Assessment

WHAT is assessment ?

• Evaluating progress in learning of a topic, skill or activity

• Evaluation knowledge and/or qualifications on a topic, skill or activity

Why assess ?

• to check learning (feedback for student)
• to check teaching! (feedback for teacher - pace & structure of learning)
• to reinforce and apply learning
• to provide a goal (motivation/achievement)
• to predict future performance

What forms does assessment take ?

Continuous evaluation

Class interactions provide an informal assessment of student’s grasp of a topic by their ability to answer questions or comment.

• Questions to the students:

  • checking that students are following
  • checking that what’s being explained is understood
  • checking for holes in knowledge
  • are students all at the same level ?
  • are they in the right class ?

• “Raise your hand” type interactions:

  • checking progress in a class lab
  • “who has finished step 5 ?”

If it’s practical, cosider having a 5 min overview of the topics covered that day, encouraging participants to ask questions on points that weren’t well understood.

Practical assessment

• Student presentation

  • You know about this now :)
  • Introduces variation in class content
  • Good way to evaluate if a participant has understood what’s expected of them
  • Can be challenging for some

• Group work

  • Use peer review/discussion to self-assess, compare understanding and progress with that of other participants
  • Offers relief from class monotony

• Tasks (labs)

  • Hands-on activity lets students apply learned knowledge in a “safe” environment and builds confidence

  • The practical task needs to be clearly defined, and students need to fully understand what they are being asked to do and what the expected outcome is.

  • Tasks can take the form of problem solving activities

  • Or as a step-by-step worksheet which gives structure and can be reused as a reference guide later

  • Subsequent tasks may or may not depend on previous ones being completed succesfully

    • if they are, it’s all the more important that continuous assessment take place to make sure you haven’t lost people along the way

    • if they stall, you may need replacement activities so people don’t idle if they can’t finish

Guidelines

• Make sure that the instructions are accurate

• In the case of computer labs, test every step beforehand on the same environment that the students will use.

• Biggest causes of delays are when students don’t know what they are supposed to do, and when instructions are inaccurate

• Different students move at different speeds. Consider including extra exercises which faster students can do at the end (or alternate activities for those completely stuck)

• Fast students can help the slower ones :)

Periodic (or scheduled) examination

Exams/quizzes/questionnaires

We’ll look at some examples of questions.

• Questions should be clearly formulated! Ask someone else to go through them - they may interpret the questions differently from what you intended

• Answers to the questions should be kept short:

  • multiple choice
  • matching categories
  • single / missing word to be added

• Be wary of extended questions such as “Justify your answer above” or “Why is this ?”. Your expectation of what students may reply may be challenged!

  Be ready to accept answer that are ultimately correct, even if they do not employ knowledge learned in class.

• Questions should be kept as neutral as possible.

  • Questions like “Is it a good idea to do … rather than …” can influence outcomes
  • Try and prefer the form “Which method A or B do you believe is most effective for…”