Designing effective assessment tools for higher learning

Assessing factual or applied

knowledge?

Do lecturers teach students to cut down jungles or to irrigate deserts?

QUALITY LEARNING

Learner-centric

content

Outcome based Learning

Meeting national and global needs

Quality T&L

'Ask in order to understand, and do not ask in order to find fault, for surely the ignorant man who wants to learn resembles a man of knowledge, and surely a man of knowledge who wants to be difficult resembles an ignorant man who wants to find fault. '

Assessment is not about finding faults from students but to ensure all succeed

Words of WisdomALI (A.S)

Change the way we perceive on assessment

Assessment becomes a celebration of learning

Students will look forward for EXAM

Students are assessed fairly from all aspects.

Students can solve real life problems

Students become skillful

Why assessment?guides and encourages effective approaches to learning; validly and reliably measures expected learning outcomes, that reflects the higher-order learning that suits higher education; and Through grading, it will define and protects academic standards.

Traditional way of testrevealonly whether the student can recognize, recall what was learnedlimited to paper-pencil, one answer question. ask the student to select or write correct responses, irrespective of reasons. standardizes objective "items" with one right answer for eachmultiple-choice test is determined merely by matching items to the curriculum content.

Authentic or performance test

Conducting research; writing, revising and discussing papers; providing an engaging oral analysis of a recent political event; collaborating with others on a debate

Student can construct, with justifiable answers, performances or products.

Emphasizing and standardizing the appropriate criteria for scoring such (varied) products with the use of a rubric

The test simulates real world tests of ability

• Apply the principles of classroom assessment• Construct and administer various types of classroom assessment• Interpret and analyze test scores• Conduct item analysis and forming item bank• Describe other forms of classroom assessment• Identify latest trend development on current issues in

testing and evaluation

Authentic or performance assessment

GROUPWORK INDIVIDUAL

• Portfolio 10%• Article/seminar paper review 10%• Case study (assessment practices) 20%• Project (test construction and evaluation) 40%• Test 20%

Example: Performance assessment

Mode Area of learning assessed

Essay type: essay exam, open book, assignment, take home

Rote learning, question spotting, coverage reading widely, organize, apply and copy.

Objective:multiple choice Recognition, comprehension, coverage hierarchies of understanding

Performance assessment: practicum, presentation, critical reviews, case study, portfolio

Real life context,, application and professional skills reflected.

Modes of assessment

• List the criteria for A, A-,B+,B, C+,C, C-, ….• Then the grade is awarded that describes

students’ performance. example:

A: clearly met all the objectives and display deep knowledge, original. Critical thinking.B: all objectives have been metC: all objectives are satisfied and effective.Less than C, work plagiarism.

How to grade performance assessment?

RUBRICS

Must be parallel with the objectives;Address the cognitive, psychomotor , affective and social domains. Questions are clear and correct

Creating test questions

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Create – put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize into new pattern or structure (Generating, planning, producing, designing, constructing, inventing)

Evaluation - make a judgment based on criteria & standards (Checking, critiquing, hypothesizing)

Analyze - break material into parts & determine how they relate to one another & to overall structure or purpose (differentiating, organizing, attributing, deconstructing, integrating)

Apply – carry out or use a procedure (concept) in a given (new ) situation (execute, implement)

Understand – construct meaning from instructional messages [oral, written & graphic communication](Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining

Remember - retrieve facts, concepts, definitions from LTM (Recognizing, Recalling, listing, describe)

Bloom’s Cognitive Processes

OBJECTIVESdescribe the underlying Islamic economic principles

relevant to Islamic Finance;explain the meaning and concept of riba and why it is

prohibited;

QUESTIONSWhat? (Knowledge and Concepts) How? (Procedures and Performances)Why? (Problem Solving and Reasoning)

Cognitive domain

• Affective objectives typically target the awareness and growth in attitudes, emotion, and feelings.

• Describe the way people react emotionally and their ability to feel another living thing's pain or joy

• There are 5 levels: Receiving, responding valuing, organizing and

internalizing

Affective domain

objectives Example of questions’ key verbs

Receiving giving, following, replying etc. (student passively pays attention )

Responding reading, answering, selecting (student actively participates in the learning process)

Valuing Demonstrating, studying, justifying. (student attaches a value to an object)

Organizing values comparing, relating and elaborating on what has been learned (student can put together different values, information, and ideas and accommodate them within his/her own schema)

Internalizing Performing, modifying, discriminating (student holds a particular value or belief that now exerts influence on his/her behaviour)

Affective domains (attitude or feelings)

Objectives Example of questions’ key verbs

Collaborating Inviting interactions, performing a team, living in society

Empowering Leadership Envisioning, maintaining commitment,

Managing Managing people, managing communication, managing resources

Communicating Preparing message, receiving message, delivering message

Social domain

Exercise 1

Which level of cognitive domains involve in the following questions?

1.How does the Murabaha contract avoid Riba elements?

2. Elaborate on what Islamic finance is and give examples of how it differs from conventional finance.

3. Has the financial crisis affected Islamic finance? Discuss.

Exercise 2

Identify which learning domain is involved.1. Produce a management report .2. Use the computer software to produce

business account.

Multiple choice items consist of a stem and a set of options

Multiple choice tests are best adapted for testing well-defined or lower-order skills.

Problem-solving and higher-order reasoning skills are better assessed through short-answer and essay tests.

Multiple choice questions

Common practice among the experts

Experts keep changing their minds

Confusing students with too many negatives in a question. All statements are not true except:

No time to prepare questions.

Using incomplete sentencesJust like giving clues for students to answer easily

Asking yesterday’s knowledge Lacking current knowledge

Summary

Questions given to our students must be at higher level of cognitive domain as it will ensure the students to think beyond the text. BUT….not too many.

Ensure students are assessed from different types of tests.

We are trying to ensure student mastery of the subject content. Thus, only test students on what has been taught.