WHAT IS ASSESSMENT?

 

What Is Assessment?

DEFINITIONS

  1. Assessment involves the use of empirical data on student learning to refine programs and improve student learning. (Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education by Allen 2004)
  2. Assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information from multiple and diverse sources in order to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and can do with their knowledge as a result of their educational experiences; the process culminates when assessment results are used to improve subsequent learning. (Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses: shifting the focus from teaching to learning by Huba and Freed 2000)
  3. Assessment is the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students. It is the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development. (Assessing Student Learning and Development: A Guide to the Principles, Goals, and Methods of Determining College Outcomes by Erwin 1991)
  4. Assessment is the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development. (Assessment Essentials: planning, implementing, and improving assessment in higher education by Palomba and Banta 1999)

TAKEN FROM: https://www.westminster.edu/about/accreditation-assessment/definition.cfm


Comments

  1. I have always had the doubt about what is assessment and evaluation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Juan Pablo Morales Sandoval
    To my mind, assessment is the process in which teachers analyze and reflect about students' performance and pros and cons of strategies used during the classes, in order to improve and increase students' learning.
    It is worth highlighting that there are different types of assessment such as self assessment, in which students reflect about their own processes taking into account their weaknesses and strengths. The second type is called peer assessment. In this one, students give advice kindly to a partner about some aspects he/she has to improve. The third one is group assessment, which refers to small groups of students that provide comments to the other groups by bearing in mind what they are doing well and what they need to work harder on. Eventually, the most important; teacher assessment. In this one, teacher takes some minutes at the end of the class to give general feedback about students' performance during the class. He /she makes some observations and comments about what students have achieved so far and what they need to improve through extra practice.
    Reminder: Assessment is not giving grades to students, but giving suggestions and advice for them to improve their learning process in the next classes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I consider your answer properly to define what is assessment, and my favorite part was when you clarify the types of assessment . Thank you for your advice

      Delete
  3. Assessment is the process in which a person can measure and analyze how the learning process of another person has been developed and improved through the time. In addition, there exist the self-assessment that consists on making a reflection of our own learning process in which we start to be conscious of how we are learning and if we are reaching the course objectives.
    There are different assessment strategies such as discussions, ask students to summarize, quizzes, reflections, etc. Thus, teachers should pick out the appropriate assessments strategies for their students. Finally, there are some assessment categories, which are formative (self-assessment) and summative (assessment from another person). In few words, “When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment; when the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment”. Paul Black.
    Written by: Geraldine Barbosa

    ReplyDelete
  4. Brigith Hidalgo:

    From my perspective, assessment is the process in which teachers support student's learning and monitor their progress, and in this way teachers can recognize and identify the student's strenghts, needs and weaknesses crearly to help and guide them to improve and develop their skills in a better way. Therefore, it's necessary that teachers to follow their progress, involve new strategies, tools, methods and plan next steps in order to achieve a better understanding and excellent advancement in the students.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In my opinion, assessment is the critical process in which people or in this case teachers can document the learning process of their students, this includes their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. The idea of ​​the assessment is that the students know where they are failing and what they are doing well, in order to improve it. The evaluation also helps teachers to see if their instructions, methodologies, techniques are being correct for their students' learning. However, as I mentioned before, this process is critical and therefore does not generate a grade. On the other hand, assessment has different categories that are formative and summative: the first category is to monitor students learning and provide feedback most of the time and the second category that is summative about to know students performance at the end of all the course knowing what was the knowledge before to start the lesson and knowing how students acquire the knowledge being taught at periodic intervals.

    In the words of Andy Hargreaves "On assessment: measure what you value instead of valuing only what you can measure".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Written by: Leidy Cruz

      Delete
    2. Thanks Leidy for your excellent opinion, i totally agree with you. Basically you explain all the "Assessment area". It is important to mention that the way you explain the categories and the evaluation process is very clear!

      Delete
  6. I consider that assessment is a feedback for both teachers and students, since teachers can evaluate the construction of knowledge, attitudes and performance that the student has developed during their learning process and teachers can evaluate themselves in their teaching practices and carefully observe the needs of your students.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Maria Fernanda Luis Castro

    Based on the last definitions i can conclude that assessment is not an easy task, it involves many aspects as collect information about a learning process then design different strategies to understand what are student doing with the knowledge which was presented to them, finally teacher has to analyze and interpret this information in order to create different strategies to improve it or explain it again if the results are not the best. It is important to take into account that the way to know students' understanding is not just by grade or qualitative evaluation, there are other ways to know if Ss are using well the topics worked.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Joan Sebastian Moreno Ortega.

    In my eyes assessment focuses on the learning process of students instead of the results, so that during this process teacher can help students to improve and encourage them to learn and find it interesting so that they enjoy learning. Also, during this process teachers can identify positive and negative aspects about their classes and this way think about how to change these bad aspects taking into account their students´characteristics, and opinions.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. In my view, assessment is an indispensable method used by a teacher in order to monitor or even to verify the learning process of the students. It can be applied through several activities while measuring learner’s process. These measurable concepts could be related to a crucial process in which students will be capable to get a meaningful learning. It’s very crucial to say, there are some components of assessment that are considered as fundamental elements such as:
    - Discussing and using assessment results to improve learning. It consists of applying the results to improve individual learner performance.
    - Creating experiences leading to outcomes. It provides to students being able to have new experiences in order to achieve the learning results in and outside their courses.
    - Formulating statements of intended learning outcomes. It refers to statements that describe students’ intentions about what they have to know, comprehend with their knowledge.
    - Developing or selecting assessment measures. It designs a sort of data gathering to assess if or not the intended learning outcomes were achieved.

    ReplyDelete
  11. assessment is important because it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students about the extent to which students are successfully meeting course learning objective.
    Assessment is very important for tracking progress, planning next steps, reporting and involving parents, children and young people in learning and is the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students.
    Daniela Lancheros Garzón

    ReplyDelete
  12. Assessment is a set of things that all teachers have to take into account to create an appreciation of each student in this step is very important the observation and examination of each student.
    When we talk about assessment we talk of some items such as selecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using some information to improve the learning process in all students.

    ReplyDelete
  13. In my opinion, assessment is the process in wich the teacher can gather, analyze and finally evaluate the student's learning progress in order to see what things have to be improved for doing the teaching learning eassier for the students. In that way, we can look for other resources that can be applied for the acquisition of knowledge.

    By Javier Arevalo.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Assessment is refers to the wide variety of tools or methods that educators use to measure or assess, and there are difference types of assessment. For intance; Formative assessment, monitor student learning in such a way that feedback can be provided or another like summative assessment, that is evaluate the results at the end of the instruction. In this way, the learning achieved by the students can be understood.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Based on all the information I had collected previously, and as far as I had understood; assessment is an ongoing and reflective process which evaluate test- takers performance throughout their learning path. For instance, what assessment tries to check is: if the strategies that are applied work well, to make suggestions, corrections and improvement methods to our learners in a qualitative way. In that sense, assessment tries to diagnose, evaluate, and measure what students know and what things they can do (weaknesses, and strengths) with this knowledge by means of interactive activities such as: responding to a question, offering a comment, opinion or advice in regards to a specific topic, or even by discussions in class.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Before to start I had to tell you that in the past I had a misconception about assessment, but now that I have a correct concept of what it is, I can say that ASSESSMENT is the way that all of the teachers should use in their classes because is the way to measure knowledge in a gentle way,not to criticize but improve the student knowledge. Also show them the strengths and weaknesses for their future .
    There are 2 different categories of assessment like formative, where you as a teacher has a goal to fulfill the lack of knowledge of the students. As a result of this ,we can get inform about our teaching. Moreover, the students received a feedback. In the other hand, summative is the way students can assess themselves and know if they reaches the goals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Lis to complement my ideas by telling the kinds of assessment that we can find; and as you said before we tended to confuse in some cases what assessment is but now that we have better ideas it is useful to avoid misconceptions when we are giving our students the best feedback and assessment.

      Delete
  17. Juliana Romero
    Assessment Is part of the process of teaching and learning, this part is the one which is focused on showing to the teacher and showing to the entity ( the course or the school) if the student is rising their knowledge and if they are acquiring the same level of skills in the same way through that complete classroom. There are different ways of applying an assessment, and those are depending on the skill the teacher wants to assess, so is important that the previous knowledge the students gathered are related to it.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi, Juan!

    I'll try to explain you, what is assessment and evaluation, and what is the difference among these.
    First, what is an assessment. There exist too many conceps about what is this, but the main Idea is that It is a PROCESS in which you use all information that you know about learning course of your students, and you apply it to improve the perfomance in your classes.
    On the other hand, We have evaluation, that summarizing, is the way how you verify that your assessment and learing process are adecually for your students and you.

    ReplyDelete
  19. In my eyes, assessment is basically a measurement. It can be used not only a measure the knowledge acquisition but also assess the learning beyond the classroom. It is important to mention to assess the different stuff we as teachers already explained. It is impossible to a student to criticize or give a well argued point of view about we did not explained.
    Categories of Assessment:
    -Formative: improve the quality Students' learning.
    -Summative: Level of knowledge. (Performances).
    Assessment can be used by students such an answer to the question "What am i capable?" . In this way, these people can evaluate and measure the skill in an area.

    ReplyDelete
  20. When it comes to education, assessment means the same as the general meaning of the word, but we have to remember another fact. That fact is that assessment in education is done in order to improve the process. The assessment pays attention to learning, teaching, as well as the outcomes.
    The assessment pays attention to learning, teaching, as well as the outcomes, but evaluation focuses only on the final out come (grades in context of education).
    The main focus on evaluation will be the grades and takes into consideration other components like discussion, attendance and cooperation. Evaluation is summative and product oriented.
    Assessment is more towards gauging performance in order to improve teaching, learning and outcomes. Its ongoing and process oriented which can also be diagnostic in nature but not graded. Information is mostly learner centred and course based.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I think that assessment is the process of collecting information on students achievement and performance. Provides information for basic of sound decision making regarding teaching and learning.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Throuh assessment the teacher is able to evaluate students in an ongoing process with the aim to provide feedback for developing better instruction. The different kind of assessmentes allow to know how and how much students are learning and also helps them building confidence in their ability to learn.
    written by: Laur Melissa Puentes.

    ReplyDelete
  23. I consider that assessment is a warm way to correct and helps the student to understand how are his/her processes while studying. I consider it could be a perfect explicit way to correct because you have the power of the words, but when you use numbers you are under the rules of the maths. I think it is better to use the assessment.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Assessment refers to the wide variety of methos or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic disposition, learning progress, skill acquisition or educational needs of students.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Viviana Montoya: From my understanding, assessment is a tool to measure what the student have learned from a topic. The assessment needs to led with the right teaching methodology and set according to the students level.

    ReplyDelete
  26. In my opinion assessment refers to a wide variety of methods or tools that teachers use to evaluate, measure, and document the learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. Also, it is to gather relevant information about student performance, or to determine students interests to make judgments about their learning process.

    ReplyDelete
  27. assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students and can be done by teacher, himself, other students. On the other hand periodic assessment can increase motivation of student progress, appropiate assessment aid in the reinforcement and retention of information, assessment can confirm strength and pinpoint areas needing futher work, assessment provide a sense of periodic closure to modules within a curriculum, also assessment promote student autonomy by encouraging students' self evaluation of their progress and finally, assessment can aid in evaluating teaching.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog