There are a number of misconceptions regarding the role of assessment in contemporary education. Unfortunately, while these beliefs may shape opinions outside of education, they also have the potential to influence the attitudes and behaviours of current instructors and students.
Following are six misconceptions towards assessments and ways to address them in the classroom:
1. Assessment and evaluation are the same
Assessment involves timely, detailed feedback based around clearly defined learning outcomes. Evaluation is ‘giving a grade’ to a piece of work, usually based on normative criteria, but too often in comparison to the work of other students.
2. Most assessment is summative
We need to constantly assess both student work and our own teaching, adjusting as we go, such that by the time we get to the end of a unit of study students have already had an opportunity to rethink and revise their work. There are still far too many teachers who rely too heavily on one single summative assessment at the end of each unit and then move onto another topic no matter the outcomes.
3. Assessment is one-way communication: the teacher gives feedback on student work
The most productive assessment should be a dialogue. In traditional assessment and evaluation models, students complete a task, the teacher assesses the work and tells the student how they’ve done and, in formative cases, how to improve the work. Modern technology makes two-way communication between teacher and student much easier and far more ubiquitous, let’s start using it more effectively.
4. Assessment is for grading purposes
This is one of the most pervasive and potentially damaging holdovers from bygone eras in education. Yes, final grades should reflect some of what has gone on between student and teacher regarding assessment. But the “collecting of marks” to arrive at the final grade is counterproductive in many ways.
5. Student work should be given a grade or a mark
In summative situations, or where grades/marks are necessary, this assertion is true. But too often we put a mark on student work when we’re hoping to use the work formatively, which is a mistake. As soon as students see a grade on a piece of work, be it a letter or number grade, the focus is immediately taken off of any meaningful feedback and, in the student’s mind, that piece of work is complete.
6. If assignments are late, a teacher should deduct points
There is no pedagogically defensible reason for doing this; this is simply trying to modify behavior using coercion through grades. There is nothing wrong with having some consequence for late work, but the assignment of grades (when necessary) should reflect student learning, nothing more. Put another way, if a student hands in work worthy of an A today, is that work somehow different if it were handed in tomorrow?
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