Summative (Tests) and Formative (Surveys) Assessment
Susan Edington and Cathy Hunt include a succinct overview of
"Classroom Evaluation and Assessment" in their Teaching Consultation Process
Sourcebook (Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press, 1996: 57-66).
The question that resonates throughout this book--as it apparently should
resonate throughout our course planning--is "What do I want my students to know and
be able to do as a result of this lesson, unit, or course?"
Testing
So testing starts with planning out the objectives to be
tested--preferably at different levels of Bloom's taxonomy of cognition. Test
questions should also be written for different levels of cognition.
"As a rule, include some questions from
all six categories of Bloom's Taxonomy,
but make sure no more than
40% are knowledge oriented."
Test banks are convenient, but they are rarely classroom tested, let
alone validated, and they don't necessarily reflect the concepts you stress in class.
Teacher's objective tests have good news and bad news for each format:
Fill-in-the-blank questions designed to elicit term or
short-answer questions for getting definitions are easy to write but don't take much
thought to answer.
Marking statements true or false can test students' ability to
distinguish fact from opinion, and this sort of test item is easy to grade, but they also
permit guessing and can work against divergent thinking.
Matching is very compact, but still only for factual recall.
Multiple-choice questions can get at more than one level of
cognition, but doing so takes time and can still work against divergent thinking.
Performance tests aim to determine if students can really use course
content under somewhat real circumstances. [I keep thinking of the sharpshooter in the
movie Glory who is challenged to reload his musket while his commanding officer
shoots off a pistol just behind his head--because a skilled field soldier could fire and
reload fast enough to get off three shots per minute. The sharpshooter was a great
shot, but he had to become an adept reloader. The impromptu test taught him an
invaluable survival lesson.]
Portfolios help faculty to evaluate the abilities of their
students, as they have done in studio courses for some time. The trick is to think
of your course in terms of what students will produce that shows learning. For instance, a
portfolio in a history course might includes a student's written or audio-recordeded
reaction to one lecture, an analysis of data from several lectures and reading(s), a
factual report or opinion piece written for the college or local newspaper (whether it was
submitted or published or not) relevant to course concepts, review of a book or an
annotated bibliography (or "webliography" if the portfolio is done as a
website), some researched writing (such as a write-up of a poll conducted by the student
and/or secondary commentary on the same topic to provide a national or a chronological
perspective).
The selection of work and its
grading can accommodate any course objectives. Using a portfolio seems to make the
student and the teacher more like allies in a common cause to meet course standards,
usually with more flexible deadlines and guidance along the way. Students might even
be distracted from working only for a grade.
Videotape can be used to assess a variety of activities, e.g.
presentations, debates, a science experiment, small group interactions, a math problem
solutions, etc.
Constructions or projects from maps and graphs to replicas,
budget plans, computer programs, accounting files, and more.
Essay tests can assess any cognitive level, but they can be tricky to
word in order to clearly match objectives. Anticipating all possible parts of an
answer (or assembling all parts from those submitted) should make listing of parts easier
for scoring.
It could help to focus students' studying by giving them
probable test questions before the test.
Distributing the a set of actual test questions about a week
before the test as a study guide. On test day, let students bring in a finite set of
notes, e.g. one 3x5 card or one sheet of paper for all questions, or maybe one card for
each question.
Team testing should involve a four-person study team. About a week
before the test, give out study questions. Students actually take the test in teams,
handing in one test paper, although there should be an option to solo on the test.
Paired testing, like team testing, involves working from the beginning
of the semester in pairs, studying and testing together, handing in one test paper.
Switching partners, of course, should be allowed during the semester, and those who won't
produce should be cut from pairs or pairs of producing students let to form new pairs.
Surveys, Questionnaires, Polls
Formative assessment consists of non-graded tasks that usually lead to
aggregate data about one course, one unit, one day. Dozens of such methods are
commonplace; here's a selection:
Focused Listing is a paired activity. Teacher and
students separately write a course concept at the top of a paper and list as many related
concepts as they can in a set time, e.g. 15 minutes. Comparing the lists is the crucial
part, and the teacher's list is not necessarily an "answer key," but it is a
signigicant control.
Directed Paraphrasing involves having students tell a
significant reading or lecture in their own words. Sort the paraphrases by quality, e.g.
"top notch," "ok," "incomplete," "confused." If
the latter two piles are the bigger stacks, that lesson needs to be reinforced.
Self-Diagnostic Learning Logs are logs for each class
session in a course to list concepts understood vs. points of confusion. Students track
problems and successes, and they summarize their findings for regular collection by the
teacher.
One-Sentence Summaries require students to get the gist
of a lecture, discussion, or reading, e.g. answering "who," "what,"
"when," "where," "why," and "how" on an index
card. If student hands it in at the end of class, the card also verifies attendance.
Invented Dialogues challenge students to create a
conversation as historical figures or proponents of particular philosophies, e.g. an
1850's abolitionist and slaveowner.
Assessment Cards permit quick assessments of students'
understanding. One side of a card might say "true" or bear a large T, the other
"false." Or a paper might be sectioned and labeled with the 5 stages as
you tell a class the characteristic(s) of one stage and ask them to hold up the label of
that stage. Students and teacher can see at a glance the majority view.
Student-Generated Quizzes offer a chance for students
to show what they know by bringing to class 5 questions (or so) on a reading or lecture.
These quizzes are collected and redistributed, taken as practice quizzes, and
returned to the quiz writer for scoring. The teacher's role is to assess the cognitive
level of the questions and strategies of answers to see if students in the course need
further training for taking tests in that course.
Test Banking ends a class by asking the class to make a
question based on the day's most important concept. Part of the next test should
include at least one of these daily questions. Of course, the teacher gets to see if
the students caught the most important concepts for the day.
One-Minute Papers rarely take only one minute, but they
can provide an end to a class session by getting students to tell
the most important concept of a class
questions that remain
Although tests are used for grades, they can also be measured themselves
to see whether they assess students' abilities to meet course objectives.
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1999