Assessment Article

A forrmative assessment is an assessment that is intended to determine whether a learning process is taking place satisfactorily or whether it needs adjusting to help the students learn.  This assessment takes place during the course of the learning program to give the teacher an idea of how the course is going.  This type of assessment is often done through the use of ungraded pop quizes.  A summative assessment is a measurement that is made at the end of a learning course to tell what the students have achieved throughout the course.  Grades are often given as the basis for the assessment.  An example of a summative assessment that we can closely relate too is the final examinations that we take after the completions of a course.

In a criterion-referenced assessment, the content, difficulty and types of items that are on the assessment are all determined by the objective demands of the leaning goals.  This method is preferred when there is a set level of competence that a student must meet to determine whether he/she has achieved the objectives needed.  This is much like the tests that we are given from the FAA to assess whether or not we have learned the material needed to get a certain certificate or rating.  A norm-referenced assessment is used when there are not really any true agreement as to what the learner must know.  For this type of situation the assessment is based off of other learners and how well each learner did respectively compared to the rest of the class.  A self-referenced assessment is used when the learning goals are personal.  For example if there is no way of knowing what a learner must or should know at the end of a course, the only appropriate way to assess the learner is through the learners self assessment.

Self-directed learning is a learning technique in which the learner controls both the objectives and the means of learning.  These types of learners are usually more sophisticated and search for oppertunities to apply critical thought to the things that they have previously learned. These types of learners also tend to prefer self-referenced assessments or critiques from their peers at the formative and summative levels.