Progress, Performance and Personalisation: Using Assessment to Guide the Learning
Student assessment is an integral part of education. Every school and college around the world assesses their students' capabilities through tests. They have, in many ways, become a vital tool in modern education.
But the standard tests that we are familiar with are those which analyze the result of learning. This method of assessment is designed to rank students, schools, and universities according to a standardized test format. While they serve the purpose of knowing a student's understanding, it does less to improve it.
Exams take place at the end of the school year when instructional activities have come to an end leaving no space for improvement and students move to another class in some time.
The goal of assessments should ideally be to obtain information on what a student understands and what not. A well designed assessment framework can provide regular information on student understanding for teachers to assist in their learning process. Assessments must be followed with corrective instructions to remedy the errors that students make.
There are macro level benefits to large-scale assessments (conducted at district, state, or at country level) such as for the government's education policy. Although, if teachers conduct similar assessments at micro-level, a lot of students can benefit from it.
Cambridge English follows a similar method of assessment called ‘Learning oriented Assessment’, where assessments hold the central position of learning and teachers are able to calibrate their methods as per student’s understanding, resulting in a better quality of education.
We can apply a similar method in our assessments. The entire method is formulated by following the three Ps: Progress, Performance and Personalization. The core of this method is to create assessments for learning, rather than assessments of learning.
For example, a teacher selects a task for students to work on. The concepts and skills evaluated in the task should align with learning objectives of the class and their level of understanding. A high-level analysis of task completion rate and learning objective wise mastery rate gives a fair measure of learning 'Progress' of students in a classroom.
Next, it is important to understand the 'Performance' of each student, which can help teachers teach at the right level. The process is not as complicated as it seems. It certainly requires more effort than simply checking the answers, but has a meaningful impact in the long term. A simple table of what criteria or concept each student missed that led to the deduction of scores works well. It gives a clear idea of trouble spots for each student. These can be simple misconceptions or use of the wrong formula.
Once the problems are pointed out, it’s viable to solve them. The most important part of this method is 'Personalization'. Teachers need to focus on the weak points of each student and help them overcome it. However, it does not mean re-teaching by simply repeating the same method but accommodating students' needs. Teachers can host small groups of students with similar problems, use complementary methods like practical learning, video learning, etc. The sole purpose of it is to help students learn better.
Assessments help teachers and students learn more effectively by measuring their progress, identifying areas of improvement and working on them. Learning oriented assessments, if used judicially, can help students mold their understanding better. But when used only to assign a certain number and rank to students, the education system is undermining its strongest tool. Assessments should not be the end goal of learning but a head start.
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4 年Good points, Shashank. It is the BRAIN that learns. So, it ought to follow - that we need to first understand how the Brain works, processes information & then tweak the input appropriately. I guess, most folks miss the first 2 steps...
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4 年Yes! So true. The entire idea of looking at assessments as an indicator of abilities and weaknesses of the children can be so apt. For long, assessments have worked as a standard of learning. It's time the perspectives and methods change and perhaps soon enough children won't fear results but look forward to it!
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4 年Good to read the article - well written. Now about your question. I never stressed about either. Till my 11th I never bothered for marks and never scored more than 60% although I am one of the most avid readers I know of - so accumulation of knowledge for the sheer pleasure was my goal - I read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica and every single reader digest ever published in school. Once I was in 12th I had the good fortune of getting public humiliated for my lack of marks in examination and then meeting someone who literally told me "bhai marks to laane hi padenge" and then I always was in the top 3 my class and then my school and then my university.
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4 年Very rightly said, we need assessments for learning, rather than of learning. In the conventional methods we don't focus on trying new methods rather we just keep repeating the old ones making the whole process same and yet of now use.
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4 年"Learning oriented assessments" is a nice description. I also describe this as "diagnostic assessment", as much like a medical diagnosis, this type of assessment helps educators focus and diagnose learning needs that can be addressed with future plans. Fabulous piece, thanks for sharing.