Assignment by.Javeria Naveed student of GECE Lyari Karachi

Assignment by.Javeria Naveed student of GECE Lyari Karachi Assessment

Assessment is judgment and it is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skill, attitudes, and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), the institution, or the educational system as a whole (also known as granularity).

The final purpose of assessment practices in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human mind, the origin of knowledge, and the process of learning.

Role of assessment

Assessment does more than allocate a grade or degree classification to students It plays an

Important role in focusing their attention and, as Sainsbury & Walker (2007) observe, actually

Drives their learning. Gibbs (2003) States that Assessment has 6 Main functions:

1. Capturing student time and attention

2. Generating appropriate student learning activity

3. providing timely feedback which students pay attention to

4. Helping students to internalize the discipline’s standards and notions of equality

5. Generatingmarks or grades which distinguish between students or enable pass/fail Decisions to be made

6. Providing evidence for other outside the course to enable them to judge the

    Appropriateness of standards on the course

Assessment is the engine which drives student learning

A student undertaking any form of study will be subject to assessment in one form or another. Similarly, any member of teaching staff will be engage at some point in assessment related work. For some of you, assessment takes up a considerable proportion of your workload, and for students it can be a significant determinant of what, when and how they learn. Getting assessment 'right' is therefore essential, both for your students and for you.

Good' assessment benefits student learning...

Well-designed assessment can encourage active learning especially when the assessment delivery is innovative and engaging. Peer and self-assessment, for instance, can foster a number of skills, such as reflection, critical thinking and self-awareness – as well as giving students insight into the assessment process. Discussing the ways in which you're assessing with your students can also help to ensure that the aims and goals of your assessments are clear. Utilizing assessment that makes use of technology, such as the use of online discussion forums or electronic submission of work, can teach students (and perhaps your colleagues)

new skills. If you design your assessments well they can also help to deter plagiarism by reducing the ways in which students can gather and report information. At the end of the day, taking some time to think about why, what and how you're going to assess your students is a worthwhile investment of time. It can help ensure you're assessing the skills and knowledge that you intended and it could open up new possibilities for different ways to assess your students, some of which may be more efficient and effective than the current methods you're using.

Standards of quality

In general, high-quality assessments are considered those with a high level of reliability and validity. Approaches to reliability and validity vary, however.
Reliability
Reliability relates to the consistency of an assessment. A reliable assessment is one that consistently achieves the same results with the same (or similar) cohort of students. Various factors affect reliability—including ambiguous questions, too many options within a question paper, vague marking instructions and poorly trained markers. Traditionally, the reliability of an assessment is based on the following:

·         Temporal stability: Performance on a test is comparable on two or more separate occasions.

·        Form equivalence: Performance among examinees is equivalent on different forms of a test based on the same content.

·      Internal consistency: Responses on a test are consistent across questions.

·        Use sufficient number of questions or observations

Allow enough time

·        Instruct students on the use of the rubric.

·        Have a systematic procedure for rating. Often, it is good to use a rubric.

To increase reliability, you should:

·        Encourage students to perform their best

·        Match the assessment difficulty to the students’ ability levels

·        Have scoring criteria that are available and well understood by students before they start the assignment

·      Validity

A valid assessment is one that measures what it is intended to measure. Teachers frequently complain that some examinations do not properly assess the syllabus upon which the examination is based; they are, effectively, questioning the validity of the exam.
Validity of an assessment is generally gauged through examination of evidence in the following categories:

1.     Content – Does the content of the test measure stated objectives?

2.     Criterion – Do scores correlate to an outside reference? (Ex: Do high scores on a 4th grade reading test accurately predict reading skill in future grades?)

3.     Construct – Does the assessment correspond to other significant variables? (Ex: Do ESL students consistently perform differently on a writing exam than native English speakers?)

4.     Face – Does the item or theory make sense, and is it seemingly correct to the expert reader?

A good assessment has both validity and reliability, plus the other quality attributes noted above for a specific context and purpose. In practice, an assessment is rarely totally valid or totally reliable. A ruler which is marked wrongly will always give the same (wrong) measurements. It is very reliable, but not very valid. Asking random individuals to tell the time without looking at a clock or watch is sometimes used as an example of an assessment which is valid, but not reliable. The answers will vary between individuals, but the average answer is probably close to the actual time. In many fields, such as medical research, educational testing, and psychology, there will often be a trade-off between reliability and validity. A history test written for high validity will have many essay and fill-in-the-blank questions. It will be a good measure of mastery of the subject, but difficult to score completely accurately. A history test written for high reliability will be entirely multiple choice. It isn't as good at measuring knowledge of history, but can easily be scored with great precision. We may generalize from this. The more reliable our estimate is of what we purport to measure, the less certain we are that we are actually measuring that aspect of attainment. It is also important to note that there are at least thirteen sources of invalidity, which can be estimated for individual students in test situations. They never are. Perhaps this is because their social purpose demands the absence of any error, and validity errors are usually so high that they would destabilize the whole assessment industry.
It is well to distinguish between "subject-matter" validity and "predictive" validity. The former, used widely in education, predicts the score a student would get on a similar test but with different questions. The latter, used widely in the workplace, predicts performance. Thus, a subject-matter-valid test of knowledge of driving rules is appropriate while a predictively valid test would assess whether the potential driver could follow those rules.
How should we assess?

1.     Day to day observation

2.     Test and quizzes

3.     Rubrics

4.     Rating scales

5.     Project work

6.     Port folio

By assessment we can assess the students:

·        To find out how student go about the tasks of doing their work

·        To find out how student feel about their work.

That’s why assessment is important in classroom.