Good Practice for Assessing Students

I just finished reading - 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning  from the course material of week 4. This paper gives a deeper insight of what are the best practices of assessing the learning. The paper starts with a universal fact that assessment is not in end itself but it is a vehicle for educational improvement. I remember when we were in school and, after we had our final exam done, we used to say- I’ll never see these books again. But the truth is that those books laid foundation for the next year and assessment made that foundation even stronger.

Assessment is not mere demonstration of some crammed facts, spitted out on paper in form of one word answers, choosing right answer of filling the blanks. It is much more than that. Assessment should find the level multidimensional and integrated performance over the time. For focused and clear assessment, it should have a clear goal so that what are the expected outcomes of the learning can be described and achieved.  assessment can also help instructors and the curriculum developers to see what are the best teaching practices and the environment for learning. Episodic assessment such as having half yearly or the final exams may not be a good practice for the learning outcomes. The assessment which is continuous and ongoing and take various tools into consideration will assess the learners on the basis of improvement they have shown over a period of time.

Consider, a 6^th grade student who has to appear for traditional final exams in the school next week, but couldn’t study because of prevailing home conditions - a sick father and full time working mom. If he couldn’t do better in exam, then generalizing that he is not good at studies is purely wrong.

The other fact which this paper reveals is that it shouldn’t be the instructor/teacher who is solely responsible for the assessment of students but student-affairs educators, librarians, administrators, and students can also  play an important role in overall assessment of a learner.

I really liked the ideas presented in this paper as they throw light on what  assessment basically is. In India, most of the schools judge students’ performance by looking at the mark sheet obtained at the end of the year. But, I am happy to find that things are changing and continuous and comprehensive assessment is being practiced by many schools now a days.