Overview of Assessment

Created by:

Dr. Sonya Lynn Dinero
Professor Emeritus, Evaluation and Measurement
Kent State University

Dr. Thomas Edward Dinero
Professor Emeritus, Evaluation and Measurement
Kent State University

Nuria M. Cuevas, Ph.D.
Acting Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs;
Director, Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment
Norfolk State University

Overview

This module serves as an introduction and overview of the field of testing and measurement as it is applied by the thoughtful educator in the classroom. Educators recognize that one of the most influential actions they take in teaching is giving feedback to their classes about how much and to what extent they have learned the material. With the recognition of the student as consumer and the university as supplier, the concept of “value-added” is an important focus in contemporary thinking: for the time and resources expended, what should the student and future employers expect from the classroom experience?

The modern educator, then, has a responsibility to know and understand that tests, as an important method of communicating to students, are not the simple asking of test questions but are a theoretically-based, systematic, and scientific method of analyzing student behavior. The educator must be able to design these instruments and interpret their results in ways that are defensible and that produce the best information available about the outcome of the classroom experience.

The reader of these modules will quickly find out that the more we think about the topic of learning and testing, the more complicated and possibly obtuse the issues become. This is possibly why some educators reject the idea of testing altogether and either ignore these issues or substitute other, less scientific, methods if the students or future employers want feedback about the classroom outcomes. But the fact that we may not be satisfied with the state of present-day classroom evaluation is not reason enough to dispense with it altogether—it is a compelling argument to improve it.

Objectives

The purpose of this module, then, is to present a general background to the history and theory of testing as support for the many decisions that a conscientious educator must make in evaluating the impact he has had on his students. After completing this module, you will be able to

new objectives

describe the purposes of testing
classify all testing elements

old objectives

Use historical and theoretical arguments as a rationale for objective testing in the classroom
Describe the possible uses of a classroom test
Recognize the concepts in test theory that are directly useful in developing and evaluating tests, and
Outline the scientific reasoning underlying the concepts of test validity and test reliability.