COURSE: Educational Measurement and Evaluation (6507) Assignment No 1
COURSE: Educational Measurement and Evaluation (6507) Assignment No 1
ASSIGNMENT NO 1
differentiate between formative and summative assessment in the light of their importance
ANS: Assessment is a systematic process of gathering information about what a student knows,
is able to do, and is learning to do. Assessment information provides the foundation for decision-
making and planning for instruction and learning. Assessment is an integral part of instruction
that enhances, empowers, and celebrates student learning. Using a variety of assessment
techniques, teachers gather information about what students know and are able to do, and
provide positive, supportive feedback to students. They also use this information to diagnose
individual needs and to improve their instructional programs, which in turn helps students learn
more effectively. Assessment must be considered during the planning stage of instruction when
learning outcomes and teaching methods are being targeted. It is a continuous activity, not
something to be dealt with only at the end of a unit of study. Students should be made aware of
the expected outcomes of the course and the procedures to be used in assessing performance
relative to the learning outcomes. Students can gradually become more actively involved in the
assessment process in order to develop lifelong learning skills. Evaluation refers to the decision
making which follows assessment. Evaluation is a judgment regarding the quality, value, or
standards. Evaluation should reflect the intended learning outcomes of the curriculum and be
consistent with the approach used to teach the language in the classroom. But it should also be
given opportunities to demonstrate the full extent of their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Evaluation is also used for reporting progress to parents or guardians, and for making decisions
related to such things as student promotion and awards Diagnostic assessment may occur at the
beginning of a term or a unit of study, or whenever information about the prior learning of a
assessment, etc.) may be used to collect that information. Teachers may use diagnostic
assessment to ! find out what students know and can do ! identify student strengths and plan
instruction which builds on and extends those strengths ! target difficulties, identify the precise
nature of them, and plan instruction to meet those difficulties ! make informed decisions
regarding where to focus instructional time and effort Formative assessment is similar to
diagnostic assessment but differs in that it provides ongoing feedback to the teacher about the
selectively to accomplish one or more of the following purposes: ! monitor student learning and
provide feedback to students and parents ! identify areas of growth ! motivate students and
provide incentive to study ! help focus attention and effort ! emphasize what is important to learn
! provide practice in applying, demonstrating, and extending knowledge, skills, and attitudes !
encourage goal-setting and monitor achievement of goals ! reflect on program structure and
effectiveness, and modify or adjust teaching as necessary Summative assessment occurs most
often at the end of a unit of study. The primary purposes are to determine the knowledge, skills,
and attitudes that have developed over a period of time, to summarize student progress.
in the same way. So let’s take a look at the biggest differences between them.
QNO2: Elaborate the concept of Reliability of a test, also explain different measure to
ANS: Test reliablility refers to the degree to which a test is consistent and stable in
consistent within itself and across time. To understand the basics of test reliability,
think of a bathroom scale that gave you drastically different readings every time you
stepped on it regardless of whether your had gained or lost weight. If such a scale
existed, it would be considered not reliable. Whenever a person takes a test, several factors
influence the test taker’s score. The most important factor (and usually the one with the greatest
influence) is the extent to which the test taker has the knowledge and skills that the test is
supposed to measure. But the test taker’s score will often depend to some extent on other kinds
of knowledge and skills, that the test is not supposed to measure. Reading ability and writing
ability often influence students’ scores on tests that are not intended to measure those abilities.
Another influence is the collection of skills we call “testwiseness.” One such skill is using testing
time efficiently. Another is knowing when and how to guess on a multiple-choice test. A kind of
test-wiseness that is often useful on an essay test is knowing how to include relevant knowledge
you have, for which the question does not specifically ask. One factor that can influence a test
score is the test taker’s alertness and concentration on the day of the test. In test taking, as in
many other activities, most people perform better on some days than on others. If you take a test
would be if you took it on a day when you were drowsy or distracted. On most tests, the
questions or problems that the test taker is confronted with are not the only ones that could have
been included. Different editions of the test include different questions or problems intended to
measure the same kinds of knowledge or skill. At some point in your education, you have
probably been lucky enough to take a test that just happened to ask about the things you knew.
And you have probably had the frustrating experience of taking a test that happened to include
questions about several specific things you did not know. Very few test takers (if any) would
perform equally well on any set of questions that the test could include. A test taker who is
strong in the abilities the test is measuring will perform well on any edition of the test—but not
equally well on every edition of the test. When a classroom teacher gives the students an essay
test, typically there is only one rater—the teacher. That rater usually is the only user of the scores
and is not concerned about whether the ratings would be consistent with those of another rater.
But when an essay test is part of a large-scale testing program, the test takers’ essays will not all
be scored by the same rater. Raters in those programs are trained to apply a single set of criteria
and standards in rating the essays. Still, a test taker’s essay might be scored by a rater who
especially likes that test taker’s writing style or approach to that particular question. Or it might
be scored by a rater who particularly dislikes the test taker’s style or approach. In either case, the
rater’s reaction is likely to influence the rating. Therefore, a test taker’s score can depend on
which raters happened to score that test taker’s essays. This factor affects any test that is scored
by a process that involves judgment. We cannot do much to reduce the effect of day-to-day
differences in a test taker’s concentration and alertness (beyond advising test takers not to be
tired or hungry on the day of the test). We could reduce the effect of these differences if we
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would not be practical for most tests. On most tests that have important consequences for the test
taker, test takers who think their performance was unusually weak can retake the test, usually
after waiting a specified time. There are some things we can do to reduce the effect of the
specific selection of questions or problems presented to the test taker. We can create detailed
specifications for the content and format of the test questions or problems, so that the questions
on different forms will measure the same set of knowledge and skills. We can avoid reporting
scores based on only a few multiplechoice questions or problems. And we can adjust the scores
to compensate for differences in the overall difficulty of the questions on different editions of the
test.1 But we cannot make the different editions of a test equally difficult for each individual test
taker. There are also some things we can do to reduce the effect of the specific selection of raters
who score a test taker’s essays, performance samples, or other responses. We can create explicit
scoring instructions, so that all the raters will use the same criteria. We can train the raters
thoroughly, with carefully chosen examples of responses to score, so that all the raters will use
the same standards in deciding what rating to award. We can test the raters by having them rate
essays that have previously been rated by expert raters, and we can require a certain level of
accuracy before we allow them to rate operationally. We can monitor the raters’ performance,
comparing ratings they award with ratings awarded to the same responses by expert raters. We
can provide additional training for raters whose ratings do not agree closely with the experts’
ratings, and we can replace those raters for whom the retraining is not successful. But we cannot
get all raters to agree about the appropriate rating for every response. For some kinds of tests, we
can get close to this ideal of perfect agreement, but for others, we cannot.
ANS: The term learning means changes in our behavior, attitude, knowledge and skills. In other
wards we can say that through learning we can feel permanently changes in our self. If we are
not feeling any changes in our above skills then it will not be called as learning. The learning is a
type of reinforcement, which may learn a change in behavior enduring by strengthening and
1. Audience- Audience is the target of learning objective and the audience character.
2. Behavior - Behavior is expected from the learner to show the audience has learn something
1. The learning objective should identify a learning outcomes – The main objective of learning is
reflection. The objective needs to state what the learner is to perform, not how the learn lesson.
2. The learning objective should be consistent with course goal – it is necessary that the learning
objective should be consistent with the course goal. When objective and goals are not consistent
3. The learning objective should be precious:- Its some have difficulties to strike a balance
between too much and too little precious in an objective. There should be a free line between
choosing objective that reflects an important and meaningful outcome of instructions and
objective. To make the objective of learning the affective steps are as under:
- Present material listed in lesson plans and follows the general outline.
- Use following traits and techniques while conducting instruction: flexibility, spontaneity,
provides empathy, and compassion uses good questioning techniques, is an active listener, gets
Knowledge, Understanding, application and creativity can be used as criteria for selecting the
1) Knowledge Objectives: This objective is achieved to develop the recall and recognition
abilities .it is the lowest learning objective and concerns with the environment of objects. The
reward, praise, punishment and reproof techniques of motivation may be employed to achieve
knowledge objective. The concrete form of motivation is effective for this purpose.
abilities of seeing relationship, discrimination, cite example and generalization, the environment
and content both are equally important for providing appropriate learning experiences to the
students. The praise, success, punishment and failure techniques of motivation can assist in
reasoning, hypothesizing, inferring, and prediction. The perception and expectancies of the
students play the significant role. The success and failure, cooperation and competition
knowledge of results and attitude, techniques of motivation can help in realizing the objective of
application
QNO4: Elaborate the different techniques for the measurement of attitude of the learners
ANS: Perhaps the most straightforward way of finding out about someone’s attitudes would be
to ask them. However, attitudes are related to self-image and social acceptance.
desirability. They may not well tell about their true attitudes, but answer in a way that they feel
socially acceptable.
Given this problem, various methods of measuring attitudes have been developed. However, all
of them have limitations. In particular the different measures focus on different components of
necessarily coincide.
Semantic Differential
The semantic differential technique of Osgood et al. (1957) asks a person to rate an issue or topic
on a standard set of bipolar adjectives (i.e. with opposite meanings), each representing a seven
point scale.
To prepare a semantic differential scale, you must first think of a number of words with opposite
For example, participants are given a word, for example 'car', and presented with a variety of
adjectives to describe it. Respondents tick to indicate how they feel about what is being
measured.
In the picture (above), you can find Osgood's map of people's ratings for the word 'polite'. The
image shows ten of the scales used by Osgood. The image maps the average responses of two
• Evaluation is concerned with whether a person thinks positively or negatively about the
• Potency is concerned with how powerful the topic is for the person (e.g. cruel – kind, and
strong - weak).
• Activity is concerned with whether the topic is seen as active or passive (e.g. active –
passive).
Using this information we can see if a persons feeling (evaluation) towards an object is
consistent with their behavior. For example, a place might like the taste of chocolate
The evaluation dimension has been most used by social psychologists as a measure of a person’s
attitude. However, as anyone who has every “faked” an attitude scales knows there are
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Socially desirability refers to the tendency for people to give “socially desirable” to the
questionnaire items. People are often motivated to give replies that make them appear “well
adjusted”, unprejudiced, open minded and democratic. Self report scales that measure attitudes
towards race, religion, sex etc. are heavily affected by socially desirability bias.
Respondents who harbor a negative attitude towards a particular group may not wish be admit to
the experimenter (or to themselves) that they have these feelings. Consequently, responses on
functioning can be assessed. The test can be used to evaluate children and adolescents for a
variety of purposes (e.g. self-image, family relationships, cognitive ability and personality).
A projective test is one in which a test taker responds to or provides ambiguous, abstract, or
While other projective tests, such as the Rorschach Technique and Thematic Apperception
Test, ask the test taker to interpret existing pictures, figure drawing tests require the test taker to
create the pictures themselves. In most cases, figure drawing tests are given to children. This is
because it is a simple, manageable task that children can relate to and enjoy.
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The major criticism of indirect methods is their lack of objectivity. Such methods are unscientific
and do not objectively measure attitudes in the same way as a Likert scale.
There is also the ethical problem of deception as often the person does not know that their
The advantages of such indirect techniques of attitude measurement are that they are less likely
to produce socially desirable responses, the person is unlikely to guess what is being measured
QNO5 (a): Describe the role of test and other assessment techniques for improving
ANS: Large-scale assessments, like all assessments, are designed for a specific purpose. Those
used in most states today are designed to rank-order schools and students for the purposes of
accountability—and some do so fairly well. But assessments designed for ranking are generally
not good instruments for helping teachers improve their instruction or modify their approach to
individual students. First, students take them at the end of the school year, when most
instructional activities are near completion. Second, teachers don't receive the results until two or
three months later, by which time their students have usually moved on to other teachers. And
third, the results that teachers receive usually lack the level of detail needed to target specific
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writing assignments, and other assessments that teachers administer on a regular basis in their
classrooms. Teachers trust the results from these assessments because of their direct relation to
classroom instructional goals. Plus, results are immediate and easy to analyze at the individual
student level. To use classroom assessments to make improvements, however, teachers must
change both their view of assessments and their interpretation of results. Specifically, they need
to see their assessments as an integral part of the instruction process and as crucial for helping
students learn.
Despite the importance of assessments in education today, few teachers receive much formal
training in assessment design or analysis. A recent survey showed, for example, that fewer than
half the states require competence in assessment for licensure as a teacher (Stiggins, 1999).
Lacking specific training, teachers rely heavily on the assessments offered by the publisher of
their textbooks or instructional materials. When no suitable assessments are available, teachers
construct their own in a haphazard fashion, with questions and essay prompts similar to the ones
that their teachers used. They treat assessments as evaluation devices to administer when
instructional activities are completed and to use primarily for assigning students' grades.
To use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their
For Students
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assessment, only to discover that the material that he or she had studied was different from what
the teacher chose to emphasize on the assessment. This experience teaches students two un-
fortunate lessons. First, students realize that hard work and effort don't pay off in school because
the time and effort that they spent studying had little or no influence on the results. And second,
they learn that they cannot trust their teachers (Guskey, 2000a). These are hardly the lessons that
Nonetheless, this experience is common because many teachers still mistakenly believe that they
must keep their assessments secret. As a result, students come to regard assessments as guessing
games, especially from the middle grades on. They view success as depending on how well they
can guess what their teachers will ask on quizzes, tests, and other assessments. Some teachers
even take pride in their ability to out-guess students. They ask questions about isolated concepts
or obscure understandings just to see whether students are reading carefully. Generally, these
teachers don't include such “gotcha” questions maliciously, but rather—often unconsciously—
because such questions were asked of them when they were students.
Classroom assessments that serve as meaningful sources of information don't surprise students.
Instead, these assessments reflect the concepts and skills that the teacher emphasized in class,
along with the teacher's clear criteria for judging students' performance. These concepts, skills,
and criteria align with the teacher's instructional activities and, ideally, with state or district
standards. Students see these assessments as fair measures of important learning goals. Teachers
facilitate learning by providing students with important feedback on their learning progress and
by helping them identify learning problems (Bloom, Madaus, & Hastings, 1981; Stiggins, 2002).
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is, What determines the content and methods of teaching? If the test is the primary determinant
of what teachers teach and how they teach it, then we are indeed “teaching to the test.” But if
desired learning goals are the foundation of students' instructional experiences, then assessments
of student learning are simply extensions of those same goals. Instead of “teaching to the test,”
teachers are more accurately “testing what they teach.” If a concept or skill is important enough
to assess, then it should be important enough to teach. And if it is not important enough to teach,
QNO5 (b): Develop and achievement test by including selection type test items and supply
type test items. Give justification for use of both types of test items.
Objective type test items are highly structured test items. It requires the pupils to supply a word
or two or to select the correct answer from a number of alternatives. The answer of the item is
fixed one. Objective type items are most efficient to measure different instructional objectives.
Objective type tests are also called as ‘new type tests’. These are designed to overcome some of
Objective type tests have proved their usefulness in the following way:
items.
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it is predetermined. So that different persons scoring the answer script arrives at the same result.
c. It is easy to score. Scoring is made with the help of scoring key or a scoring stencil. So that
d. It is easy to administer.
f. It is time saving.
h. It is highly reliable.
Supply type items are those in which answers are not given in the question. The students supply
their answer in the form of a word, phrase, number or symbol. These items are also called as
According to the method of presentation of the problem these items can be divided into two
types viz.,
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Example:
In which year the first battle of Panipath was fought? 1526 A.D.
2. Completion type:
The first battle of Panipath was fought in the year 1526 AD.
In the first case the pupil has to recall a response from his past experience to a direct question.
These type of questions are useful in mathematics and physical science. But in the second case
the pupil may be asked to supply a word or words missing from a sentence. So in completion
type a series of statements are given in which certain important words or phrases have been
omitted and blanks are supplied for the pupils to fill in.
If the recall type items are constructed with the following principles then it will be more effective
1. The statement of the item should be so worded that the answer will be brief and specific:
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While formulating the statements of the true false items the following principles should be
followed. So that the items will be free from ambiguity and unintentional clues.
1. Determiners that are likely to be associated with a true or false statement must be
avoided:
Broad general statements like usually, generally, often and sometimes give a clue that the
statements may be true. Statements like always, never, all, none and only which generally appear
The statements having little significance sometimes compel the students to remember minute
1. True false items are useful to measure varied instructional objectives. Some of the common
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of terms etc. True false items are useful in measuring the ability to distinguish facts from
opinion.
3. It is useful to measure knowledge concerning the beliefs held by an individual or the values
4. True false items are useful to measure the understanding of cause and effect relationship.
a. True-false items provide a simple and direct means of measuring essential outcomes.
b. All the important learning outcomes can be tested equally well with true-false items like other
c. The probability of an examinee achieving a high score on a true false test by guessing blindly
is extremely low.
f. It is easy to construct.
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