Assessment, popularly known in the field of education as examination, is the eye-opener that helps instructors and educational managers to know whether the expected learning outcomes have been attained by learners. It is so worthwhile in education so much so that educational seru tfl test book experts are advocating for it to be carried out even before, during and after every lesson delivery.
Its benefits are countless. It quickly sends a signal to the instructor that the content was or was not well digested by learners and might require a re-teaching. The causes may be due to poor lesson preparation on the part of the instructor or teaching the topic at the wrong timing or without considering the relevant previous knowledge of students. Whatever be the case, assessments enable the instructor to diversify his/her teaching methods, strategies, and techniques so that the expected learning outcomes would be achieved to the optimum. Thus, despite the assessments helping learners to grasp learning content and exhibiting the required expected behavior, it immensely helps the instructor to grow in his/her professional career with very rich instructional experience.
However, assessments can be a great obstacle for most instructors. This is especially true when an instructor has to assess the understanding of a large class of students. Owing to this, some instructors have greatly reduced the number of assessments they give to their learners. Worse yet, others have decided not to engage in pre-assessments (assessments undertaken before the lesson delivery) and the on-assessments (assessments carried out during the lesson delivery), reducing the three phases of assessment to only post-assessments (assessments done after the lesson delivery) at the end of the semester or term. As a result, it negatively affects the learning outcomes of students. No wonder students sometimes complete a course with empty barrels! Therefore, instructors must make it their priority to undertake all the phases of assessment. How can they overcome this seemingly difficult responsibility?
Peer assessment is one cardinal assessment strategy that instructors can adopt. The instructor would assign the students to assess the submitted works of their colleagues after the correct answers or marking scheme has been discussed and distributed to each student. To kill any form of favoritism due to relationships among themselves, some instructors decide to use pseudonym or anonymity identity technique where only index numbers are used. This is very effective for especially the pre-assessments and the on-assessments. However, the pseudonym or anonymity identity of students must be varied so that students would not engage in any foul play. Also, the instructor must randomly check the general assessments that the students have done to vouch for their validity. This assessment technique saves the energy and time of the instructor while minimizing the heavy task of assessment.
In addition, instructors must set simple questions that would require easy assessment of the scores of students. The table of specification for test item construction must be used tactfully. Knowledge based questions must be skillfully blended with the understanding, application, synthesis and evaluation levels of test construction. This also reduces the burden of assessment while also not compromising on quality assessment. In this technological age, instructors can set up online or virtual class discussion forums for his/her students and reward marks for students' participation. Occasionally, the instructor reads the comments passed by the students in the forum discussions to ascertain their levels of understanding on the lesson taught. Clickers, Back Channel Communication, Open-Ended Response System as well as Live-Question Tool are specially designed online programs that can help an instructor to assess the understanding of his/her students. Thus, if an institution has a strong internet or technological infrastructure, these strategies can be implemented.
Interestingly, social media platforms can be created by instructors so that students can discuss lessons taught. The instructor must intermittently act as a moderator while seru tfl test book policing the discussions so that it will not sway into other unnecessary discussions unrelated to the sole academic purpose.
The instructor can also use other traditional assessment strategies such as the use of response cards. The response cards are used to ascertain the responses of learners to the questions asked by the instructor. Students write brief answers to the questions posed on their response cards. Then, they hold up their cards that bear their answers to the questions the instructor asks. The instructor finally scans through the answers to glean the understanding of learners to the lesson taught. This strategy reduces the yoke of having to mark all scripts presented on the instructor's table to assess the understanding of students.