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This Week's Topic
Assessment—Part 3
Evaluating student learning and development is one of your most important tasks as an instructor. As traditional methods continue to remain important assessment tools, alternative methods also are being used. This week’s Teaching Tips include both. Check out this week’s Download Depot for a quick reference sheet.
This Week's Tips
Objective Assessment Strategies (Monday)
Traditional assessment tools include objective measures such as tests that include multiple-choice questions, matching, item sets, and true or false questions. These tests measure cognitive knowledge effectively. They are reliable, easy to validate, objective, low cost, and efficient. They allow for automated administration, and they lend themselves to equating. Since objective tests fail to measure overall performance, use objective tests along with alternative assessment methods.
Written Assessment Strategies (Tuesday)
Written assessment strategies include essays, restricted responses, written simulations, case analysis, and problem-solving exercises. Written assessments can provide in-depth evaluation of real-life experiences. They measure writing skills and higher-level skills, and they are reasonable in developmental costs and time. However, the scoring is objective, time consuming and expensive, difficult to equate, and only moderately reliable. For these reasons, use written assessment along with alternative assessment methods.
Oral Assessment Strategies (Wednesday)
Oral assessment strategies include oral examinations and interviews. Oral evaluations measure communication and interpersonal skills, provide in-depth assessment with varied stimulus materials, and encourage learner involvement. They also are costly and time consuming, have limited reliability, and reflect a narrow sample of content. The scoring is difficult and requires multiple raters. This is not a widely recommended method of assessment.
Simulated Activity Assessment Strategies (Thursday)
Simulated activity assessment strategies include computer simulations and in-basket activities. Simulated activities are moderately reliable, but they are also costly and time consuming. They are performance-based measures that are difficult to score, administer, and develop. Simulated activities are recommended only for special circumstances and specific courses that lend themselves to this time of assessment.
Product Analysis Assessment Strategies (Friday)
Product analysis includes work samples, projects, work diaries and logs, and achievement records. Product analysis assessment strategies provide student involvement and information not normally available with other types of assessment. Information is easy to collect, and students are provided with real-life evaluations. Product analysis can be costly to administer and labor and paper intensive. There may be a bias toward the best samples. Keep in mind that product samples can be used alone or as part of students portfolios.
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