Student –

Centered
Classroom
Assessment
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 2

A DEFINITION OF STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT 2

FEATURES OF STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT. 3
WHAT IS FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT ? 4
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE 5
ASSESSMENT?
ASSESSING STUDENTS PASSION AND LEARNING STYLES 6

ASSESSING 21ST -CENTURY/SUCCESS SKILLS 6

FORMATIVE STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT AT THE CLASSROOM 8

LEVEL

SELF-ASSESSMENT 8

PEER ASSESSMENT 10

PORTFOLIOS 11

EXHIBITIONS 12

ASSESSMENT METHODS 15

CONSTRUCT AN ASSESSMENT SKELTON 17

SRANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT 18

CONCLUSION 19

REFERENCES 20

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 Ministry of Education ‫وزارة التربية‬
ELT General Supervision ‫التوجيه الفني العام للغة اإلنجليسية‬
School Year 2015 - 2016 2016 - 2015 ‫العام الدراسي‬

Student – Centered Classroom Assessment

" Assessment practices that provide opportunities for open-ended
responses and that enable youngsters to play to their strengths fly in the face of
assumptions about uniformity. . . . The good school . . . does not diminish individual
differences; it increases them. It raises the mean and increases the variance.”
—Elliot W. Eisner in “The Uses and Limits of Performance Assessment,” 1999

Introduction :
Student-centered assessment embodies sound assessment practices that can be
incorporated into any educational setting but are especially critical in student-
centered learning contexts, where active engagement in learning and responsibility
for the management of learning are core assumptions (Lea, Stephenson, & Troy
2003). In this report, we begin to paint a picture of student-centered assessment by
discussing existing classroom-based assessment practices in terms of its role in a
comprehensive system and how well it represents our defining characteristics of
student-centered assessment. The picture that emerges includes a blend of classroom-
based assessments, such as: student self- and peer assessments, formative tests, and
portfolios . We also feature computer-based assessments, which hold special promise
in a balanced system. While all the assessments we discuss play a valuable role, some
are more student-centered than others, according to the definition used for the
Students at the Center project. We point out some of the challenges faced by each
type of assessment and outline possibilities for advancements.

A DEFINITION OF STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT:

Like any good assessment, student-centered assessment articulates
appropriately challenging and developmentally appropriate learning targets. It also
provides feedback to students, teachers, districts, and states about how to deepen
learning. It is valid and reliable for the given context, and it is practicable and
efficient (McMillan 2011).
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Our vision of student-centered assessment has several additional defining qualities. It
is:
> Individualized;
> Focused on learning and growth;
> Motivating;
> Amenable to actively engaging students in the regulation of their own learning;
and
> Informative and useful to a variety of audiences.

The first and most obvious feature of student-centered assessment is that it is

individualized. Indeed, how could it not center on individual students’ strengths,
needs, and interests and still be student centered? Individualizing assessment involves
differentiating learning targets, assignments, and tasks, providing focused feedback
on students’ learning (whether they are working alone or in groups), and adjusting
teaching and learning processes as needed.

Student-centered assessment also focuses on learning and growth. That means

it does more than measure and report student learning or the lack thereof—although it
does those things as well. Student-centered assessment promotes learning and growth
by providing useful feedback to the students themselves, their teachers, and others
about what the students need in order to progress toward the learning target. This
quality of student-centered assessment echoes modern conceptions of formative
assessment in that assessment is a moment of learning, not just grading, ranking, or
sorting .

Student-centered assessment involves the active engagement of students in

setting goals for their learning and growth, monitoring their progress toward those
goals, and determining how to address any gaps. Also called self-regulated learning,
the ability to manage one’s own learning and growth is a key type of expertise
needed for 21st-century college and career success . Classroom assessment practices
such as self-assessment, peer assessment, and portfolios have the potential to not only
help students learn core content knowledge and skills, but also to develop important
self-regulatory habits (Allal 2010; Andrade 2010).

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of our definition of student-centered

assessment is that it is motivating. Many people associate being evaluated with mild
to moderate anxiety, not motivation, and research has shown that grades can be
associated with decreased motivation and lower achievement . However, recent
studies have shown that formative assessment—particularly detailed, task-specific
comments on student work—can activate interest in a task and result in better
performance .

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 Recent studies have shown that formative assessment—particularly detailed,
task-specific comments on student work—can activate interest in a task and result in
better performance.

Finally, student-centered assessment is informative and useful to a variety of

audiences. Daniel Resnick and Lauren Resnick (1985) have said that American
students are the most tested and the least examined students in the world. We have
test scores coming out of our ears, but we do not yet do a very good job of using
assessment information to adapt curricula and instruction. Student-centered
assessment provides useful information that stakeholders at all levels— including
students, teachers, administrators, parents, districts, and states—can use to support
learning. For an example of an assessment that is informative at the local level,
consider public exhibitions of student work, which engage an audience from the
community in discussions of the quality of student work and learning, and of the
education students are getting (Davidson & Feldman 2010

Assessment is key to creating a more student-centered classroom. Before

proceeding, though , we want to clarify what we mean by assessment. We don't mean
testing, nor do we mean grading. Unfortunately this term has been hijacked to mean
more testing and knowing students only in terms of their test scores. We know this is
unacceptable and does not meet the needs of all students. Yes, data such as test
scores can give us a window into better serving our students, but it's not the whole
window. If we truly want to know our students, we must view them as a stained-glass
window with test data as only one of many pieces. Assessment can allow us to know
the whole child as we create a more student-centered classroom.

What is Formative Assessment?

We assess students to understand what they have acquired from our instruction.
The purpose of formative assessment is to adapt and accommodate our instruction
based on student needs and readiness, to determine if we have achieved our goals and
whether we can continue or should reteach the language .

Formative assessment guides us in many ways. It helps us to appropriately

scaffold and provides feedback to us and to the students . Use formative assessment
to check for understanding and adjust your instruction based on what you’ve found.

Do we grade formative assessments?

Often, formative assessments are not graded. We focus on qualitative rather than
quantitative feedback. While we won’t usually grade formative assessments, we
might want to consider tracking them to see trends and improvements .

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How does formative assessment differ from summative (traditional) assessment?
At base, we use formative assessment to alter our instruction and guide us toward
discovering what students need more of, as compared to traditional quizzes that often
serve to see what students don’t know. Formative assessment transforms thinking
about grades or points to thinking about progress or acquisition of the language .

Often, summative assessment, which is used to summarize or assess the development

of learners at a specific time, can be used to identify weaknesses that formative
assessment can then build on. A handy contrast is to think of summative assessment
as assessment of learning, while formative assessment is assessment for learning .

Assessment for learning:

Students know at the beginning of a lesson or unit what they are expected to
learn, work with the teacher to identify what she or he already knows about the topic
and to see where any gaps or misconceptions exist. Together, the child and teacher
work to determine learning needs, where and how improvement can take place and
document the progress. Assessment takes place throughout the learning process, and
is embedded in that. The assessment may be a learning experience at the same time,
and has descriptive feedback but not typically a grade.

Assessment of learning:
Is measured more often at the end of a lesson or unit of study simply to assess
what is known at the end (summative assessment) and is usually graded, and
sometimes compared to a standard.

Electronic documentation: This refers to anecdotal notes, photos, scan of child’s

drawing or written work documented as a computer file, to be kept as an item in an
electronic portfolio.

Formative assessment:
Is a measure of what students know and can do during the lesson or unit to
guide instruction and reinforce learning.
National Assessment Policy: This refers to the National Assessment Policy
prescribed by the Ministry of Education, Maldives.

Summative assessment:
Takes place at the end of a unit of study to determine the level of student
understanding or skill. Examples: formal tests, final exams, final projects, term
papers, etc. The information is often used in determining a grade, placement, or
promotion.
The following picture will summarize what was mentioned above:
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Assessing Student Passions and Learning Styles
One key way to create a more student-centered classroom is by assessing
students for their passions and interests. All of our students come with powerful
experiences that have driven their lives, such as family stories, favorite books,
hobbies, and trips. We can use a variety of assessment tools like one-on-one
conversations, journals, and graphic organizers to learn more about our students and
what drives them to learn. Tools like learning profile cards can allow us to
differentiate appropriately, leverage our students' strengths, and push them to learn in
different ways. Assessing for passions and interests can also push us to know our
students more deeply and create a classroom designed for them.

Assessing 21st-Century/Success Skills

We know that some of our students collaborate better than others, just as some
students have more global empathy than others. If we assess for these success or
21st-century skills, we can provide experiences and instructions that foster those
skills and allow our students to grow in areas that are more than simply content
knowledge or skills. Teachers can use rubrics and other assessment tools to let
students know what these success skills look, sound, and feel like. In addition, they
can use these assessment tools for self, teacher, and expert assessment.

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Formative Assessment of Content and Skills
Test data lets us know how students are progressing toward learning content
and skills from the standards. However, these standardized tests may only assess the
bare minimum (if that) of the level of rigor that we want and expect from our
students. Also, these assessments do not provide us with just-in-time data that we can
truly use. What we get from them often comes too late for our purposes. While we
can look at the data for trends, we may not be able to use this information in the
immediate moment to meet the needs of individual students. Teachers instead should
use low-stakes formative assessments to assess students' content knowledge and
skills. This way, we can learn which concepts and skills need to be retaught, and
which ones students have mastered. These assessments are not graded. Instead, we
can use them to create a learning environment that is more student-centered.

Assessing for Instruction

All of these data points and assessments should primarily drive instruction in the
classroom, and they are all examples of powerful formative assessments. The intent
of formative assessments is to feed forward in the instruction, and create learning
activities that individual students need. Yes, this may mean whole-group instruction,
but it often means small-group or individual instruction. When we use formative
assessments carefully, we can discover whether students need a think-aloud or model,
or if they are ready for independent practice and application. In addition, formative
assessment can tell us if students need more collaborative learning. Whenever we
plan instruction, we know it is never set in stone, and we use on-the-spot assessment
to make immediate decisions for instruction, as well as using these assessments to
feed forward for future instruction. If we use assessment to provide the right just-in-
time instruction, we can increase student engagement in a more student-centered
classroom.
Truly, assessment can be a powerful force for knowing our students and creating a
classroom that can meet their needs. We simply have to move past the baggage that
comes with the term assessment, and understand that it can mean a lot of things. We
can assess for content and skills, yes, but we can also assess for passions, interests,
success skills, and the like for the purposes of the right instruction at the right time.

Successful assessment:
1. Flows from the institution's mission.
2. Has a conceptual framework.
3. Has faculty ownership/responsibility.
4. Has institution-wides upport.
5. Uses multiple measures.
6. Provides feedback to students and the institution.
7. IS cost-effective.

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 8. Does not restrict or inhibit goals of access, equity, and diversity established by the
institution.
9. Leads to improvement.
10. Includes a process for evaluating the assessment program.

FORMATIVE STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT AT THE

CLASSROOM LEVEL
The purpose of classroom-based assessment in a balanced, student-centered
system is to provide timely information to students and teachers about where students
are in their learning, what gaps in knowledge and understanding exist, and how
teachers and students can work to deepen learning (Perie, Marion, & Gong 2009).
Particularly student-centered forms of classroom assessment include self- and peer
assessment, process portfolios, and formative tests.

SELF-ASSESSMENT
The purpose of self-assessment is to identify areas of strength and weakness
in one’s work in order to make improvements and promote learning, achievement,
and self-regulation . As defined by Paul Pintrich (2000), self-regulation is the
tendency to monitor and manage one’s own learning. Research suggests that self-
regulation and student achievement are closely related: Students who set goals, make
flexible plans to meet them, and monitor their progress tend to learn more and do
better in school than students who do not (Zimmerman & Schunk 2011). Self-
assessment is a key element of self-regulation because it involves awareness of the
goals of a task and checking one’s progress toward them. As a result of self-
assessment, Dale Schunk (2003) found that both self-regulation and achievement can
increase.

It is critical to recognize the nature of self-assessment as formative. Self-

assessment is done on work in progress in order to inform revision and improvement;
it is not a matter of having students determine their own grades. Given what we know
about human nature, as well as research regarding students’ tendencies to inflate self-
evaluations that count toward final grades, we subscribe to a purely formative type of
student self-assessment—that is, as feedback for oneself from oneself Done correctly,
self-assessment can play a fundamental role in a balanced system of student centered
assessment. By encouraging students to critique their own work and explicitly
identify both strengths and areas that need improvement, self-assessment is
individualized. It involves active student engagement by putting ownership of the
assessment process in the students’ hands: They are in charge of monitoring progress
toward goals by comparing their work to explicit criteria, identifying gaps, and
making plans to close those gaps. Student involvement is even greater if their teacher
involves students in generating the criteria for a task, perhaps by co-creating a rubric.

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The focus of self-assessment is learning and growth: Students generate feedback
through the self-assessment process and then have opportunities to use that feedback
to improve their work. This process of identifying weaknesses and making
improvements can be repeated until mastery is achieved. In this way, self-assessment
provides useful information to the students themselves about the quality of their
work. However, student self-assessments are of limited usefulness to audiences
outside the classroom; hence, the need for other forms of assessment.

Effective self-assessment involves at least three steps:

1. Articulate performance targets. The teacher, the students, or, preferably, both
clearly articulate the expectations for the task or performance. Students become better
acquainted with the task at hand when they are involved in thinking about what
counts and how quality is defined. Co-creating a rubric is an effective way to make
expectations clear and readily available to students. A rubric is usually a one- or two-
page document that lists criteria and describes varying levels of quality, from
excellent to poor, for a specific assignment.

2. Checking progress toward the targets. Students take a first attempt at their
assignment, be it an essay, lab report, choral performance, or speech. They monitor
their progress on their assignments by comparing their performances-in-progress to
the expectations, noting areas of strength and weakness and making plans for
improvement.

3. Revision. Students use feedback from their selfassessments to guide revision. This
step is crucial. Students, being savvy, will not assess their own work thoughtfully
unless they know their efforts can lead to opportunities to make improvements and
possibly increase their grades.

Heidi Goodrich (1996) has generated a list of conditions that are necessary for
effective self-assessment. Students need:
> Awareness of the value of self-assessment;
> Access to clear criteria on which to base the assessment;
> A specific task or performance to assess;
> Models of self-assessment;
> Direct instruction in and assistance with self-assessment;
> Practice;
> Cues regarding when it is appropriate to self-assess; and
> Opportunities to revise and improve the task or performance.

Research has examined the effects of self-assessment in a wide range of content

areas, including writing (Evans 2001). Findings suggest that student self-assessment
can promote achievement and learner autonomy. Student reactions to self-assessment
are generally positive, but they report needing support and practice to reap the full
benefits of the process (Andrade & Du 2007).
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PEER ASSESSMENT
The purpose of peer assessment is for learners to provide feedback to one
another on the quality of a product or performance . Students engaged in peer
assessment help one another identify strengths, weaknesses, and target areas for
improvement. According to Keith Topping, peer assessment happens both inside and
outside of school and across different times and contexts, leading to the development
of valuable metacognitive, personal, and professional skills. Similar to self-generated
feedback, peer feedback is available in much greater volume and with greater
immediacy than is teacher feedback.

Peer feedback can play an important role in a balanced system of student-

centered assessment. It is individualized, and it actively engages students in the
assessment process as peers familiarize themselves with the assessment criteria,
examine a particular piece of work, and identify its unique strengths, weaknesses, and
need for improvement—all of which they then discuss with the creator of the work.
The focus is on growth through feedback, followed by opportunities to revise,
improve, and promote mastery. Peer feedback is informative and useful for all in a
peer feedback group as they take turns giving and receiving feedback on works in
progress. Like self-assessment, however, peer assessment information has limited
value for parents, administrators, and policymakers.

Topping (2010) argues that effective peer assessment involves the following steps:
1. Students and teachers co-create assessment criteria
2. Peers are placed into pairs or small groups based on similar ability levels.
3. The teacher provides training by modeling how to assess a piece of work using
explicit criteria.
4. Students get a checklist with peer assessment guidelines.
5. The activity to be assessed and timeline are specified.
6. The teacher monitors the progress of the peer assessment groups.
7. The quality of the feedback is examined.
8. Reliability is checked by comparing teacher- and peer-generated feedback.
9. The teacher provides feedback to the students about the effectiveness of their
assessments.

Research suggests that peer assessment can improve the quality and
effectiveness of learning across grade levels, particularly in writing (Yang, Ko,
& Chung 2005). Furthermore, both the assessee and the assessor benefit from
peer assessment (Topping 2010). As Topping notes, “[L]istening, explaining,
questioning, summarizing, speculating, and hypothesizing are all valuable
skills of effective peer assessment.” While an initial investment is necessary to
establish effective peer feedback groups, it is likely to be worthwhile in terms
of student learning.

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Peer assessment can improve the quality and effectiveness of learning across grade
levels, particularly in writing. Furthermore, both the assessee and the assessor benefit
from peer assessment

PORTFOLIOS
An academic portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that
includes student involvement in its construction and student reflection on its contents
(Belgrad, Burke, & Fogarty 2008). The purpose is to scaffold student reflection and
self-regulated learning, as well as to provide nuanced information—about a student’s
knowledge, dispositions, motivations, and needs—that can help teachers, students,
and parents make decisions.
There are two general categories of portfolios: those that showcase a student’s
best work; and those that demonstrate growth and learning over time (Brookhart
2008). The latter are sometimes called process portfolios or process-folios (Seidel et
al. 1997). The key feature of a process portfolio is evidence of students’ learning
processes and products. For example, a writing process portfolio typically includes
several drafts, along with the student’s comments on each draft. Together, the writing
and the student reflections show improvement over time, with each subsequent piece
showing more developed skill than earlier works.
All portfolios are individualized collections of student work that trace progress
and highlight strengths via physical artifacts. For portfolios to be successful and
student-centered, students must be actively engaged in their creation, especially by
setting goals for the learning and achievement, selecting the pieces to include in the
portfolio, and reflecting on what those pieces communicate about their own progress
toward their goals. In this way, portfolios scaffold self-regulation. Process portfolios
are designed to show progression from novice to mastery. Both process and showcase
portfolios can be useful and informative to students, parents, teachers, and,
sometimes, administrators. However, research on the effectiveness of portfolios
suggests they are best used formatively for classroom assessment purposes, rather
than summatively as large-scale evaluations, thus limiting their usefulness to
audiences outside the school (Brookhart 2008; Herman & Winters 1994).
Barrett (2007) describes the value of electronic portfolios, or e-portfolios, that
harness technology to enable archiving, linking, storytelling, collaborating, and
publishing. Electronic portfolios use computers and/or the Internet as a container,
allowing students to collect and organize their portfolio materials in audio, video,
graphics, and text. A study by Chi-Cheng Chang and Kuo-Hung Tseng (2009)
suggests that the use of electronic portfolios is positively associated with
improvements in student performance, goal setting, problem solving, and reflection.

Formative tests differ in a very important way from practice tests, which usually
involve students taking a test, passively listening as the teacher goes over the correct
answers, then taking another test. It is not really hearing the correct answers to the
test that makes formative use of testing work.

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Assessment in the Context of Student-centered Learning: The Students at the
Center
It is the hard thinking that happens in between the tests that matters (Bloom
1984). This approach to testing is based on Benjamin Bloom’s approach to mastery
learning, which emphasizes the value of formative assessment and corrective
procedures that re-teach content to struggling learners in a new way (Guskey 2010).

Research shows that mastery learning is related to learning gains, especially for
struggling students, and that it has positive effects on students’ attitudes toward
course content (Kulik, Kulik, & Bangert-Drowns 1990). In fact, after reviewing
meta-analyses from over 40 areas of educational research, Chen-Lin Kulik, James
Kulik, and Robert Bangert-Drowns concluded that “few educational treatments of
any sort were consistently associated with achievement effects as large as those
produced by mastery learning.”

Formative uses of summative testing are individualized: they provide

information about what each student does and does not know, at least in terms of
what was tested. This approach to testing is designed with learning and growth in
mind. The explicit goal of the first test is to activate learning about the content of the
second test. Although teachers can do all the work of analyzing the results of the first
test to identify areas that need to be retaught, testing at its best actively engages
students in the regulation of their own learning when they themselves determine the
gaps in their knowledge and make plans for filling in those gaps. Having a grasp of
the targets for their learning (as articulated by the first test) and a chance to learn
more and earn a higher grade is likely to be motivating, especially to students who
need extra time or resources.

Of the four classroom assessment processes discussed in this section, formative

uses of summative testing are informative and useful to the widest variety of
audiences. The usefulness to administrators can be enhanced if the first test is also
used as an interim test and analyzed in terms of the instructional and curricular needs
of a class or entire grade level.

Testing at its best actively engages students in the regulation of their own
learning when they themselves determine the gaps in their knowledge and make plans
for filling in those gaps.

SUMMATIVE STUDENT-CENTERED ASSESSMENT AT THE SCHOOL

LEVEL:

EXHIBITIONS
Exhibitions are public demonstrations of mastery that occur at culminating
moments, such as at the conclusion of a unit of study or at high school graduation
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(Davidson 2009). Their purpose is to support sustained, personalized learning while
assuring commitment, engagement, and high-level intellectual achievement aligned
with established standards. Exhibitions ensure continuity between formative
classroom assessments and high-stakes summative assessments by employing
teaching, learning, and assessment practices in classroom settings to rehearse,
emphasize, and otherwise reinforce progress toward successful final exhibitions.

According to Jill Davidson, exhibitions represent a paradigm shift from

evaluating academic achievement strictly through “seat time” toward a system of
authentic demonstrations of mastery designed to simulate the kinds of open-ended
challenges faced by people working in a field of study.

Exhibitions are a rare example of a summative assessment process that

exemplifies each of our characteristics of student-centered assessment. They are
individualized to student interests. They involve personalized, ongoing feedback
from a variety of sources before the official, summative exhibition. They actively
engage students in regulating learning by requiring them to set short-term and long-
term goals and to seek out feedback in order to achieve a successful outcome.

Because exhibitions are typically presented to an audience that includes

practicing experts, they provide an authentic, real-world task that can increase student
motivation. By definition, exhibitions are demonstrations of mastery that provide
useful information about student learning and achievement to students, teachers,
parents, administrators, and community members.

According to Davidson (2009), successful exhibitions:

> Provide multiple opportunities for revision based on frequent feedback;
> Are open to the public;
> Involve school-wide participation;
> Are high stakes (e.g., associated with graduation requirements);
> Occur at culminating moments; and
> Are demonstrations of mastery.

In addition to these key features, Davidson lists four supportive conditions

that facilitate the effective implementation of exhibitions:
> School-wide, exhibitions-aligned instructional and assessment processes;
> Structures that support sustained collaboration and inquiry among students and
teachers;
> Strong connections with the community outside the school; and
> Active participation in a system or network of other exhibitions-driven schools.

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 Because exhibitions are typically presented to an audience that includes
practicing experts, they provide an authentic, real-world task that can increase student
motivation.

Yet even an exquisitely balanced assessment system would present challenges.

For one, the breadth and depth of the data about learning provided by modern
measurement systems is awe-inspiring. Never before have students, teachers, parents,
school districts, states, and the nation had access to such large quantities of high-
quality information. But the sheer quantity of assessment data threatens to overwhelm
us all. Even as we design new assessment processes, we must work to ensure they are
useful to and used by the appropriate audiences. Students must learn how to take
advantage of feedback to improve their work, deepen their understandings, and
regulate their own learning. Teachers must learn how to individualize instruction and
assessments and to make adjustments to instruction based on assessment results.
Schools and districts must learn how to combine formative, interim, and summative
results and interpret them in meaningful ways. And policymakers must learn to create
and use balanced assessment systems that inform but do not overburden or
overwhelm those they are designed to assist.

If that were not enough, we must also continually assess the assessments.
From the perspective of evidence-centered design, we should be articulating our
claims and goals for our assessment system, such as “students are revising their work
based on individualized feedback,” describing the observable evidence for those
claims, and designing or identifying sources of that evidence. That is the job of
researchers who, in collaboration with educators, can help ensure that recent
advances in assessment are as student-centered as possible.

So, assessment is an integral part of the course design, but is it really measuring
the learning that both you and your students most want to achieve? Assessment
should integrate grading, learning, and motivation for your students. Carefully
planned assessment questions and methods make the time you spend grading
assignments and tests worthwhile. Here are five suggestions to help you when
planning assessment:

1. Consider what you want your students to learn and tell them.
Effective assessment practices begin when you can complete the following
sentence: "By the end of the course, I want my students to be able to …" Concrete
verbs such as define, argue, solve, and create are more helpful for course planning
than vague verbs such as know or understand or passive verbs such as be exposed to.
If you write, "I want students to think like kinesiologists," elaborate on what that
means. How does a kinesiologist think? Which aspects of that thinking do you want
to cultivate in your students? Be as specific as possible and the students will be much
more likely to reach the intended learning outcomes of the course. And remember to
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put these learning outcomes on your course outline and assignments. For ideas on
wording your learning outcomes, see the CTE Teaching Tips "Matching Assignments
to the Level of Study" and "Writing Learning Outcomes."

2. Select assignments and tests that measure what you value most.
Because grading is perhaps one of the most labour-intensive things that
instructors do, why spend time grading work that does not address your most
important goals? Try to ensure that your tests, exams, and assignments will teach and
test the knowledge and skills that you most want students to learn. And throughout
your course, teach students how to answer the kinds of questions that you will ask on
tests and assignments. Help them to be prepared by asking them exam-type questions
in class and encouraging them to answer by saying, "If I asked you this question on
an exam, could you answer it?" Other main ideas to consider are as follows:

3. Choose assessment methods that elicit from your students the kind of
learning that you want to measure.
A combination of careful forethought, knowledge of your own students and
analysis of their work are the keys here. For example, if you teach math problems,
you may want students to demonstrate their ability to solve problems and explain
the process. Putting too much emphasis on getting the right answers can take away
from the goals. So consider adding the following requirement to some of your
assignments and exams: have students draw a vertical line down the centre of their
page, dividing it into two columns. In one column they solve the problem, and in the
other, they write sentences for each step to explain what they did and why.

Also consider carefully how you label assignments and tests and how your
students may interpret those labels. If you ask for a "term paper" but really want a
literature review, your students will not complete the assignment you had hoped for.
Make your assumptions clear in classes and on your course outline and/or assignment
description. And be sure to teach students how to complete the task at hand; if a
literature review is new to them, spend some time teaching them how to write one.

Finally, think about your use of "traditional" assessment methods and ask
yourself how much students really need to do in order to achieve your goals.
The most important point is that a test or an assignment is a valid measurement only
if it will elicit from your students the kind of learning you want to measure.

4. Choose assessment methods that are interesting and challenging to your

students.
The type of assignments and tests that you administer will influence your
students’ motivation (Baird, 1987; Lowman 1995, 1996). Consider creative kinds of
assignments without being carried away by something "cute" that doesn’t meet your
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needs. For example, an American historian asked students to write diary entries for
a hypothetical Nebraska farm woman in the 1890s. He liked this assignment
because it required that students know about economics, social class, transportation,
gender roles, technology, family relations, religion, diet, and so on, yet it also gave
students a chance to exercise their imaginations. He found that if he was explicit
that they use the diary to display the breadth of their historical knowledge, the
assignment achieved his learning goals in an enjoyable way. See the CTE teaching
tip on "Types of Assignments and Tests."

5. Use peer collaboration.

One obvious advantage of group assignments is that you have fewer
assignments to grade, but collaborative assignments can also have strong
pedagogical and motivational advantages. One advantage is the power of peer
instruction. Astin (1996) summarizes his comprehensive study of factors that
influence college students' learning: "The strongest single source of influence on
cognitive and affective development (in college) is the student’s peer group … the
study strongly suggests that the peer group is powerful because it has the capacity to
involve the student more intensely in the educational experience" .

Assignments that encourage student involvement with one another and with
you as the instructor may draw on this powerful force. Further, when well-managed,
collaborative work can increase students’ sense of their own control and power in
the classroom (Perry, Menec, and Struthers, 1996). When poorly managed,
however, collaborative assignments can decrease students’ sense of control and
increase their anxiety and anger. Careful planning and guidance of students is
crucial to success. The most important principle to remember is that successful
group assignments are those that can be better done by a group than by an individual
student. It is crucial that students understand why they are participating in a group
project rather than completing the assignment on their own. If you do that, the
group’s motivation to work together, solve group tensions, and deal effectively with
non-participating members will be strong.

Don’t be hyper-corrective.
Instead, focus on key content when you are evaluating work, and circle
mistakes rather than fix them. If you really want students to learn from their
mistakes, help them identify one problem at a time.

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Construct an assessment skeleton:
Once you have chosen assessment methods and their general features, the next
step is to combine all your tests and assignments into a bare-bones assessment
"skeleton." This skeleton helps you see whether your assignments and tests fit both
yours and your students' course goals and whether they are manageable in terms of
workload. Ask yourself: "Is the workload reasonable, strategically placed, and
sustainable?" The rest of the course outline can then be structured to help students
learn what they need to know if they are to do well on the tests and assignments. For
more information about course design, refer to the CTE teaching tip, "Course Design
Heuristic".

Collaborate with your students to set and achieve goals.

Your goals as an instructor are not the only ones in your classroom. Your
students' goals are also very powerful. An understanding of those goals is crucial to
designing effective assessment methods because if the instructor and students are on
different wavelengths, the students may not complete the assignments in the way the
instructor planned.

Student input can come in varying degrees. Try asking the students on the first
day you meet with them what they think the purpose of the class is and what they
want to learn from it. You may ask them to record their personal learning goals for
the course and some strategies by which they can accomplish those goals.
Alternatively, ask them to recall the most successful course they’ve had in the past.
What assessment methods worked for them there? Can they use or adapt these
strategies for your class? Some instructors even wait to finalize their goals and
syllabus until after meeting with their students once or twice so that the students can
help set the course goals. However, the input that you allow the students can also be
very minimal, for example, allowing them to decide whether they would like an
assignment to be worth 10% vs. 20%. If you take the liberty of establishing the goals
without direct student input, you should still be somewhat flexible because each
cohort of students will be different - do not assume that the same goals and methods
will work equally well with any group. The degree of collaboration that is acceptable
will vary across disciplines and institutions, but the bottom line is that it is very
important to know the types of goals your students have in order to create assessment
methods that will motivate them to learn.

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Make assignment and test instructions clear to students.
How can we assess learning when students define the task in different ways?
Once you have assignments and tests that assess what you most want your students to
learn, you need to ensure that your instructions for the assignment are clear to your
students. Tell the students what you are looking for by means of a rubric or by
providing examples. Sometimes it is also useful to ask for pieces of the assignment
along the way (for example, an essay proposal/outline, or a scientific hypothesis) to
ensure that students are on the right track. Remember that with sketchy or ambiguous
instructions, you risk having students draw on previous learning that may not be
relevant or desirable in your situation. Help them to succeed by being as clear as
possible and limit both student and instructor frustrations.

Standards and Assessment :

Setting appropriately high and challenging standards and assessing the learner
as well as learning progress -- including diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment
-- are integral parts of the learning process.

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 Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at all
stages of the learning process. Effective learning takes place when learners feel
challenged to work towards appropriately high goals; therefore, appraisal of the
learner's cognitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as current knowledge and skills,
is important for the selection of instructional materials of an optimal degree of
difficulty. Ongoing assessment of the learner's understanding of the curricular
material can provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers about progress
toward the learning goals. Standardized assessment of learner progress and outcomes
assessment provides one type of information about achievement levels both within
and across individuals that can inform various types of programmatic decisions.
Performance assessments

This historical document is derived from a 1990 APA presidential task force (revised
in 1997). can provide other sources of information about the attainment of learning
outcomes. Self-assessments of learning progress can also improve students self-
appraisal skills and enhance motivation and self-directed learning.
* The development of each principle involved thorough discussions of the research
supporting that principle. The multidisciplinary research expertise of the Task Force
and Work Group members facilitated an examination of each principle from a
number of different research perspectives.

CONCLUSION:
Remember that the most important thing is to choose assessment methods
that will assess the type of learning you are trying to achieve in your course. That
means that the methods that other instructors before you have used are not
necessarily the only way or the best way to assess. It is all right to step outside your
own comfort zone and outside what has traditionally been done if you feel that an
alternate assessment method will serve your students' and your interests and goals
better. Even if you are a new instructor, remember that you have spent many years as
a student and therefore have information and experiences that will guide you in this
process. Reflect on those experiences and decide if you want to do what you
experienced and use those experiences in your own assessment design or whether you
want to change the way you assess. If you do think change is necessary, ask yourself
why and how you will change things?

(Adapted in part from Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson,

Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment.)

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 References:

 McMillan, James H (ed.), New Directions For Teaching and Learning: Assessing
Student's Learning, 34 (Summer, 1988).
 Miller, Allen H., Bradford W. Imrie and Kevin Cox, Student Assessment in Higher
Education: A Handbook for Assessing Performance, London: Kogan Page, 1998,
LB 3060.32.C74M54x 1998.
 Neff, Rose Ann and Maryellen Weimer (eds.), Teaching College: Collected
Readings for the New Instructor, Madison, Wisconsin: Magna Publications Inc.,
1990, LB 2331.T33 1990.
 Newble, David and Robert Cannon, A Handbook for Teachers in Universities and
Colleges: A Guide to Improving Teaching Methods (Third Edition), London: Kogan
Page, 1995, LB 2331.N43 1995.
 Walvoord, Barbara E., and Virginia Johnson Anderson, Effective Grading: A Tool
for Learning and Assessment, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998, LB
2368.W35 1998

 “Technology-aided Formative Assessment of Learning: New Developments

and Applications.” In H.L. Andrade & G.J. Cizek, eds. Handbook of Formative
Assessment. New York, NY: Routledge.
Schneider, M.C. & Randel, B. 2010

 “Analyzing Diagnostic Items: What Makes a Student Response Interpretable?”

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education.

 Diagnostic Measurement: Theory, Methods, and Applications. New York, NY:

Guilford Press.
Russell, M.K. 2010.

 Handbook of Formative Assessment. New York, NY

Rupp, A., Templin, J., & Henson, R. 2010.

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