The Process of Developing Assessment.

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Licda: Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The first chapter as to do with the process of developing assessment in the same you will find a summary of the most important points on this subject. What is assessment? It is said that assessment is an integral part of the entire curriculum cycle, not something tacked on as an afterthought to teaching. 

For such reason it includes the phases of planning, development, administration, analysis, feedback, and reflection. 

Planning

The planning for assessment must consider why are we assessing and choose a type of assessment that fits the students needs. What is the purpose of the assessment, and what kind of information do we need to get from it?

Specifications

A specification is a detailed description of exactly what is being assessed and how it is being done. Specifications can be simple or complex, depending on the context for assessment. As a rule, the more formal and higher-stakes the assessment, the more detailed specifications need to be to ensure validity and reliability.

They are steps a simpler specifications might include:

• a general description of the assessment.
• a list of skills to be tested and operations students should be able to do.
• the techniques for assessing those skills.
• the expected level of performance and grading criteria

Constructing the Assessment

At this point after used the specifications we have to be sure that the assessment is constructed the right way, whenever a teacher builds her test she/he needs to prepare an answer key. No matter how good you believe your test is, always try it out on a human being before administering it to your actual target group.  

Preparing Students

Students need accurate information about assessment, and they need to develop good test-taking skills. In many cases teachers need to have outcome statements from the beginning of the course so the students can know what is expected of them. Some teachers post these outcomes in the classroom as a reminder of the goals to be achieved.

Finally I will say the things we need to remember about this topic is that assessment is an integral part of the teaching/learning cycle, transparency and accountability are the hallmarks of good assessment, prepare grading criteria and answer keys along with tests, and plan time for reflection on assessment.