Examples, Comparison and contrast of assessment and evaluation
Assessment can be defined as the process of making opinion or judgment, after considering someone or something carefully. Evaluation is the act of judging to determine the nature, quality, character or value of someone or something. An example of evaluation is where a teacher or a trainer collects feedback for improvement of teaching or training, collecting data to inform the teacher of personnel decisions or developing an assortment for job presentation. In assessments, they are typically designed to ration a particular element of learning. For example, a teacher or a trainer may test the level of knowledge that the learners already have on a certain skill or concept the instructor is designing to teach. The teacher looks at the ability of the students to understand and analyze different types of readings and scripts.
Assessment and evaluation are closely related in that, they all involve examining the ability and progress of the student by the teacher or the trainer. However, they both differ in several ways. Evaluation mostly happens at the end of a certain program or exercise while assessment takes place before the commencement of an exercise or program. While evaluation is a continuous process, assessment can be a one-time process that does not require much time. The function of time makes an evaluation process to be more expensive than an assessment process. Nevertheless, the variable of the cost of a process depends on other factors which may tend to increase the cost of assessment more than that of evaluation. Some of this factors include the parties contracted to do the assessment, expertise of the parties, the time taken to undertake the exercise, and other tools required to carry out the exercise. At the end of a program or a course, the teacher is able to know how best the students have understood the teachings by looking at their performance as part of the evaluation (DuPaul & Stoner, 2014). Therefore, the trainer should focus and put more emphasis on the areas students have a weakness in and the only way to identify the weakness is through carrying out an assessment.
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Characteristics of assessment
First, an assessment process should promote an active student participation. The students should have an opportunity to contribute to the planning of the process. This means that the teacher's knowledge, the textbook or the scripts to be used in the assessment should not solely determine the coverage of a test. Instead, the students are supposed to gather and analyze information that is used to prepare the coverage of a test. Secondly, the teacher should hold the wheel of the assessment by navigating through the procedures. Although students are given the opportunity to contribute to it, the teacher is supposed to give the direction. The teacher has the expertise and knowledge on how the exercise goes about, thus, outsiders are not allowed to take part in an assessment (DuPaul et al., 2014). Thirdly, the process of assessment should be constructive, in that, the students and teachers are able to obtain essential and helpful information at the end of it. Assessment should not be taken as a threat to students but rather as an inspiration to perform better. Lastly, an assessment should be purpose-driven. If the objective is to see that a summative or formative assessment is realized, the teacher must adhere to all the steps and procedures that are required in order to ensure that the results will be reliable and valid.
Characteristics of evaluation
Unlike assessment, evaluation is a continuous process. It is not done at only one particular stage or class in the learning process. Evaluation is piloted from one class, stage or school to the other. In a school setting, it starts when a child gets admission to a particular grade school. In the end, a formative and summative evaluation is done when the child completes instructions in a particular grade. Evaluation can be said to be comprehensive. It not only looks at the education ability and status of the students but also their cognitive and non-cognitive aspects. For the process to take place, the evaluator is supposed to make observations, use rating scale, test, interview and value opinion and judgment to collect information that is complete, efficient, effective and reliable about the students. The process helps the evaluators to make decisions and judgments that are centered towards identifying challenges the child might be facing and the overall progress of the students. As a result, the teacher uses the information to introduce corrective measures on the difficulties the students may be encountering so as to improve their learning and understanding.
Ways in which teachers or trainers use assessment and evaluation in instructional design and delivery
As the author stated earlier in the characteristics of assessment, that, it should enhance the involvement of students in the process. During the instructional design and delivery of a unit, course or a lesson, the assessor put questions, short tests or discussions at the end of a lesson or unit in order to assess the understanding of the topic by the students (Romiszowski, 2016). By doing this, the teacher is able to capture the effectiveness of the lessons and the areas that require more focus and emphasizes. At the end of the program, an effective assessment reduces the probability of failure in the delivery of the course. When it comes to evaluation, a trainer develops a comprehensive examination which evaluates the students' ability through a performance index. This is designed such that, after putting into consideration all issues that an instructor identifies through assessment, the students are evaluated to either grade them according to performance, or allow them to advance to the next stage if they qualify. In addition, evaluation process helps to inform the instructor on the key issues and improvements that should be looked into in the next program. Therefore, an instructor who fails to observe the information that an assessment or an evaluation provides may not be able to make an effective instructional design and delivery.
Examples, similarities of formative and summative assessment
Formative assessment is an informal day-to-day exercise that aims to diagnose the students understanding. This helps the teacher to decide on the best ways to improve the ability of the pupils understanding. Some examples are when a teacher may use, discussions, questions, personal observations, graphic organization, visual representations, and self-assessments. Summative assessment provides information that indicates achievement or progress of a particular module or completed work (Shute & Kim, 2014). The information can be used to grade or number the students according to the performance. Examples of this type of assessment include the semester, end-of-term, or end of program exams, state assessments, end-of-unit test, and county benchmark. The similarities of both assessments are that they all aim at evaluating the ability of the learner. They also help the teachers to identify areas that students may require more assistance.
Differences between formative and summative assessment and their purpose
Formative assessment is a low-stake valuation in which its results do not contribute to grading or judging the final performance of a learner. On the contrary, summative valuation provides the grades a student have after marking an exam or a test. The results a learner obtains may determine their progress to the next class of an effectiveness of the teaching program. Unlike formative assessment which is informal, summative valuation is a formal exercise. Formative is an improvement-oriented while summative is outcome-oriented (Dolin, Black, Harlen & Tiberghien, 2018). Their frequency of occurrence brings another difference in that, formative assessment takes place throughout the unit or course while in summative, it occurs at the end of a unit, semester, course or year. Summative assessment can be referred to as assessment of learning since it is used to evaluate the outcome of a learning process. On the contrary, formative valuation is pivotal in monitoring how effective a learning process is during the delivery of the module and therefore, it can be called an assessment for learning. The purpose of formative assessment during instructional design and delivery is to provide the teachers and students with the feedback to adjust to the ongoing teaching and learning in order to better the performance of the students. Summative assessment is used to show the effectiveness of a teaching module which provides data on the areas to be considered and improved during the design and delivery of another program.
Formative and summative evaluation
Examples of formative include, literature review, use of the focus group, questionnaires, observations and others. In the summative evaluation, a teacher may use counts, questionnaires, focus groups, laboratory practical and test to evaluate students. Traditional schools and university examinations standardized tests are also an example of summative evaluation. A summative appraisal is used to estimate whether a person, an intervention or a program has met the set goals (Morrow, Mood, Disch, & Kang, 2015). On the contrary, formative evaluation is envisioned to advance growth and improvement in a process that is underway, a product or a program. While summative evaluation takes place at the end of a course or a program, formative evaluation is conducted when a particular activity or exercise is underway. Formative is carried out more than once while summative is conducted only once. In both types of evaluations, they involve an evaluator, a course or program and a student who is evaluated. Although the two types of evaluation are carried at different times, they all aim at the improvement of a person's performance, whether at the end of a course or in another program to be conducted.
Purpose of summative and formative evaluation and how they are used in an instructional design process.
Formative evaluation is used by instructors and teachers to collect information, to figure out strengths and weakness with an objective to improve learning and teaching (Lacy & Williams, 2018). For example, a teacher may avail a test to the students at a different time of the semester or term to assess their performance at a particular unit or topic. If a teacher realizes that the students' displays a poor understanding of a certain topic, more emphases such as revisiting or teaching once again on the areas they have a weakness at are taken as a corrective measure. The instructor focuses more on the weakness of the students in the next program or course. By doing this, it bridges the gap that the previous program had, thus improving the process of learning as time goes. On the other hand, summative evaluation purpose to assess the achievement of a program, project or a course through grading. For example, if the previous class or session had a mean of seven out of the possible ten, and the current has 8 out of ten, this shows that the instrumental design was effective. If the mean grade had seen a reduction, it means that the next instrumental design should be improved from the current. The weakness identified during a formative evaluation helps to inform the teachers on the areas that require a reorganization, thus this helps to save time during the delivery process since the previous weaknesses will have been handled in advance.
References
Dolin, J., Black, P., Harlen, W., & Tiberghien, A. (2018). Exploring Relations between Formative and Summative Assessment. In Transforming Assessment (pp. 53-80). Springer, Cham.
DuPaul, G. J., & Stoner, G. (2014). ADHD in the schools: Assessment and intervention strategies. Guilford Publications.
Glazer, N. (2014). Formative plus Summative Assessment in Large Undergraduate Courses: Why Both?. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 26(2), 276-286.
Lacy, A. C., & Williams, S. M. (2018). Measurement and evaluation in physical education and exercise science. Routledge.
Morrow Jr, J. R., Mood, D., Disch, J., & Kang, M. (2015). Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance, 5E. Human Kinetics.
Romiszowski, A. J. (2016). Designing instructional systems: Decision making in course planning and curriculum design. Routledge.
Shute, V. J., & Kim, Y. J. (2014). Formative and stealth assessment. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 311-321). Springer New York.
