide a basis for instructional placement
■ Inform and guide instruction
■ Communicate learning expectations
■ Motivate and focus students’ attention
and effort
■ Provide practice applying knowledge and
skills
■ Provide a basis for evaluation for the
purpose of:
■ Grading
■ Promotion/graduation

■ Program admission/selection

■ Gauge program effectiveness

 Informal and Formal Assessment
■ Informal assessment can take a number
of forms:
■ unplanned comments, verbal feedback to students,
observing students perform a task or work in
small groups, and so on.
■ Formal assessment are exercises or
procedures which are:
■ systematic
■ give students and teachers an appraisal of students’
achievement such as tests.
 Traditional Assessment
■ Multiple-choice
■ True-false

■ Matching

■ Norm-referenced and criterion referenced tests

 Authentic Assessment
■ Authentic assessment
■ reflects staudent learning, achievement,
motivation, and attitudes on instructionally
relevant classroom activities (O’Malley & Valdez,
1996).
■ Examples:
■ performance assessment
■ portfolios

■ self-assessment
 Assessment Instruments
Pre- Formative (ongoing) Summative
assessment (final)
(diagnostic)
Quizzes Teacher-made test
Pretests
Discussion Portfolios
Observation
Journals/logs sAssignments Projects
s
Discussions Projects Standardized tests
Questionnaire Observations
s Interviews Portfolios
Journal logs
Standardized tests