CTELT Newsletter Fort Hays State University

There are more than three thousand colleges and universities in the United States, and the missions and students of these colleges and universities are different. Yet all these institutions share one fundamental goal: to produce the highest quality of student learning. To put it in another way, the central aim of all the institutions is to help students learn more effectively and efficiently than they could on their own.

As teachers, how do we know how much and how well have students learned? The answer comes through assessment.  People think differently about the role of assessment. For some, assessment serves only to verify learning at the end of a course, while for others it serves to help students improve learning during the course.  The central aim of assessment is to inform learning and improve teaching. It helps instructors to know whether students have become more effective and self-directed learners.

If we liken a course to a sea voyage, then assessments in the form of exercises, assignments, tests, and exams are like ports along the way. Doing assessment is like navigating, and the assessment techniques are procedures and devices that the navigator could use to determine the ship’s position at sea. These position checks allow the captain to keep the ship on course. In a similar fashion, assessment gives teachers information to “navigate by,” feedback to guide and keep student learning “on course.”

Perceptions on assessment are rooted in the cultural assumptions of education. For example, in Chinese culture, assessment seems to be a synonym to a test or an exam. Tests or exams are the only way to evaluate student learning and provide them a ticket to enter a key school or a college. Caused by the rigid entrance examinations to colleges, such perception of assessment is misleading, and assessment itself often becomes a simple way to test students’ memory skills.

Assessment techniques also reflect the teaching philosophy of a teacher. How an instructor views a teacher’s role is related to the way assessment will be administered to the students. When teaching is viewed as transmission of knowledge, assessment tends to focus on facts and principles of the subject matter. When teaching is viewed as apprenticeship, assessment is more likely to be designed to measure project-based learning and higher-order thinking skills. When teaching is viewed as career preparation, assessment tends to focus on basic learning skills, student development, and personal growth.

Assessment is multidimensional rather than uni-dimensional. Bloom’s taxonomy has set up a basic framework for formulating course objectives according to the six levels of cognition, including knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In a similar fashion, assessment can focus on different clusters of knowledge and skills, including discipline-specific knowledge and skills, basic academic success skills, liberal arts and academic values, work and career preparation, personal development, and higher-order thinking skills.

Assessment can be summative or formative. A summative assessment such as a final exam is administered after the learning has ended. Such assessment allows a teacher to know how well students have learned. The purpose of summative assessment is not to help students succeed but to evaluate learning by grading them from the strongest to the weakest. A formative assessment can be done at any moment during the learning process. The purpose of formative assessment is to gain feedback from students and help students better learn the current materials directed by the course objectives. The two types of assessment complement each other, and both of them are important in the learning process.

Assessment is an important component in the teaching and learning process. It is designed to align with the course objectives. It is designed to reinforce and enhance learning of the specific content that is being assessed. As ports along the way to tell a captain about the voyage, assessment will allow teachers to know the “position of the ship” during the course. Take good advantage of assessment, and enjoy your voyage for each course.