CLASSSIFICATION OF ASSESSMENT UNIT -1

 

CLASSIFICATION OF ASSESSMENT:

BASED ON    PURPOSE    

(PROGNOSTIC, FORMATIVE, DIAGNOSTIC AND SUMMATIVE)

PROGNOSTIC

It is guess as to the outcome treatment. A test is designed to predict how well one is likely to do   a subject

A prognostic assessment expands the findings of an assessment with analysis of abilities and potentials with a further dimension: the future development of the concerned person, as well as the necessary conditions, time frame and limits.

 Prognostic assessments act as a means of estimation and prediction of the future career.

 

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

1. It is used during instruction

Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes.

2. Provides feed back to instructors and students.

The function of this feedback is to help instructors and students make adjustments that will improve students' achievement of intended learning outcomes

Formative assessment measures student progress but it can also assess your own progress as an instructor.

3. Identity areas needs to improve

 A primary focus of formative assessment is to identify areas that may need improvement.

4. It helps   instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. 

5. Active involvement of students is an essential aspect of formative assessment.

6. It is assessment of learning

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SCOPE

(TEACHER MADE, STANDARDIZED)

Point of Comparison	Teacher-made Achievement Test	Standardized Achievement Test
1. Learning outcomes and content measured	They are used to evaluate the outcomes and content of what has been taught in the classroom.	They are used to evaluate outcomes and content that have been determined irrespective of what has been taught
2. Quality of test items	Quality of test items unknown and is generally lower than items of standardized tests.	General quality of items is high. They are pre-tested and selected on the basis of difficulty and discrimination power.
3.Reliability	Reliability is usually unknown but it can be high if test items are carefully constructed	Reliability is usually high.
4. Administration and scoring	Uniform procedure of administration and scoring may be possible. It is usually flexible.	The procedure of its administration is standardized and specific instructions’ for its administration and scoring are provided
5. Interpretation of scores	Scores can be compared and interpreted only in the context of the local school situation	Scores can be compared to norm groups, Test manuals and other guides for interpretation and use.
6.cost	Teacher-made tests are easy to prepare.	Development of standardized tests involve substantial costs
7.basic	Teacher made test are local use for some particular institutions	Standardized tests are based on uniform curriculum in many schools in a province or the whole nation
8. usage	It emphasize on particular knowledge.	It emphasize on different field knowledge.
9.subject matter	Teacher-made tests are designed according to the content and objectives of a particular unit of study	Standardized tests cover broad areas of subject matter. The test content is determined by extensive investigations of the existing syllabus, textbooks, and programmes. The sampling of content is done systematically
10.Evaluation	Teacher made assessment is aimed to check the level of knowledge and abilities of students from one school	standardized assessment allows to evaluate student abilities in different schools and even states,

ATTRIBUTE MEASURED

(ACHIEVEMENT, APTITUDE, ATTITUDE, ETC.)

For optimal development of child it is necessary to understand the pupil and there by requires three kind of information of pupil characteristics

1.     ACHIEVEMENT (cognitive skills and knowledge)

2.     AFFECTIVE (non cognitive behaviors i.e. attitude, interests, personality)

3.     APTITUDE (general and specific potential)

ACHIEVEMENT (COGNITIVE SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE)

Achievement test are usually given after students have received instruction and involves the determination of what pupil has learned.

According to Free Man, “Achievement test is a test designed to measure knowledge, understanding and skills in a specified subject or a group of subjects”.

According to N.M. Downie, “Any test that measures the attainments or accomplishments of an individual after period of training or learning is called achievement test. It helps to permute the student to next class.”

Characteristics

It provides basis for promotion to the next grade.

It finds out where each student stands in various academic areas.

It helps in determination about the placement of the students in a particular section.

It measures knowledge obtained from formal learning situations.

It is one of the tools

 

 

STEPS INVOLVED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF ACHIEVEMENTTEST

 

1. Planning of test

2. Preparation of a design for the test

3. Preparation of the blue print

4. Writing of items

5. Preparation of the scoring key and marking scheme

 6. Preparation of question-wise analysis

1. Planning of test

Objective of the Test

Determine the maximum time and maximum marks

 2.   Preparation of a design for the test

 Important factors to be considered in design for the test are:

•Weight age to objectives

 •Weight age to content

•Weight age to form of questions

•Weight age to difficulty level.

3. Preparation of the blue print

 Blue print is a three-dimensional chart giving the placement of the objectives, content and form of questions.

4.     Writing of items

The paper setter writes items according to the blue print.

The difficulty level has to be considered while writing the items.

 It should also check whether all the questions included can be answered within the time allotted.

 It is advisable to arrange the questions in the order of their difficulty level.

5.     Preparation of the scoring key and marking scheme

Making rubrics for score. Preparing scoring guide

6.     Preparation of Question-wise Analysis

 It helps to know the strengths and weakness of the test, to tally the question paper and the blueprint, and to determine the content validity of the test.

So for assessment of Achievement can be assessed by different test

Teacher made test, standardized test.

ATTITUDE

Attitude is a state of mind. Knowledge about student’s attitude helps the teacher to promote desirable attitude.

So it is necessary to assess the attitude of the students collecting the information i.e. their favor or disfavor, like dislike etc.

Mostly some attitude measurement scale

Reniss Likert scale- it has five choices 1.strongly agree2.Agree 3.Undicided4.Disagree5.strongly disagree Assign scale values to the degrees of agreement or disagreement with each item.

The particular values may differ from one researcher to another. Sometimes one may adopt the values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and sometimes +2, +1, 0, -1, -2. For negative items the directions should be reversed.

Turnstone scale

Self report inventories.

APTITUDE

Aptitude is another name as potential or ability.

An aptitude test is designed to assess what a person is capable of doing or to predict what a person is able to learn or do given the right education and instruction. It represents a person's level of competency to perform a certain type of task.

Aptitudes are natural talents or special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things easily and quickly. Musical talent and artistic talent are examples of such aptitudes.

Examples of Aptitude Tests

People encounter a variety of aptitude tests throughout their personal and professional lives, often starting while they are children going to school.

Here are a few examples of common aptitude tests:

• An aptitude test is given to high school students to determine which type of careers they might be good at
• A computer programming test to determine how a job candidate might solve different hypothetical problems 
• A test designed to test a person's physical abilities needed for a particular job such as a police officer or firefighter

For example, a student might take an aptitude test suggesting that they are good with numbers and data. Such results might imply that a career as an accountant, banker, or stockbroker would be a good choice for that particular student

Another student might find that they have strong language and verbal skills, which might suggest that a career as an English teacher, writer, or journalist might be a good choice

achievement tests, which are concerned with looking a person's level of skill or knowledge at any given time,

Aptitude tests are instead focused on determining how capable of a person might be of performing a certain task.

Special Aptitude Tests

Special aptitude tests are designed to look at an individual's capacity in a particular area.

Multiple Aptitude Tests

Multiple aptitude tests are designed to measure two or more different abilities.

 NATURE OF INFORMATION GATHERED

(QUALITATIVE, QUANTITATIVE)

Qualitative methods of assessment are ways of gathering information that yield results that can't easily be measured by or translated into numbers.

 They are often used when you need the subtleties behind the numbers – the feelings, small actions, or pieces of community history that affect the current situation.

Qualitative assessment is focused on understanding how people make meaning of and experience their environment or world (Patton, 2002).

Technique -Interview, observation, focused group discussion

 

Quantitative Assessment –

It Collects data that can be analyzed using quantitative methods, i.e. numbers, statistical analysis. 

Mean percentage

 MODE OF RESPONSE

(ORAL AND WRITTEN; SELECTION AND SUPPLY)

MODE OF RESPONSE

a. Oral Response and Written Assessments

Student oral responses are longer and more complex, parallel to extended written response questions. Just as with extended written response, one evaluates the quality of oral responses using a rubric or scoring guide. Longer, more complicated responses would occur,

For example, during oral examination or oral presentations.

 Written assessments

These are activities in which the student selects or composes a response to a prompt. In most cases, the prompt consists of printed materials (a brief question, a collection of historical documents, graphic or tabular material, or a combination of these). However, it may also be an object, an event, or an experience. Student responses are usually produced ―on demand, ‖ i.e., the respondent does the

Writing at a specified time and within a fixed amount of time. These constraints contribute to standardization of testing conditions, which increases the comparability of results across students or groups (a theme that is explored later in Chapters Four and Five).

B. SELECTED-RESPONSE TESTS

An assessment using multiple-choice, true/false, matching, or any combination of these item types is called a selected-response assessment because the student “selects” the correct answer from available answer choices.

Characteristics

Selected-response tests are so named because the student reads a relatively brief opening statement (called a stem) and selects one of the provided alternatives as the correct answer.  Selected-response tests are typically made up of multiple-choice, true-false, or matching items.

Quite often all three item types are used in a single test.

Selected-response tests are sometimes called "objective" tests because they have a simple and set scoring system. If alternative (b) of a multiple-choice item is keyed as the correct response and the student chose alternative (d), the student is marked wrong, regardless of how much the teacher wanted the student to be right.

Advantages

A major advantage of selected-response tests is efficiency -- a teacher can ask many questions in a short period of time.

It has   reliability of scoring.

c. Supply - Response Tests

i. Fill –in-the- Blank

Fill –in-the- Blank with a word bank is just another form of matching and only test the lower cognitive levels.

Rules

Rule I: Position in the blank at the end of the statement.

Poor Item

A -------------- is used to keep food cold.

Better Item

To keep food cold use a -----------------

Rule II: Limit the number of blanks in a statement.

Poor Item

A -------------- sends ------------of electrical current through ---------------.

Better Item

Pulses of electrical current are sent through wore by a (n) -----------------

Rule III: Keep blanks the same length

Poor Item

American flag is composed of ------ and ------------------------.

Better Item

American flag is composed of ---------------- and -----------------.

 

 

 

 

NATURE OF INTERPRETATION

 (SELF-REFERENCED, NORM-REFERENCED, CRITERION- REFERENCED)

SELF-REFERENCED TEST (SRT)

 Self referenced test is used to ascertain an individual’s optimum capabilities based on his/her own self reflection.(R.Muthaiyan, 2006).

Self-referenced occurs in natural or formal languages, when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed directly, through some intermediate sentence or formula or by means of some encoding.

SRT AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION

1.     The goal of education is to enable the individual to acquire optimum knowledge, skills, habits, attitudes and values.

2.     To achieve these goals we need to identify the most essential competencies, attitudes and values. Learning is not a collection of information and memorizing it.

3.     It is an outcome of experience in real life situations supported and strengthened by related classroom work. In this regard maximum opportunities should be given to the students.

4.     SRT provides the maximum opportunities.

NEED FOR USING SRT IN QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

One of the most commonly used measures of quality is the student’s test score.

SRT provides the kind of test score information needed to make individual decisions arising in objective based instructional programmes.

The more traditional Norm Referenced Test and Criterion Referenced Test are considered less than ideal for providing the desired kind of test score information for self improvement.

MERITS OF SELF REFERENCED TEST

Students himself knows his expectations and also his real performance. The feedback helps him to monitor himself and this will lead him for further improvement until he/she achieves the optimum capabilities.

These self referenced tests prove us the famous quotation of Swami Vivekananda, “Arise,

Awake and stop not till your goal is reached”.

DEMERITS OF SELF REFERENCED TEST

To conclude a full-fledged SRT is time consuming as well as costly. However this can be effectively administered during formative evaluation stage.

NORM-REFERENCED TEST

It is a preliminary test for comparing achievement of an examinee to a large group of examinees at the same grade. The representative group is known as Norm group.

Norm referenced test is a test design to provide a measure of performance that is interpretable in terms of an individual‘s relative standing in some known group. Norm group may be made up of examinees at the local level, district level, state level or national level.

Norm-referenced refers to standardized tests that are designed to compare and rank test takers in relation to one another. Norm-referenced tests report whether test takers performed better or worse than a hypothetical average student, which is determined by comparing scores against the performance results of a statistically selected group of test takers, typically of the same age or grade level, who have already taken the exam.

Norm-referenced scores are generally reported as a percentage or percentile ranking. For example, a student who scores in the seventieth percentile performed as well or better than seventy percent of other test takers of the same age or grade level, and thirty percent of students performed better.

MERITS OF NORM- REFERENCED TEST

·        To make differential predictions in aptitude testing.

·        to get a reliable rank ordering of the pupils with respect to the achievement

·        To identify the pupils who have mastered the essentials of the course more than others.

·        to select the best of the applicants for a particular programme.

·        To find out how effective a programme is in comparison to other possible programmes.

DEMERITS OF NORM -REFERENCED TEST

·        Test items answered by the students are not included in these test items because of their Inadequate contribution to response variance.

·        There is lack of congruence between what the test measures and what is stressed in a local curriculum.

·        This promotes unhealthy competition and injurious to self-concepts of low scoring students.

CRITERION-REFERENCED TESTS

Criterion-referenced tests and assessments are designed to measure student performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards - i.e., concise, written descriptions of what Students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education.

Criterion referenced interpretation enables one “to describe what an individual can do, without reference to performance of others” (Gronlund, 1977, p.18). In criterion referenced measurement a student’s performance is interpreted by comparing it to some specified behavioral criterion of proficiency.

EX. Criterion-referenced tests have been compared to driver’s license exams, which require Would-be drivers to achieve a minimum passing score to earn a license.

CHARACTERISTICS

·        The tests can use to improve teaching and school performance.

·        The tests are evaluating achievement against a common and consistently applied set of criteria.

·        The tests apply the same learning standards to all students, which can hold underprivileged or disadvantaged students to the same high expectations as other students.

·        The tests can be constructed with open-ended questions and tasks that require students to use Higher-level cognitive skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, or interpretation.

MERIT

A criterion-referenced test can give teachers an idea of how a student is advancing in class. 

DEMERIT

It does not allow for comparing the performance of students in a particular location with national norms.

 For example, a school would be unable to compare 5th grade achievement levels in a district, and therefore be unable to measure how a school is performing against other schools.

It is time-consuming and complex to develop.

Teachers will be required to find time to write a curriculum and assessments with an already full work-load. It might require more staff to come in and help.

It costs a lot of money, time and effort. Creating a specific curriculum takes time and money to hire more staff; and most likely the staff will have to be professionals who have experience.

CONTEXT (INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL)

Internal assessment is set and marked by the school (i.e. teachers). Students get the mark and feedback regarding the assessment. 

External assessment is set by the governing body, and is marked by non-biased personnel. Some external assessments give much more limited feedback in their marking.

The students‘ performances are measured periodically in different context during the period of the course. Student‘s performance in slip tests, weekly tests, monthly tests with behaviour are being taken into account besides assignments and project wok while calculating the internal mark. At the same time, the performance of the students at the end of the course has been measured which is called as external. In other way it is called as formative and Summative Evaluation