EDU431 Glossary

EDU431 · Glossary ·  Assessment

Assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

 Benchmark

An expected performance level for a student at a particular point in time determined by standards based criteria; an identified content standard for a particular course, grade level, or developmental level at a specific point in time

 Constructed Response Questions

Assessment item for which students create or produce their own answer or response. Examples of constructed-response questions include short answer questions and extended written response/essay questions.

 Formative Assessment

Formative assessments are assessments for learning. They are designed to provide information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. These assessments are used by teachers and students to determine what students have learned in order to plan further instruction

 High Stake Assessment

High-stakes assessments are typically standardized tests used for the purposes of accountability— i.e., any attempt by federal, state, or local government agencies to ensure that students are enrolled in effective schools and being taught by effective teachers.

•  Learning objective.

A learning objective is a specific statement that describes what the student is to learn, understand, or to be able to do as a result of a lesson or a series of lessons.

 Measurement

Measurement is simply the process of assigning a number, or a score if you will, to some performance or product. Examples would include grading a test or a homework assignment in terms of number or percent of correct or incorrect responses

 Multiple Choice Questions

A task-type in which learners are given a question and three or four possible answers or options. They choose the correct answer from the options they are given.

 Norm Referenced Test

Assessments that compare a student’s performance to that of other students rather than to previously established criteria. Standardized examinations such as the SAT are norm-referenced tests

 Performance Assessment

Performance assessments are designed to measure what students know through their ability to perform certain tasks. In certain situations, performance assessments – sometimes called performance-based assessments – may provide a more accurate indication of what students can do than traditional assessments are able to provide. Performance-based assessments typically include exhibitions, investigations, creation of products, demonstrations, written or oral responses, journals, and portfolios.

 Pre-Assessment

Assessments that gather and analyze baseline data about what students know and can do as they enter the learning experience.

 Reliability

Reliability refers to the degree of consistency or dependability of a test. A reliable test will produce similar scores and distributions whenever it is given to similar populations. Thus, if a student scored a 90 on an achievement test today, then, if the test is reliable, the student's score would not differ substantially if the test were taken again another day. Reliability may also mean that a student would earn similar scores on two different forms of a test, if tested at about the same time.

 Selected Response Question

Assessment item for which students select a response from possible responses that are provided. Examples of selected-response questions include multiple-choice, true/false, and matching

 Summative Assessment

Summative assessments are assessments of learning. They are designed to document what students have learned at the end of a period of instruction relative to the standards.

 Validity

Validity is a term that describes how well a test, or a test item, measures what it claims to measure, accurately predicts a behavior, or accurately contributes to decision making about the presence or absence of a characteristic.