This past week I really enjoyed the discussion that we had about assessment. It was interesting to talk about what an assessment of learning is as opposed to an evaluation of learning. Other than it being a three hour lecture it was very enjoyable and informative. Although I beleive Geoff has a strong (biased) oppinion i would agree with what he said.
"True and False tests are a waste of everyone's time!"
This statement was very interesting to me because i have never enjoyed taking a true and false test. The questions always seemed the most confusing to me and the most unfair. Now after this lecture i understand why i have always felt that way. Geoff informed us that he could always score at least a 72% on a true and false quiz. He claims this is because you are not required to know the material, rather, by following a few key words and rules there is no knowlege of the subject required. Long story short there is no way to get a true evaluation of content.
Evaluation = measuring the understanding, judgment of merit
Assessment = process of documenting in measurable terms
Another interesting point that Geoff made about tests was on multiple choice questions, he showed many different questions that were written wrong and we picked out why. He showed examples of questions that either guided the students toward the right answer or didnt allow them to get the right answer because it contained the wrong article. Another example was using less than four answers or using garbage just to fill one of the answers. I thought that these ideas were obvious but i think they are mistakes that everybody makes.
Rubrics = a list of criteria and ranges of content
Reliability = measument is repeated
Validity = accuracy of measure
All in all it was a good week. I enjoyed the last few teachings that we had (especially the Lego activity that Jared prepared).
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