Which Tool to Use?
In their book, Classroom Assessment for Student Learning – Doing it Right, Using it Well, Stiggins and Chappuis summarize four basic categories of assessment tools. All the tools can be used to improve student learning through assessment for learning and assessment as learning. All four methods are legitimate options. Using your teacher’s professional judgment is essential to ensure that the tool you choose matches the learning goals and intended assessment purpose. The information that tools gather can serve as the basis of instructional planning, as well as feedback for students to guide them in their next steps and for student self-assessment and goal setting.
Goal-Method Match
Stiggins and Chappuis argue that the assessment tool’s overriding criterion is the type of learning goal you will assess, and that careful selection of this tool will ensure you gather quality evidence (p. 113). That is, some assessment methods will better match specific types of learning goals than others.
Types of Tools and Assessments
Let’s examine the strengths and considerations of different assessment tools and tasks and how they match the four categories of knowledge and skills in the Ontario Achievement Chart: Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking, Communication, and Application.
What About Portfolios?
Portfolios can be a powerful aid to learning. However, a portfolio is not an assessment method but a vehicle for teachers and students to track, reflect on, and communicate about achievement. Typically, a portfolio contains a collection of evaluated work, each resulting from an assignment or task. The individual pieces represent responses to some form of assessment – selected response, written response, performance, or personal communication – but the portfolio itself is the repository of evidence, not the stimulus that produced its ingredients. So, although a portfolio includes an array of assessments and plays a valuable role in assessment for learning, it is not an assessment method itself.
Assessment For, As, and Of Learning
The different kinds of classroom assessments lead to immediate insights about student learning and they can reveal misunderstandings and generate timely corrective action. As a result, we usually think of them as tools for assessment for learning and assessment as learning rather than assessment of learning. However, if the learning goal and criteria for judging student response quality are clear, then the information gathered can be used for the assessment of learning. If the task and tool are planned carefully, data is recorded systematically, and its purpose has been communicated to students beforehand, the information gathered can be used as part of a final grade.
Multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and matching questions
These selected response assessments are suitable for gathering basic knowledge and understanding of specific concepts. They can give you a quick overview of how well your students understand basic concepts. They can be ideal for students with limited written output and multilingual learners (MLs) who may require more structured prompts to help them demonstrate what they know. While care needs to be taken to ensure the questions are straightforward for students, these questions are typically less time-consuming to mark. Some drawbacks of these tools are that they may not give you information about students’ ability to think, communicate, or apply their knowledge. These types of tools may also not offer many rich opportunities to provide individualized feedback to students on their learning. Still, they can help you determine if your students are on the right track.
Short and long answer written responses
If capturing your student’s understanding, thinking, and application skills are what you are looking for, then written responses may be the assessment tool you need. Question verbs like “identify,” “describe,” and “explain” are often found in the prompts of these types of tools. These types of assessments can give you more information than the previously discussed selected response assessments. Students will be required to provide more than just the basic level of knowledge and will usually be asked to include elements of reasoning to support their answers. These assessments may be challenging for students with limited written language or who need help communicating their ideas on paper. While these tools may require more time and consideration from teachers when marking, they provide valuable opportunities to offer more explicit feedback on student learning.
Performances, demonstrations, and products
These types of assessments require two parts: the task and the tool containing the criteria used to judge the task. A rubric is a standard tool to organize and share criteria for these assessments with students. While a student’s knowledge and understanding may be assessed in these assessments, these tasks are better used when teachers want to gain insight into how students can communicate and the strength of their thinking and critical/creative thinking skills. When planning these types of assessments, it is essential to note that students may require a significant amount of class time to complete these tasks. It will also need an investment of teacher time to design/source and apply the appropriate criteria tool that will be used to assess student work. Ultimately, these assessments provide students with a more hands-on way to demonstrate their learning and offer teachers a richer source of assessment data due to the layering of skills required to complete these tasks.
Interviews, oral exams, and conferences
Personal communication tasks have a lot to offer to your assessment toolkit. These types of assessments can provide students with opportunities to display their communication skills and have the versatility to showcase student thinking and understanding. The time it takes to conduct these assessments can sometimes be seen as a barrier for teachers, but the ability to gather on-the-spot data is a strong selling point. The word assessment comes from the Latin “assidere,” which means to “sit beside.” These assessment tasks offer personal moments of connection between teachers and students and may yield more personal and descriptive feedback. Students may also appreciate the ability to communicate directly with their teachers instead of writing and responding to written prompts.
