purpose of this assessment essay

Center for Teaching

Assessing student learning.

Forms and Purposes of Student Assessment

Assessment is more than grading, assessment plans, methods of student assessment, generative and reflective assessment, teaching guides related to student assessment, references and additional resources.

Student assessment is, arguably, the centerpiece of the teaching and learning process and therefore the subject of much discussion in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Without some method of obtaining and analyzing evidence of student learning, we can never know whether our teaching is making a difference. That is, teaching requires some process through which we can come to know whether students are developing the desired knowledge and skills, and therefore whether our instruction is effective. Learning assessment is like a magnifying glass we hold up to students’ learning to discern whether the teaching and learning process is functioning well or is in need of change.

To provide an overview of learning assessment, this teaching guide has several goals, 1) to define student learning assessment and why it is important, 2) to discuss several approaches that may help to guide and refine student assessment, 3) to address various methods of student assessment, including the test and the essay, and 4) to offer several resources for further research. In addition, you may find helfpul this five-part video series on assessment that was part of the Center for Teaching’s Online Course Design Institute.

What is student assessment and why is it Important?

In their handbook for course-based review and assessment, Martha L. A. Stassen et al. define assessment as “the systematic collection and analysis of information to improve student learning” (2001, p. 5). An intentional and thorough assessment of student learning is vital because it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students about the extent to which students are successfully meeting learning objectives. In their book Understanding by Design , Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe offer a framework for classroom instruction — “Backward Design”— that emphasizes the critical role of assessment. For Wiggins and McTighe, assessment enables instructors to determine the metrics of measurement for student understanding of and proficiency in course goals. Assessment provides the evidence needed to document and validate that meaningful learning has occurred (2005, p. 18). Their approach “encourages teachers and curriculum planners to first ‘think like an assessor’ before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider up front how they will determine if students have attained the desired understandings” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, p. 18). [1]

Not only does effective assessment provide us with valuable information to support student growth, but it also enables critically reflective teaching. Stephen Brookfield, in Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, argues that critical reflection on one’s teaching is an essential part of developing as an educator and enhancing the learning experience of students (1995). Critical reflection on one’s teaching has a multitude of benefits for instructors, including the intentional and meaningful development of one’s teaching philosophy and practices. According to Brookfield, referencing higher education faculty, “A critically reflective teacher is much better placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well as to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment” (Brookfield, 1995, p. 17). One important lens through which we may reflect on our teaching is our student evaluations and student learning assessments. This reflection allows educators to determine where their teaching has been effective in meeting learning goals and where it has not, allowing for improvements. Student assessment, then, both develop the rationale for pedagogical choices, and enables teachers to measure the effectiveness of their teaching.

The scholarship of teaching and learning discusses two general forms of assessment. The first, summative assessment , is one that is implemented at the end of the course of study, for example via comprehensive final exams or papers. Its primary purpose is to produce an evaluation that “sums up” student learning. Summative assessment is comprehensive in nature and is fundamentally concerned with learning outcomes. While summative assessment is often useful for communicating final evaluations of student achievement, it does so without providing opportunities for students to reflect on their progress, alter their learning, and demonstrate growth or improvement; nor does it allow instructors to modify their teaching strategies before student learning in a course has concluded (Maki, 2002).

The second form, formative assessment , involves the evaluation of student learning at intermediate points before any summative form. Its fundamental purpose is to help students during the learning process by enabling them to reflect on their challenges and growth so they may improve. By analyzing students’ performance through formative assessment and sharing the results with them, instructors help students to “understand their strengths and weaknesses and to reflect on how they need to improve over the course of their remaining studies” (Maki, 2002, p. 11). Pat Hutchings refers to as “assessment behind outcomes”: “the promise of assessment—mandated or otherwise—is improved student learning, and improvement requires attention not only to final results but also to how results occur. Assessment behind outcomes means looking more carefully at the process and conditions that lead to the learning we care about…” (Hutchings, 1992, p. 6, original emphasis). Formative assessment includes all manner of coursework with feedback, discussions between instructors and students, and end-of-unit examinations that provide an opportunity for students to identify important areas for necessary growth and development for themselves (Brown and Knight, 1994).

It is important to recognize that both summative and formative assessment indicate the purpose of assessment, not the method . Different methods of assessment (discussed below) can either be summative or formative depending on when and how the instructor implements them. Sally Brown and Peter Knight in Assessing Learners in Higher Education caution against a conflation of the method (e.g., an essay) with the goal (formative or summative): “Often the mistake is made of assuming that it is the method which is summative or formative, and not the purpose. This, we suggest, is a serious mistake because it turns the assessor’s attention away from the crucial issue of feedback” (1994, p. 17). If an instructor believes that a particular method is formative, but he or she does not take the requisite time or effort to provide extensive feedback to students, the assessment effectively functions as a summative assessment despite the instructor’s intentions (Brown and Knight, 1994). Indeed, feedback and discussion are critical factors that distinguish between formative and summative assessment; formative assessment is only as good as the feedback that accompanies it.

It is not uncommon to conflate assessment with grading, but this would be a mistake. Student assessment is more than just grading. Assessment links student performance to specific learning objectives in order to provide useful information to students and instructors about learning and teaching, respectively. Grading, on the other hand, according to Stassen et al. (2001) merely involves affixing a number or letter to an assignment, giving students only the most minimal indication of their performance relative to a set of criteria or to their peers: “Because grades don’t tell you about student performance on individual (or specific) learning goals or outcomes, they provide little information on the overall success of your course in helping students to attain the specific and distinct learning objectives of interest” (Stassen et al., 2001, p. 6). Grades are only the broadest of indicators of achievement or status, and as such do not provide very meaningful information about students’ learning of knowledge or skills, how they have developed, and what may yet improve. Unfortunately, despite the limited information grades provide students about their learning, grades do provide students with significant indicators of their status – their academic rank, their credits towards graduation, their post-graduation opportunities, their eligibility for grants and aid, etc. – which can distract students from the primary goal of assessment: learning. Indeed, shifting the focus of assessment away from grades and towards more meaningful understandings of intellectual growth can encourage students (as well as instructors and institutions) to attend to the primary goal of education.

Barbara Walvoord (2010) argues that assessment is more likely to be successful if there is a clear plan, whether one is assessing learning in a course or in an entire curriculum (see also Gelmon, Holland, and Spring, 2018). Without some intentional and careful plan, assessment can fall prey to unclear goals, vague criteria, limited communication of criteria or feedback, invalid or unreliable assessments, unfairness in student evaluations, or insufficient or even unmeasured learning. There are several steps in this planning process.

• Defining learning goals. An assessment plan usually begins with a clearly articulated set of learning goals.
• Defining assessment methods. Once goals are clear, an instructor must decide on what evidence – assignment(s) – will best reveal whether students are meeting the goals. We discuss several common methods below, but these need not be limited by anything but the learning goals and the teaching context.
• Developing the assessment. The next step would be to formulate clear formats, prompts, and performance criteria that ensure students can prepare effectively and provide valid, reliable evidence of their learning.
• Integrating assessment with other course elements. Then the remainder of the course design process can be completed. In both integrated (Fink 2013) and backward course design models (Wiggins & McTighe 2005), the primary assessment methods, once chosen, become the basis for other smaller reading and skill-building assignments as well as daily learning experiences such as lectures, discussions, and other activities that will prepare students for their best effort in the assessments.
• Communicate about the assessment. Once the course has begun, it is possible and necessary to communicate the assignment and its performance criteria to students. This communication may take many and preferably multiple forms to ensure student clarity and preparation, including assignment overviews in the syllabus, handouts with prompts and assessment criteria, rubrics with learning goals, model assignments (e.g., papers), in-class discussions, and collaborative decision-making about prompts or criteria, among others.
• Administer the assessment. Instructors then can implement the assessment at the appropriate time, collecting evidence of student learning – e.g., receiving papers or administering tests.
• Analyze the results. Analysis of the results can take various forms – from reading essays to computer-assisted test scoring – but always involves comparing student work to the performance criteria and the relevant scholarly research from the field(s).
• Communicate the results. Instructors then compose an assessment complete with areas of strength and improvement, and communicate it to students along with grades (if the assignment is graded), hopefully within a reasonable time frame. This also is the time to determine whether the assessment was valid and reliable, and if not, how to communicate this to students and adjust feedback and grades fairly. For instance, were the test or essay questions confusing, yielding invalid and unreliable assessments of student knowledge.
• Reflect and revise. Once the assessment is complete, instructors and students can develop learning plans for the remainder of the course so as to ensure improvements, and the assignment may be changed for future courses, as necessary.

Let’s see how this might work in practice through an example. An instructor in a Political Science course on American Environmental Policy may have a learning goal (among others) of students understanding the historical precursors of various environmental policies and how these both enabled and constrained the resulting legislation and its impacts on environmental conservation and health. The instructor therefore decides that the course will be organized around a series of short papers that will combine to make a thorough policy report, one that will also be the subject of student presentations and discussions in the last third of the course. Each student will write about an American environmental policy of their choice, with a first paper addressing its historical precursors, a second focused on the process of policy formation, and a third analyzing the extent of its impacts on environmental conservation or health. This will help students to meet the content knowledge goals of the course, in addition to its goals of improving students’ research, writing, and oral presentation skills. The instructor then develops the prompts, guidelines, and performance criteria that will be used to assess student skills, in addition to other course elements to best prepare them for this work – e.g., scaffolded units with quizzes, readings, lectures, debates, and other activities. Once the course has begun, the instructor communicates with the students about the learning goals, the assignments, and the criteria used to assess them, giving them the necessary context (goals, assessment plan) in the syllabus, handouts on the policy papers, rubrics with assessment criteria, model papers (if possible), and discussions with them as they need to prepare. The instructor then collects the papers at the appropriate due dates, assesses their conceptual and writing quality against the criteria and field’s scholarship, and then provides written feedback and grades in a manner that is reasonably prompt and sufficiently thorough for students to make improvements. Then the instructor can make determinations about whether the assessment method was effective and what changes might be necessary.

Assessment can vary widely from informal checks on understanding, to quizzes, to blogs, to essays, and to elaborate performance tasks such as written or audiovisual projects (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Below are a few common methods of assessment identified by Brown and Knight (1994) that are important to consider.

According to Euan S. Henderson, essays make two important contributions to learning and assessment: the development of skills and the cultivation of a learning style (1980). The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) also has found that intensive writing is a “high impact” teaching practice likely to help students in their engagement, learning, and academic attainment (Kuh 2008).

Things to Keep in Mind about Essays

• Essays are a common form of writing assignment in courses and can be either a summative or formative form of assessment depending on how the instructor utilizes them.
• Essays encompass a wide array of narrative forms and lengths, from short descriptive essays to long analytical or creative ones. Shorter essays are often best suited to assess student’s understanding of threshold concepts and discrete analytical or writing skills, while longer essays afford assessments of higher order concepts and more complex learning goals, such as rigorous analysis, synthetic writing, problem solving, or creative tasks.
• A common challenge of the essay is that students can use them simply to regurgitate rather than analyze and synthesize information to make arguments. Students need performance criteria and prompts that urge them to go beyond mere memorization and comprehension, but encourage the highest levels of learning on Bloom’s Taxonomy . This may open the possibility for essay assignments that go beyond the common summary or descriptive essay on a given topic, but demand, for example, narrative or persuasive essays or more creative projects.
• Instructors commonly assume that students know how to write essays and can encounter disappointment or frustration when they discover that this is sometimes not the case. For this reason, it is important for instructors to make their expectations clear and be prepared to assist, or provide students to resources that will enhance their writing skills. Faculty may also encourage students to attend writing workshops at university writing centers, such as Vanderbilt University’s Writing Studio .

Exams and time-constrained, individual assessment

Examinations have traditionally been a gold standard of assessment, particularly in post-secondary education. Many educators prefer them because they can be highly effective, they can be standardized, they are easily integrated into disciplines with certification standards, and they are efficient to implement since they can allow for less labor-intensive feedback and grading. They can involve multiple forms of questions, be of varying lengths, and can be used to assess multiple levels of student learning. Like essays they can be summative or formative forms of assessment.

Things to Keep in Mind about Exams

• Exams typically focus on the assessment of students’ knowledge of facts, figures, and other discrete information crucial to a course. While they can involve questioning that demands students to engage in higher order demonstrations of comprehension, problem solving, analysis, synthesis, critique, and even creativity, such exams often require more time to prepare and validate.
• Exam questions can be multiple choice, true/false, or other discrete answer formats, or they can be essay or problem-solving. For more on how to write good multiple choice questions, see this guide .
• Exams can make significant demands on students’ factual knowledge and therefore can have the side-effect of encouraging cramming and surface learning. Further, when exams are offered infrequently, or when they have high stakes by virtue of their heavy weighting in course grade schemes or in student goals, they may accompany violations of academic integrity.
• In the process of designing an exam, instructors should consider the following questions. What are the learning objectives that the exam seeks to evaluate? Have students been adequately prepared to meet exam expectations? What are the skills and abilities that students need to do well on the exam? How will this exam be utilized to enhance the student learning process?

Self-Assessment

The goal of implementing self-assessment in a course is to enable students to develop their own judgment and the capacities for critical meta-cognition – to learn how to learn. In self-assessment students are expected to assess both the processes and products of their learning. While the assessment of the product is often the task of the instructor, implementing student self-assessment in the classroom ensures students evaluate their performance and the process of learning that led to it. Self-assessment thus provides a sense of student ownership of their learning and can lead to greater investment and engagement. It also enables students to develop transferable skills in other areas of learning that involve group projects and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as leadership roles in the teaching and learning process with their peers.

Things to Keep in Mind about Self-Assessment

• Self-assessment is not self-grading. According to Brown and Knight, “Self-assessment involves the use of evaluative processes in which judgement is involved, where self-grading is the marking of one’s own work against a set of criteria and potential outcomes provided by a third person, usually the [instructor]” (1994, p. 52). Self-assessment can involve self-grading, but instructors of record retain the final authority to determine and assign grades.
• To accurately and thoroughly self-assess, students require clear learning goals for the assignment in question, as well as rubrics that clarify different performance criteria and levels of achievement for each. These rubrics may be instructor-designed, or they may be fashioned through a collaborative dialogue with students. Rubrics need not include any grade assignation, but merely descriptive academic standards for different criteria.
• Students may not have the expertise to assess themselves thoroughly, so it is helpful to build students’ capacities for self-evaluation, and it is important that they always be supplemented with faculty assessments.
• Students may initially resist instructor attempts to involve themselves in the assessment process. This is usually due to insecurities or lack of confidence in their ability to objectively evaluate their own work, or possibly because of habituation to more passive roles in the learning process. Brown and Knight note, however, that when students are asked to evaluate their work, frequently student-determined outcomes are very similar to those of instructors, particularly when the criteria and expectations have been made explicit in advance (1994).
• Methods of self-assessment vary widely and can be as unique as the instructor or the course. Common forms of self-assessment involve written or oral reflection on a student’s own work, including portfolio, logs, instructor-student interviews, learner diaries and dialog journals, post-test reflections, and the like.

Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is a type of collaborative learning technique where students evaluate the work of their peers and, in return, have their own work evaluated as well. This dimension of assessment is significantly grounded in theoretical approaches to active learning and adult learning . Like self-assessment, peer assessment gives learners ownership of learning and focuses on the process of learning as students are able to “share with one another the experiences that they have undertaken” (Brown and Knight, 1994, p. 52).  However, it also provides students with other models of performance (e.g., different styles or narrative forms of writing), as well as the opportunity to teach, which can enable greater preparation, reflection, and meta-cognitive organization.

Things to Keep in Mind about Peer Assessment

• Similar to self-assessment, students benefit from clear and specific learning goals and rubrics. Again, these may be instructor-defined or determined through collaborative dialogue.
• Also similar to self-assessment, it is important to not conflate peer assessment and peer grading, since grading authority is retained by the instructor of record.
• While student peer assessments are most often fair and accurate, they sometimes can be subject to bias. In competitive educational contexts, for example when students are graded normatively (“on a curve”), students can be biased or potentially game their peer assessments, giving their fellow students unmerited low evaluations. Conversely, in more cooperative teaching environments or in cases when they are friends with their peers, students may provide overly favorable evaluations. Also, other biases associated with identity (e.g., race, gender, or class) and personality differences can shape student assessments in unfair ways. Therefore, it is important for instructors to encourage fairness, to establish processes based on clear evidence and identifiable criteria, and to provide instructor assessments as accompaniments or correctives to peer evaluations.
• Students may not have the disciplinary expertise or assessment experience of the instructor, and therefore can issue unsophisticated judgments of their peers. Therefore, to avoid unfairness, inaccuracy, and limited comments, formative peer assessments may need to be supplemented with instructor feedback.

As Brown and Knight assert, utilizing multiple methods of assessment, including more than one assessor when possible, improves the reliability of the assessment data. It also ensures that students with diverse aptitudes and abilities can be assessed accurately and have equal opportunities to excel. However, a primary challenge to the multiple methods approach is how to weigh the scores produced by multiple methods of assessment. When particular methods produce higher range of marks than others, instructors can potentially misinterpret and mis-evaluate student learning. Ultimately, they caution that, when multiple methods produce different messages about the same student, instructors should be mindful that the methods are likely assessing different forms of achievement (Brown and Knight, 1994).

These are only a few of the many forms of assessment that one might use to evaluate and enhance student learning (see also ideas present in Brown and Knight, 1994). To this list of assessment forms and methods we may add many more that encourage students to produce anything from research papers to films, theatrical productions to travel logs, op-eds to photo essays, manifestos to short stories. The limits of what may be assigned as a form of assessment is as varied as the subjects and skills we seek to empower in our students. Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching has an ever-expanding array of guides on creative models of assessment that are present below, so please visit them to learn more about other assessment innovations and subjects.

Whatever plan and method you use, assessment often begins with an intentional clarification of the values that drive it. While many in higher education may argue that values do not have a role in assessment, we contend that values (for example, rigor) always motivate and shape even the most objective of learning assessments. Therefore, as in other aspects of assessment planning, it is helpful to be intentional and critically reflective about what values animate your teaching and the learning assessments it requires. There are many values that may direct learning assessment, but common ones include rigor, generativity, practicability, co-creativity, and full participation (Bandy et al., 2018). What do these characteristics mean in practice?

Rigor. In the context of learning assessment, rigor means aligning our methods with the goals we have for students, principles of validity and reliability, ethics of fairness and doing no harm, critical examinations of the meaning we make from the results, and good faith efforts to improve teaching and learning. In short, rigor suggests understanding learning assessment as we would any other form of intentional, thoroughgoing, critical, and ethical inquiry.

Generativity. Learning assessments may be most effective when they create conditions for the emergence of new knowledge and practice, including student learning and skill development, as well as instructor pedagogy and teaching methods. Generativity opens up rather than closes down possibilities for discovery, reflection, growth, and transformation.

Practicability. Practicability recommends that learning assessment be grounded in the realities of the world as it is, fitting within the boundaries of both instructor’s and students’ time and labor. While this may, at times, advise a method of learning assessment that seems to conflict with the other values, we believe that assessment fails to be rigorous, generative, participatory, or co-creative if it is not feasible and manageable for instructors and students.

Full Participation. Assessments should be equally accessible to, and encouraging of, learning for all students, empowering all to thrive regardless of identity or background. This requires multiple and varied methods of assessment that are inclusive of diverse identities – racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, gendered, sexual, class, etcetera – and their varied perspectives, skills, and cultures of learning.

Co-creation. As alluded to above regarding self- and peer-assessment, co-creative approaches empower students to become subjects of, not just objects of, learning assessment. That is, learning assessments may be more effective and generative when assessment is done with, not just for or to, students. This is consistent with feminist, social, and community engagement pedagogies, in which values of co-creation encourage us to critically interrogate and break down hierarchies between knowledge producers (traditionally, instructors) and consumers (traditionally, students) (e.g., Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009, p. 10; Weimer, 2013). In co-creative approaches, students’ involvement enhances the meaningfulness, engagement, motivation, and meta-cognitive reflection of assessments, yielding greater learning (Bass & Elmendorf, 2019). The principle of students being co-creators of their own education is what motivates the course design and professional development work Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching has organized around the Students as Producers theme.

Below is a list of other CFT teaching guides that supplement this one and may be of assistance as you consider all of the factors that shape your assessment plan.

• Active Learning
• An Introduction to Lecturing
• Beyond the Essay: Making Student Thinking Visible in the Humanities
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
• Classroom Response Systems
• How People Learn
• Service-Learning and Community Engagement
• Syllabus Construction
• Teaching with Blogs
• Test-Enhanced Learning
• Assessing Student Learning (a five-part video series for the CFT’s Online Course Design Institute)

Angelo, Thomas A., and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers . 2 nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Print.

Bandy, Joe, Mary Price, Patti Clayton, Julia Metzker, Georgia Nigro, Sarah Stanlick, Stephani Etheridge Woodson, Anna Bartel, & Sylvia Gale. Democratically engaged assessment: Reimagining the purposes and practices of assessment in community engagement . Davis, CA: Imagining America, 2018. Web.

Bass, Randy and Heidi Elmendorf. 2019. “ Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design .” Social Pedagogies: Teagle Foundation White Paper. Georgetown University, 2019. Web.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print

Brown, Sally, and Peter Knight. Assessing Learners in Higher Education . 1 edition. London ;Philadelphia: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Cameron, Jeanne et al. “Assessment as Critical Praxis: A Community College Experience.” Teaching Sociology 30.4 (2002): 414–429. JSTOR . Web.

Fink, L. Dee. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Second Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2013. Print.

Gibbs, Graham and Claire Simpson. “Conditions under which Assessment Supports Student Learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education 1 (2004): 3-31. Print.

Henderson, Euan S. “The Essay in Continuous Assessment.” Studies in Higher Education 5.2 (1980): 197–203. Taylor and Francis+NEJM . Web.

Gelmon, Sherril B., Barbara Holland, and Amy Spring. Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement: Principles and Techniques. Second Edition . Stylus, 2018. Print.

Kuh, George. High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter , American Association of Colleges & Universities, 2008. Web.

Maki, Peggy L. “Developing an Assessment Plan to Learn about Student Learning.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 28.1 (2002): 8–13. ScienceDirect . Web. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Print.

Sharkey, Stephen, and William S. Johnson. Assessing Undergraduate Learning in Sociology . ASA Teaching Resource Center, 1992. Print.

Walvoord, Barbara. Assessment Clear and Simple: A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments, and General Education. Second Edition . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

Weimer, Maryellen. Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice. Second Edition . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2013. Print.

Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding By Design . 2nd Expanded edition. Alexandria,

VA: Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005. Print.

[1] For more on Wiggins and McTighe’s “Backward Design” model, see our teaching guide here .

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Assessing student writing, what does it mean to assess writing.

• Suggestions for Assessing Writing

Means of Responding

Rubrics: tools for response and assessment, constructing a rubric.

Assessment is the gathering of information about student learning. It can be used for formative purposes−−to adjust instruction−−or summative purposes: to render a judgment about the quality of student work. It is a key instructional activity, and teachers engage in it every day in a variety of informal and formal ways.

Assessment of student writing is a process. Assessment of student writing and performance in the class should occur at many different stages throughout the course and could come in many different forms. At various points in the assessment process, teachers usually take on different roles such as motivator, collaborator, critic, evaluator, etc., (see Brooke Horvath for more on these roles) and give different types of response.

One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. We know that feedback is crucial to writing development. The 2004 Harvard Study of Writing concluded, "Feedback emerged as the hero and the anti-hero of our study−powerful enough to convince students that they could or couldn't do the work in a given field, to push them toward or away from selecting their majors, and contributed, more than any other single factor, to students' sense of academic belonging or alienation" (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos/index.cgi?section=study).

Source: Horvath, Brooke K. "The Components of Written Response: A Practical Synthesis of Current Views." Rhetoric Review 2 (January 1985): 136−56. Rpt. in C Corbett, Edward P. J., Nancy Myers, and Gary Tate. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook . 4th ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000.

Suggestions for Assessing Student Writing

Be sure to know what you want students to be able to do and why. Good assessment practices start with a pedagogically sound assignment description and learning goals for the writing task at hand. The type of feedback given on any task should depend on the learning goals you have for students and the purpose of the assignment. Think early on about why you want students to complete a given writing project (see guide to writing strong assignments page). What do you want them to know? What do you want students to be able to do? Why? How will you know when they have reached these goals? What methods of assessment will allow you to see that students have accomplished these goals (portfolio assessment assigning multiple drafts, rubric, etc)? What will distinguish the strongest projects from the weakest?

Begin designing writing assignments with your learning goals and methods of assessment in mind.

Plan and implement activities that support students in meeting the learning goals. How will you support students in meeting these goals? What writing activities will you allow time for? How can you help students meet these learning goals?

Begin giving feedback early in the writing process. Give multiple types of feedback early in the writing process. For example, talking with students about ideas, write written responses on drafts, have students respond to their peers' drafts in process, etc. These are all ways for students to receive feedback while they are still in the process of revising.

Structure opportunities for feedback at various points in the writing process. Students should also have opportunities to receive feedback on their writing at various stages in the writing process. This does not mean that teachers need to respond to every draft of a writing project. Structuring time for peer response and group workshops can be a very effective way for students to receive feedback from other writers in the class and for them to begin to learn to revise and edit their own writing.

Be open with students about your expectations and the purposes of the assignments. Students respond better to writing projects when they understand why the project is important and what they can learn through the process of completing it. Be explicit about your goals for them as writers and why those goals are important to their learning. Additionally, talk with students about methods of assessment. Some teachers have students help collaboratively design rubrics for the grading of writing. Whatever methods of assessment you choose, be sure to let students in on how they will be evaluated.

 Do not burden students with excessive feedback. Our instinct as teachers, especially when we are really interested in students´ writing is to offer as many comments and suggestions as we can. However, providing too much feedback can leave students feeling daunted and uncertain where to start in terms of revision. Try to choose one or two things to focus on when responding to a draft. Offer students concrete possibilities or strategies for revision.

Allow students to maintain control over their paper. Instead of acting as an editor, suggest options or open-ended alternatives the student can choose for their revision path. Help students learn to assess their own writing and the advice they get about it.

Purposes of Responding We provide different kinds of response at different moments. But we might also fall into a kind of "default" mode, working to get through the papers without making a conscious choice about how and why we want to respond to a given assignment. So it might be helpful to identify the two major kinds of response we provide:

• Formative Response: response that aims primarily to help students develop their writing. Might focus on confidence-building, on engaging the student in a conversation about her ideas or writing choices so as to help student to see herself as a successful and promising writer. Might focus on helping student develop a particular writing project, from one draft to next. Or, might suggest to student some general skills she could focus on developing over the course of a semester.
• Evaluative Response: response that focuses on evaluation of how well a student has done. Might be related to a grade. Might be used primarily on a final product or portfolio. Tends to emphasize whether or not student has met the criteria operative for specific assignment and to explain that judgment.

We respond to many kinds of writing and at different stages in the process, from reading responses, to exercises, to generation or brainstorming, to drafts, to source critiques, to final drafts. It is also helpful to think of the various forms that response can take.

• Conferencing: verbal, interactive response. This might happen in class or during scheduled sessions in offices. Conferencing can be more dynamic: we can ask students questions about their work, modeling a process of reflecting on and revising a piece of writing. Students can also ask us questions and receive immediate feedback. Conference is typically a formative response mechanism, but might also serve usefully to convey evaluative response.
• Written Comments on Drafts
• Local: when we focus on "local" moments in a piece of writing, we are calling attention to specifics in the paper. Perhaps certain patterns of grammar or moments where the essay takes a sudden, unexpected turn. We might also use local comments to emphasize a powerful turn of phrase, or a compelling and well-developed moment in a piece. Local commenting tends to happen in the margins, to call attention to specific moments in the piece by highlighting them and explaining their significance. We tend to use local commenting more often on drafts and when doing formative response.
• Global: when we focus more on the overall piece of writing and less on the specific moments in and of themselves. Global comments tend to come at the end of a piece, in narrative-form response. We might use these to step back and tell the writer what we learned overall, or to comment on a pieces' general organizational structure or focus. We tend to use these for evaluative response and often, deliberately or not, as a means of justifying the grade we assigned.
• Rubrics: charts or grids on which we identify the central requirements or goals of a specific project. Then, we evaluate whether or not, and how effectively, students met those criteria. These can be written with students as a means of helping them see and articulate the goals a given project.

Rubrics are tools teachers and students use to evaluate and classify writing, whether individual pieces or portfolios. They identify and articulate what is being evaluated in the writing, and offer "descriptors" to classify writing into certain categories (1-5, for instance, or A-F). Narrative rubrics and chart rubrics are the two most common forms. Here is an example of each, using the same classification descriptors:

Example: Narrative Rubric for Inquiring into Family & Community History

An "A" project clearly and compellingly demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows strong audience awareness, engaging readers throughout. The form and structure are appropriate for the purpose(s) and audience(s) of the piece. The final product is virtually error-free. The piece seamlessly weaves in several other voices, drawn from appropriate archival, secondary, and primary research. Drafts - at least two beyond the initial draft - show extensive, effective revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter demonstrate thoughtful reflection and growing awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "B" project clearly and compellingly demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows strong audience awareness, and usually engages readers. The form and structure are appropriate for the audience(s) and purpose(s) of the piece, though the organization may not be tight in a couple places. The final product includes a few errors, but these do no interfere with readers' comprehension. The piece effectively, if not always seamlessly, weaves several other voices, drawn from appropriate archival, secondary, and primary research. One area of research may not be as strong as the other two. Drafts - at least two beyond the initial drafts - show extensive, effective revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter demonstrate thoughtful reflection and growing awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "C" project demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows audience awareness, sometimes engaging readers. The form and structure are appropriate for the audience(s) and purpose(s), but the organization breaks down at times. The piece includes several, apparent errors, which at times compromises the clarity of the piece. The piece incorporates other voices, drawn from at least two kinds of research, but in a generally forced or awkward way. There is unevenness in the quality and appropriateness of the research. Drafts - at least one beyond the initial draft - show some evidence of revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter show some reflection and growth in awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "D" project discusses a public event and a family/community, but the connections may not be clear. It shows little audience awareness. The form and structure is poorly chosen or poorly executed. The piece includes many errors, which regularly compromise the comprehensibility of the piece. There is an attempt to incorporate other voices, but this is done awkwardly or is drawn from incomplete or inappropriate research. There is little evidence of revision. Writer's notes and learning letter are missing or show little reflection or growth.

An "F" project is not responsive to the prompt. It shows little or no audience awareness. The purpose is unclear and the form and structure are poorly chosen and poorly executed. The piece includes many errors, compromising the clarity of the piece throughout. There is little or no evidence of research. There is little or no evidence of revision. Writer's notes and learning letter are missing or show no reflection or growth.

Chart Rubric for Community/Family History Inquiry Project

All good rubrics begin (and end) with solid criteria. We always start working on rubrics by generating a list - by ourselves or with students - of what we value for a particular project or portfolio. We generally list far more items than we could use in a single rubric. Then, we narrow this list down to the most important items - between 5 and 7, ideally. We do not usually rank these items in importance, but it is certainly possible to create a hierarchy of criteria on a rubric (usually by listing the most important criteria at the top of the chart or at the beginning of the narrative description).

Once we have our final list of criteria, we begin to imagine how writing would fit into a certain classification category (1-5, A-F, etc.). How would an "A" essay differ from a "B" essay in Organization? How would a "B" story differ from a "C" story in Character Development? The key here is to identify useful descriptors - drawing the line at appropriate places. Sometimes, these gradations will be precise: the difference between handing in 80% and 90% of weekly writing, for instance. Other times, they will be vague: the difference between "effective revisions" and "mostly effective revisions", for instance. While it is important to be as precise as possible, it is also important to remember that rubric writing (especially in writing classrooms) is more art than science, and will never - and nor should it - stand in for algorithms. When we find ourselves getting caught up in minute gradations, we tend to be overlegislating students´- writing and losing sight of the purpose of the exercise: to support students' development as writers. At the moment when rubric-writing thwarts rather than supports students' writing, we should discontinue the practice. Until then, many students will find rubrics helpful -- and sometimes even motivating.

• Our Mission
• Why Is Assessment Important?

Asking students to demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter is critical to the learning process; it is essential to evaluate whether the educational goals and standards of the lessons are being met.

Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met. Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspire us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?" "Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?" "Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?"

Today's students need to know not only the basic reading and arithmetic skills, but also skills that will allow them to face a world that is continually changing. They must be able to think critically, to analyze, and to make inferences. Changes in the skills base and knowledge our students need require new learning goals; these new learning goals change the relationship between assessment and instruction. Teachers need to take an active role in making decisions about the purpose of assessment and the content that is being assessed.

Grant Wiggins, a nationally recognized assessment expert, shared his thoughts on performance assessments, standardized tests, and more in an Edutopia.org interview . Read his answers to the following questions from the interview and reflect on his ideas:

• What distinction do you make between 'testing' and 'assessment'?
• Why is it important that teachers consider assessment before they begin planning lessons or projects?
• Standardized tests, such as the SAT, are used by schools as a predictor of a student's future success. Is this a valid use of these tests?

Do you agree with his statements? Why or why not? Discuss your opinions with your peers.

When assessment works best, it does the following:

• What is the student's knowledge base?
• What is the student's performance base?
• What are the student's needs?
• What has to be taught?
• What performance demonstrates understanding?
• What performance demonstrates knowledge?
• What performance demonstrates mastery?
• How is the student doing?
• What teaching methods or approaches are most effective?
• What changes or modifications to a lesson are needed to help the student?
• What has the student learned?
• Can the student talk about the new knowledge?
• Can the student demonstrate and use the new skills in other projects?
• Now that I'm in charge of my learning, how am I doing?
• Now that I know how I'm doing, how can I do better?
• What else would I like to learn?
• What is working for the students?
• What can I do to help the students more?
• In what direction should we go next?

Continue to the next section of the guide, Types of Assessment .

This guide is organized into six sections:

• Introduction
• Types of Assessment
• How Do Rubrics Help?
• Workshop Activities
• Resources for Assessment

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Teaching students about xavier: renegade angel – an exploration into surreal animation, teaching students about flashdance cast: a creative approach to film history, teaching students about hellenistic culture and its impact, teaching students about stokely carmichael: civil rights, black power, and the legacy of a revolutionary, teaching students about blackadder: a timeless educational tool, teaching students about james mccartney: a comprehensive guide, teaching students about scott parker: inspiring the classroom through the life of a resilient sportsman, teaching students about foster brooks, teaching students about necaxa: a unique learning experience, the real purpose of assessments in education.

Assessment is a key part of today’s educational system. Assessment serves as an individual evaluation system, and as a way to compare performance across a spectrum and across populations. However, with so many different kinds of assessments for so many different organizations available (and often required) these days, it can sometimes be hard to keep the real purpose of assessing in view. So, what’s really at the heart of all these assessments?

The purpose of assessment is to gather relevant information about student performance or progress, or to determine student interests to make judgments about their learning process. After receiving this information, teachers can reflect on each student’s level of achievement, as well as on specific inclinations of the group, to customize their teaching plans.

Continuous assessment provides day-to-day feedback about the learning and teaching process. Assessment can reinforce the efficacy of teaching and learning. It also encourages the understanding of teaching as a formative process that evolves over time with feedback and input from students. This creates good classroom rapport. Student assessments are necessary because:

• Throughout a lesson or unit, the teacher might want to check for understanding by using a formative assessment.
• Students who are experiencing difficulties in learning may benefit from the administration of a diagnostic test, which will be able to detect learning issues such as reading comprehension problems, an inability to remember written or spoken words, hearing or speech difficulties, and problems with hand–eye coordination.
• Students generally complete a summative assessment after completing the study of a topic. The teacher can determine their level of achievement and provide them with feedback on their strengths and weaknesses. For students who didn’t master the topic or skill, teachers can use data from the assessment to create a plan for remediation.
• Teachers may also want to use informal assessment techniques. Using self-assessment, students express what they think about their learning process and what they should work on. Using peer assessment, students get information from their classmates about what areas they should revise and what areas they’re good at.

Some standardized assessment procedures are designed to compare the academic achievement of students from different schools, states, nationwide or worldwide. For example:

• The Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) was administered to random samples of fourth graders in 36 countries and eighth graders in 48 countries.
• The Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) was last administered in 2012. It tests functional skills in reading, math, and science on a 3-year cycle. American students scored below the international average on the last test.
• Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) focuses on reading comprehension on a 5-year cycle. It was last administered in 2011. Before you administer an assessment, be sure you understand what its purpose is. What is it testing? Who is it testing? What entity will the results be reported to? Understanding the makeup of each assessment you give will help you better prepare your students to match up to it.

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Assessment and Evaluation Compare & Contrast Essay

Assessment is an interactive process that provides teachers, parents or guardians and the students themselves with valid information about progress and attainment of expected curriculum teaching. It focuses on teaching, learning and outcomes. The main goal of assessment is to improve student learning in the subject under study.

Assessments are based on achievement goals and standards developed for a particular curriculum grade. Assessment is done to collect information on individual student performance within a given time frame. Learning evidences may include tests and portfolios. It may also involve other learning tasks such as journals and written work.

The outcome information can be shared with the students to make improvements. Improvement of student learning can be through changing achieved through changing the learning environment or the study habits. The subject of assessment can be of any type. It may be a happening or event, an individual, a place or a condition. The subject matter is learner-centered, course based and in most times anonymous and not graded. Assessment seeks to note down all data whether subjective or objective (Jere, 2010).

On the hand, an evaluation is a set of activities or statements that seek to determine whether objectives were realized. It focuses largely on grades and may reflect the components of classroom other than mastery level and course content. Evaluation may include discussion, attendance, verbal ability and cooperation among others. It is the last object of an inquiry.

Evaluations tell whether a set goal or a solution has been met or not. It takes place after completion of a learning activity. Evaluation is done at end of inquiry. Evaluation can result in three things: A positive change, a negative change or no change or development at all. Evaluation looks into whether improvements or changes have occurred in the data. Assessment and evaluation need each other and support one another (Gavi, 2011).

In summary, the three differences between assessment and evaluation are; Assessment is formative in the sense that it is ongoing and meant to improve learning while evaluation is summative, that is, it is final and it is meant to gauge quality. Assessment focuses on how learning is going (process-oriented) while evaluation focuses on what has been learned (product-oriented). Assessment identifies areas for improvement (it is diagnostic) while evaluation arrives at an overall grade, that is, it is judgmental (Patty, 2004).

Formal assessments have common sets of expectations from all students. These tests help teachers to understand how well students have understood theme skills and concepts taught in class. Thus teachers are able to systemically evaluate the students by use of real writing and reading experiences. They come with prescribed criteria interpretation. Data is computed and summarized mathematically. There are criteria for scoring and scores are commonly given by standard scores, percentiles or stanines.

The teachers have statistics that can support certain conclusions such as “a student is reading below average” because these tests have had been tried before on the students. Flexibility in assessment outcomes gives teachers another chance to closely monitor the students in order to modify assessment as required. Thus these benchmarks help teachers and guardians to evaluate student progress over the entire year (Gavi, 2011).

On the other hand, informal assessment indicates techniques that are incorporated into learning activities or classroom routines. Informal assessments are also called performance based measures or criterion referenced measures. They should be used in form of instruction. The type of assessment used should be in line with the purpose of assessment. They can be employed at any time without necessarily interfering with instructional time.

The results obtained indicate the performance of the student on that particular subject or skill of interest. Activities associated with informal assessment include demonstrations, oral presentations, individual projects and experiments among others. This type of assessment does not compare a broader group other than the students in that particular local project. Unlike formal assessments that are data driven, informal assessments are content and performance driven (Patty, 2004).

Social studies are integrated studies that are meant to improve civic responsibilities of students. I have chosen history subject as a social study in my informal assessment below. The informal assessment test is designed for students in elementary grades. A fourth-year grade teacher has just finished three hours lesson teaching a topic on the state’s history.

He intends to check the instructional effectiveness and understanding of this topic by employing a type of discussion that takes the form of written checks. The data obtained will in turn assist the teacher to plan and use data-based instructions during the next teaching period.

Gavi, R. M. (2011). Dyslexia : Special Educational Needs Series . New York, NY: International Publishing Group.

Jere, E. B. (2010). Effective assessment and Evaluation . Chicago: Tylor & Francis.

Patty, S. A. (2004). Making sense of Online learning: A guide for beginners and the truly skeptical. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

• Overview of Instructional Technology in Education
• Difference between formal and informal teaching
• Online Education Goals and Instructional Objectives
• Changing the Structure of the Class Grading System
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• Ownership and Operation of the Global Village English Language School
• How to Prepare the Students to Travel to a Foreign Country?
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IvyPanda. (2018, October 31). Assessment and Evaluation. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-and-evaluation/

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1. IvyPanda . "Assessment and Evaluation." October 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-and-evaluation/.

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IvyPanda . "Assessment and Evaluation." October 31, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-and-evaluation/.

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Wednesday, 19th January 2022

Image courtesy of   Lagos Techie.  Unsplash

Assessment always has a purpose. We need to be clear on that purpose in our learning design work. But that purpose can vary. In this article aimed at educators, we explore assessment of, for, and as learning to think about the purpose of assessment and to help us think about integrated summative assessment.

In a  previous article about online assessment , we asked ‘How do we know if students are learning?’ We spoke about the value of formative assessment as part of activity-based teaching and learning. We suggested that formative assessment activities form an important part of an integrated summative assessment strategy.

But what do we mean? Traditionally,

"Formative assessment  occurs  before or   during  teaching. It is a way of assessing students’ progress, providing feedback and making decisions about further instructional activities. It is assessment  for  learning purposes.  Summative assessment  is conducted  after  instruction primarily as a way to document what students know, understand and can do. It is an assessment  of  learning and its aim is to ‘sum up’ the learning that has taken place." (Waspe, 2020)

But Waspe goes on to say:

"There isn’t always a clear split between formative and summative assessment: some activities may fall somewhere in the middle. For example, a test at the end of a section of material may be used for marks (summative) but the lecturer may also analyse it to identify which competences need strengthening going forward (formative)." (Waspe, 2020)

Assessment and learning

We know there is an integral relationship between assessment and learning. We can see this when we unpack three important forms of assessment:

Assessment  of learning

Assessment of learning measures the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values students have demonstrated at the end of a learning cycle.

Assessment  for  learning

Assessment for learning checks what students understand and can do as part of the learning process. It helps to identify any misunderstandings, difficulties, or gaps in knowledge so educators can adjust teaching to address these.

Assessment  as  learning

Assessment as learning involves the student ‘thinking about how they are thinking’ and using what they discover to make adjustments to how they approach learning. Assessment as learning helps students notice their own thoughts and processes, called  metacognition , and make changes to those thoughts and processes, called  self-regulation .

Let’s think about these three forms of assessment in relation to formative and summative assessment.

In his article about assessment for learning, Wiliam (2011) agrees with Bennett (2009) that it is unhelpful, and simplistic, to equate assessment for learning with formative assessment and assessment of learning with summative assessment. Bennett suggests that assessments designed primarily to serve a summative function may also function formatively, while those designed primarily to serve a formative function may also function summatively.

Let’s look at an example:

This is an example of an activity in which students are learning about the impact of globalisation in an economics course. Let’s analyse the activity for opportunities for assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning.

Example adapted from OER Africa: https://www.oerafrica.org/supporting-distance- learners/case-studies-using-asynchronous-communication

In this example, we believe we can identify all three forms of assessment:

Integrated activity-based summative assessment

What does this mean for how we think about integrated summative assessment?

Most definitions of integrated assessment include ideas about gathering and presenting evidence for judgement against standards, outcomes and criteria, using a combination of assessment methods and instruments, in different contexts, supporting learners to demonstrate understanding of theory in practice.

When we integrate assessment of, for, and as learning into activity-based teaching and learning, we design integrated (summative) assessment that supports integrated learning. In certain cases, it might be useful to think about summative (and formative) assessment as gathering evidence for the purposes of marking, recording, and promotion. But when we want to ‘stop worrying about testing and start thinking about learning’ and we are challenged to think about assessment differently for whatever reason, we can use activity-based teaching that integrates assessment for, of, and as learning to support and guide students’ learning towards success.

In the ‘Impact of globalisation’ example above, we saw the integration of assessment of, for, and as learning in a single activity. But integrated summative assessment could also be the integration of formative and summative assessment over a series of activities for a whole unit or module of study, or even a whole course.

The same basic rules of assessment will apply, so that activities are fair, reliable, and valid. Let’s consider what criteria and elements activity-based design would need to incorporate in order to constitute valid, fair, reliable, and integrated assessment of, for, and as learning:

• Do the activities have a clear purpose that is clear to students?
• Are the activities aligned to one or more outcomes?
• Are the activities logically sequenced along a learning pathway?
• Are the activities and tasks fit for purpose for different students in different contexts?
• Is there a range of activities or tasks that give students the opportunity to engage and learn in different ways?
• Are there clear guidelines that help students understand what they are expected to do individually or collaboratively?
• Are all the activities accessible to all students, whether they have an Internet connection or not, whether they are on campus or not, whether they have access to devices or not?
• Do all students have access to the resources necessary to do the activities?
• Do the activities provide sufficient opportunities for students to collaborate?
• Do the activities provide sufficient opportunities for students to reflect on their own and each other’s learning (self and peer reflection)?
• Do the activities encourage students to give and receive feedback in meaningful ways?

Consider an assessment activity or task you have recently given to students. To what extent does the activity promote assessment of, for, and as learning? Which of the above criteria and elements does the activity address? What tasks can you add to the activity to ensure students have opportunities for assessment of learning, for learning, and as learning? What activities could you add, before or after this activity, to create a more integrated activity-based learning and assessment pathway as part of your materials design?

Bennett, R. E. (2009).  A critical look at the meaning and basis of formative assessment  (ETS RM-09-06). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Waspe, T and Louton, B. (2020).  Rethinking TVET Assessment , Advanced Diploma Technical and Vocational Training, DHET. (See also https://nols.gov.za/dhetnols/ )

Wiliam, Dylan. (2011). ‘What is assessment for learning?’  Studies in Educational Evaluation . 37. 3-14. 10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.03.001.

Related articles

• Online assessment: How do we know if students are learning successfully? (16 September, 2020)
• Open pedagogy (19 April, 2021)
• How has COVID-19 highlighted the need for open access? (23 July, 2021)

Access the OER Africa Communications Archive here

Following the adoption of the OER Recommendation in 2019, UNESCO initiated a programme to support governments and educational institutions in implementing it.

One aspect of this programme was the development of a series of five guidelines to inform implementation of each Action Area in the Recommendation.

Image courtesy of Ismail Salad Osman Hajji dirir, Unsplash

As the digital age continues to reshape the global educational landscape in fundamental ways, the need for governments and educational institutions to champion Open Educational Resources (OER) has never been more relevant. Freely accessible, openly licensed educational content can help tackle some of the most pressing needs in education systems, including equity, access, and quality.

Following the adoption of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER at the 40th UNESCO General Conference in Paris on 25th November 2019, UNESCO initiated a programme to support governments and educational institutions in implementing the Recommendation.

One such action was the development of a series of five guidelines for governments . These guidelines were developed through a comprehensive consultative process and in cooperation with OER experts worldwide. They draw heavily on in-depth background papers prepared by OER experts from around the world in each of the five Action Areas of the OER Recommendation: Prof. Melinda dP. Bandalaria (building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER); Dr Javiera Atenas (developing supportive policy); Dr Ahmed Tlili (encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER); Dr Tel Amiel (nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER), and Ms Lisbeth Levey (facilitating international cooperation).

OER Africa has provided logistical and editorial assistance to UNESCO on this work as part of a formal cooperation agreement with UNESCO to provide support in implementation of the OER Recommendation.

Aimed at governments and educational institutions, each set of guidelines has the following structure:

• An overview of recommendations in the Action Area;
• An introduction to the main issues surrounding the Action Area;
• A matrix of possible actions recommended for governments and institutions to implement each point in the Action Area;
• An in-depth discussion of the key issues surrounding the Action Area; and
• Examples of good practice.

By actively supporting and implementing the OER Recommendation, governments and educational institutions can not only make high quality education more accessible but can also promote transformation in their education systems. This commitment to OER is essential for building resilient, adaptable education systems that can meet the demands of a rapidly changing world.

Access the guidelines here

• What are the benefits of open textbooks in the Global South?
• African Librarians Support the UNESCO OER Recommendation
• The Revised Open Knowledge Primer for African Universities

With the ever-increasing costs of textbooks, how can university students get access to the resources they need to study? This article examines the benefits of using open textbooks in the Global South.

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With the ever-increasing costs of textbooks, how can university students get access to the resources they need to study?

Worldwide, university students find it difficult to purchase textbooks for their courses as they are too expensive. Already in 2014 in South Africa [1] , and in 2011 in the United States [2] , there were reports that students didn’t buy textbooks due to expense. The situation has not improved in recent years; for example, in a study of nearly fifty thousand respondents in South African universities, nearly two thirds indicated that they spent between R500 and R2500 on textbooks, and while 87% of students’ first semester modules had prescribed textbooks, 27% of students did not buy any prescribed books in the first semester of 2020. Students were opting not to purchase textbooks either because of a lack of affordability, because they did not find them contextually relevant, or because a course would only use a small portion of the textbook.  [3]

Open textbooks can be regarded as a subset of Open Educational Resources (OER). They are digital textbooks published under an open licence, which means that they are freely downloadable and adaptable to suit a range of contexts (as long as the licence permits adaptation). The right to adapt is particularly important for educators who may want to tailor the textbook to their specific curriculum. An open textbook can be published with different Creative Commons licences, [4]  depending on how open or restrictive the author wishes the licence to be. The principal advantages of an open textbook are its accessibility and affordability to the students, as long as they have a digital device, or have access to print at low or no cost. However, open textbooks have other advantages as well. These include: [5]

• Local Contexts : Open textbooks can be regularly updated, and tailored to suit the local context, providing cultural relevance and addressing specific needs of students.
• Partial  Use : In some courses, only a portion of the overall textbook content is relevant. Students may hesitate to purchase an expensive textbook when they will only use a few chapters. In contrast, open textbooks allow educators to select and integrate specific sections, reducing unnecessary costs.
• Collective  Authorship : Open textbooks encourage collaborative authorship strategies. Locally produced open textbooks can involve input from multiple experts, resulting in richer and more contextually relevant content with diverse perspectives.
• Flexibility : Open textbooks can be accessed in different formats and stored digitally, so that they are easy to share and adapt.

Of course, open textbooks also have some disadvantages, namely:

• Availability : We provide examples of open textbook repositories below, but educators may find that there is limited selection for certain subjects or specialised topics. 
• Quality : There may be inconsistencies in writing style, accuracy, and depth of content but these can be easily mitigated by evaluating the textbooks prior to use, as should be done for all resources to be used, including commercial textbooks.
• Author incentives : Authors of traditional textbooks normally receive royalties from publishers as their books are sold. The open licence by which open textbooks are released means that other forms of incentive may be needed, for example in the form of grants, that may not be sufficiently enticing for many potential authors.

Research on open textbooks

Most research has been carried out in the Global North. For example, a meta-analysis of 22 studies of 100,012 students found that there were no differences between open and commercial textbooks for learning performance. [6]  A research study  Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South [7]  had similar findings, with open textbooks being more effective that traditional ones in several instances. However, the studies reported that careful pedagogical scaffolding, including a mix of OER, produced the most effective learning. Within Africa, research findings from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) Project [8]  found that open textbooks addressed economic, cultural, and political injustices faced by their students, issues not considered by traditional textbooks. Summarising the research overall, we can say that open textbooks have several advantages over traditional ones, as listed above, and in terms of learning, they are equivalent. 

Examples of African institutions who have benefited from using open textbooks

Probably the best example of collaborative development of open textbooks is the University of Cape Town’s DOT4D Project. If you want to learn about the experiences of their staff and students, read  UCT Open Textbook Journeys which documents the stories of 11 academics at the University who embarked on open textbook development initiatives to provide their students more accessible and locally relevant learning materials.

Other African universities’ libraries list sites where open textbooks and other OER are available, usually from outside the continent. Finding open textbooks for your own institution is not always easy. Here we list three sites where you can search for open textbooks. Bear in mind that, if you choose an American or European textbook, you may need to spend time adapting it for your own context. 

University of Cape Town Catalogue

26 textbook titles ranging from medical texts, through sustainable development to marketing, but also many other titles on  OpenUCT .

Open Textbook Library

Based at the University of Minnesota in the United States, this repository has 1,403 titles. The view shown here groups the titles by subject.

University of Stellenbosch 

This LibGuide lists 17 platforms where you can search for open access textbooks and other free books.

Resources on developing and using open textbooks

Below is a list of resources to help you explore this growing field. The first three assist you to develop an open textbook, while the last two guide you to adopt or modify an existing open textbook.

• Commonwealth of Learning Guide to Developing Open Textbooks
• Open Education Network: Authoring Open Textbooks
• Rebus Community: A guide to making open textbooks with students
• BC Campus: Steps to Adopting an Open Textbook
• Open Education Network: Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know

Finally, although they are not designed for higher education, the open textbooks developed by  Siyavula  for high school mathematics, technology, and sciences may be useful for colleges and access courses in universities.

In summary, there are considerable benefits to using open textbooks, but with a few exceptions, African institutions have not yet taken on the challenge of producing open textbooks themselves. Clearly, funding is required for the development of open textbooks, and institutions might consider making funding applications to create (or adapt) these highly useful open education resources for the benefit of more African students.

Related resources:

• Researching OER initiatives in African higher education
• Self-Publishing Guide: BC Open Textbook

  Access the OER Africa communications archive here

[1]  Nkosi, B. (2014). Students hurt by pricey textbooks. Mail & Guardian. Retrieved from  https://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-03-students-hurt-by-pricey-textbooks/

[2]  Redden, M. (2011). 7 in 10 Students Have Skipped Buying a Textbook Because of Its Cost, Survey Finds. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from  https://www.chronicle.com/article/7-in-10-students-have-skipped-buying-a-textbook-because-of-its-cost-survey-finds/

[3]  Department of Higher Education. (2020). Students’ Access to and use of Learning Materials—Survey Report 2020. Retrieved from  https://www.usaf.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/DHET_SAULM-Report-2020.pdf

[4]  See  https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/#:~:text=Creative%20Commons%20licenses%20give%20everyone,creative%20work%20under%20copyright%20law .

[5]  Digital Open Textbooks for Development. (2021). ‘Open Textbooks in South African Higher Education’ Roundtable Report. University of Cape Town. Retrieved from https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/3a7e1a09-0617-4ba4-b6dd-4572bd870d60/content

[6]   Clinton, V. and Khan, S. (July 2019).  ‘Efficacy of Open Textbook Adoption on Learning Performance and Course Withdrawal Rates: A Meta-Analysis’  AERA Open.  5  (3): 233285841987221.  doi : 10.1177/2332858419872212 .  ISSN   2332-8584 .

[7]  Hodgkinson-Williams, C. & Arinto, P. B. (2017).  ‘Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South’ . Cape Town & Ottawa: African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1005330 

[8]  See  https://ched.uct.ac.za/dot4d

OER Africa is honoured to have contributed two chapters to the recently published book ‘Does Distance Education in the Developing Context Need More Research? Building Practice into Theory’. Edited by Dr Folake Ruth Aluko and Prof. Daniella Coetzee, the book explores the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice in distance education.

Research can have a transformative impact on any field, and distance education is no exception. It can, for example,  contribute to more effective use of new educational strategies, provide insights into technological advancements, and contribute to our understanding of the key successes and challenges in distance education delivery.

While the concept of distance education dates back more than a century, research in this area is relatively nascent when compared to the development of educational research in general. [1]  The body of literature on the practice, influence, and impact of distance education is therefore limited, and even more so when considering developing world contexts. This, combined with the fact that distance education is experiencing significant shifts in terms of new demands and evolving technologies that provide new potential and pitfalls alike, mean that the recently published book  Does Distance Education in the Developing Context Need More Research? Building Practice into Theory  is a critical addition to the distance education research literature.

The book explores the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice in distance education, and OER Africa is honoured to have contributed two chapters to it. Edited by Dr Folake Ruth Aluko and Prof. Daniella Coetzee, the book is divided into two volumes which explore various themes:

Volume 1  focusses on the history, approaches and paradigms in distance education; building frameworks in distance education research; and praxis in this area.

Volume 2  moves on to address regional trends and gaps in distance education research; scholarship in this area; and quality assurance.

The two chapters that we contributed focus on the intersection of distance education and catalysing open education praxis, with each chapter approaching this intersection from a different angle. Each is outlined below.

Chapter 12 - Approaches To Continuing Professional Development For Open Education Practices In Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of professional development on effective teaching and learning for university academics into sharp relief. Universities found themselves having to close their campuses and were unable to teach their students face-to-face. Universities in Africa resorted to various strategies to reach students, ranging from no teaching taking place, through emergency remote teaching (ERT) with some form of online teaching, to fully implemented e-learning. Whatever form the teaching has taken, academics have found that traditional lecturing has not been effective when implementing ERT or online teaching. Those who are experienced in adult pedagogies have been expressing the inadequacies of the lecture mode for many years, and the realities of the new forms of teaching required have brought such shortcomings to the fore. Several recent opinion pieces have expressed the need for continuing professional development (CPD) of academic staff, especially with respect to their teaching competence, arguing that it needs to be a central strategy within higher educational institutions (HEIs) around the world, supporting academics with digital teaching and communities of practice.

This chapter opens with a review of successful and innovative CPD models and approaches used in HEIs around the world. It examines recent CPD activities created by OER Africa and describes their development, piloting, and deployment, together with the implications the pilot findings have for ODL institutions and research in the field. 

Chapter 13 - Measuring implementation of UNESCO’s OER Recommendation: A possible framework

Drawing on a comprehensive literature review of best practice in OER measurement, as well as experience of working with UNESCO to support implementation of the Recommendation, this chapter presents an initial framework for the measurement of the effectiveness of the OER Recommendation and proposes indicators that regions, countries, and/or institutions could adopt or adapt to rigorously measure both how OER is used and its effectiveness for improving learning. Putting in place shared understandings of what counts as effectiveness for OER is critical to inform ongoing developments and improvements in the field. Such measures can also provide an evidence base that can be used for advocacy work around the importance of OER for quality open and distance learning.

Access both volumes below:

• How can we plan professional development in universities?
• The UNESCO OER Recommendation and effective, inclusive, equitable access to quality OER
• Continuing Professional Development strategies in Higher Education Institutions Report

[1]  Zawacki-Richter and Naidu (2016) quoted in Aluko, F.R. and Coetzee, D. (2023). Chapter 1: Setting the scene – Why research distance education? In  Does Distance Education in the Developing Context Need More Research? Building Practice into Theory. ESI Press:

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Formative, Summative, and More Types of Assessments in Education

All the best ways to evaluate learning before, during, and after it happens.

When you hear the word assessment, do you automatically think “tests”? While it’s true that tests are one kind of assessment, they’re not the only way teachers evaluate student progress. Learn more about the types of assessments used in education, and find out how and when to use them.

Diagnostic Assessments

Formative assessments, summative assessments.

• Criterion-Referenced, Ipsative, and Normative Assessments

What is assessment?

In simplest terms, assessment means gathering data to help understand progress and effectiveness. In education, we gather data about student learning in variety of ways, then use it to assess both their progress and the effectiveness of our teaching programs. This helps educators know what’s working well and where they need to make changes.

There are three broad types of assessments: diagnostic, formative, and summative. These take place throughout the learning process, helping students and teachers gauge learning. Within those three broad categories, you’ll find other types of assessment, such as ipsative, norm-referenced, and criterion-referenced.

What’s the purpose of assessment in education?

In education, we can group assessments under three main purposes:

• Of learning
• For learning
• As learning

Assessment of learning is student-based and one of the most familiar, encompassing tests, reports, essays, and other ways of determining what students have learned. These are usually summative assessments, and they are used to gauge progress for individuals and groups so educators can determine who has mastered the material and who needs more assistance.

When we talk about assessment for learning, we’re referring to the constant evaluations teachers perform as they teach. These quick assessments—such as in-class discussions or quick pop quizzes—give educators the chance to see if their teaching strategies are working. This allows them to make adjustments in action, tailoring their lessons and activities to student needs. Assessment for learning usually includes the formative and diagnostic types.

Assessment can also be a part of the learning process itself. When students use self-evaluations, flash cards, or rubrics, they’re using assessments to help them learn.

Let’s take a closer look at the various types of assessments used in education.

Diagnostic assessments are used before learning to determine what students already do and do not know. This often refers to pre-tests and other activities students attempt at the beginning of a unit.

How To Use Diagnostic Assessments

When giving diagnostic assessments, it’s important to remind students these won’t affect their overall grade. Instead, it’s a way for them to find out what they’ll be learning in an upcoming lesson or unit. It can also help them understand their own strengths and weaknesses, so they can ask for help when they need it.

Teachers can use results to understand what students already know and adapt their lesson plans accordingly. There’s no point in over-teaching a concept students have already mastered. On the other hand, a diagnostic assessment can also help highlight expected pre-knowledge that may be missing.

For instance, a teacher might assume students already know certain vocabulary words that are important for an upcoming lesson. If the diagnostic assessment indicates differently, the teacher knows they’ll need to take a step back and do a little pre-teaching before getting to their actual lesson plans.

Examples of Diagnostic Assessments

• Pre-test: This includes the same questions (or types of questions) that will appear on a final test, and it’s an excellent way to compare results.
• Blind Kahoot: Teachers and kids already love using Kahoot for test review, but it’s also the perfect way to introduce a new topic. Learn how Blind Kahoots work here.
• Survey or questionnaire: Ask students to rate their knowledge on a topic with a series of low-stakes questions.
• Checklist: Create a list of skills and knowledge students will build throughout a unit, and have them start by checking off any they already feel they’ve mastered. Revisit the list frequently as part of formative assessment.

Formative assessments take place during instruction. They’re used throughout the learning process and help teachers make on-the-go adjustments to instruction and activities as needed. These assessments aren’t used in calculating student grades, but they are planned as part of a lesson or activity. Learn much more about formative assessments here.

How To Use Formative Assessments

As you’re building a lesson plan, be sure to include formative assessments at logical points. These types of assessments might be used at the end of a class period, after finishing a hands-on activity, or once you’re through with a unit section or learning objective.

Once you have the results, use that feedback to determine student progress, both overall and as individuals. If the majority of a class is struggling with a specific concept, you might need to find different ways to teach it. Or you might discover that one student is especially falling behind and arrange to offer extra assistance to help them out.

While kids may grumble, standard homework review assignments can actually be a pretty valuable type of formative assessment . They give kids a chance to practice, while teachers can evaluate their progress by checking the answers. Just remember that homework review assignments are only one type of formative assessment, and not all kids have access to a safe and dedicated learning space outside of school.

Examples of Formative Assessments

• Exit tickets : At the end of a lesson or class, pose a question for students to answer before they leave. They can answer using a sticky note, online form, or digital tool.
• Kahoot quizzes : Kids enjoy the gamified fun, while teachers appreciate the ability to analyze the data later to see which topics students understand well and which need more time.
• Flip (formerly Flipgrid): We love Flip for helping teachers connect with students who hate speaking up in class. This innovative (and free!) tech tool lets students post selfie videos in response to teacher prompts. Kids can view each other’s videos, commenting and continuing the conversation in a low-key way.
• Self-evaluation: Encourage students to use formative assessments to gauge their own progress too. If they struggle with review questions or example problems, they know they’ll need to spend more time studying. This way, they’re not surprised when they don’t do well on a more formal test.

Find a big list of 25 creative and effective formative assessment options here.

Summative assessments are used at the end of a unit or lesson to determine what students have learned. By comparing diagnostic and summative assessments, teachers and learners can get a clearer picture of how much progress they’ve made. Summative assessments are often tests or exams but also include options like essays, projects, and presentations.

How To Use Summative Assessments

The goal of a summative assessment is to find out what students have learned and if their learning matches the goals for a unit or activity. Ensure you match your test questions or assessment activities with specific learning objectives to make the best use of summative assessments.

When possible, use an array of summative assessment options to give all types of learners a chance to demonstrate their knowledge. For instance, some students suffer from severe test anxiety but may still have mastered the skills and concepts and just need another way to show their achievement. Consider ditching the test paper and having a conversation with the student about the topic instead, covering the same basic objectives but without the high-pressure test environment.

Summative assessments are often used for grades, but they’re really about so much more. Encourage students to revisit their tests and exams, finding the right answers to any they originally missed. Think about allowing retakes for those who show dedication to improving on their learning. Drive home the idea that learning is about more than just a grade on a report card.

Examples of Summative Assessments

• Traditional tests: These might include multiple-choice, matching, and short-answer questions.
• Essays and research papers: This is another traditional form of summative assessment, typically involving drafts (which are really formative assessments in disguise) and edits before a final copy.
• Presentations: From oral book reports to persuasive speeches and beyond, presentations are another time-honored form of summative assessment.

Find 25 of our favorite alternative assessments here.

More Types of Assessments

Now that you know the three basic types of assessments, let’s take a look at some of the more specific and advanced terms you’re likely to hear in professional development books and sessions. These assessments may fit into some or all of the broader categories, depending on how they’re used. Here’s what teachers need to know.

Criterion-Referenced Assessments

In this common type of assessment, a student’s knowledge is compared to a standard learning objective. Most summative assessments are designed to measure student mastery of specific learning objectives. The important thing to remember about this type of assessment is that it only compares a student to the expected learning objectives themselves, not to other students.

Many standardized tests are criterion-referenced assessments. A governing board determines the learning objectives for a specific group of students. Then, all students take a standardized test to see if they’ve achieved those objectives.

Find out more about criterion-referenced assessments here.

Norm-Referenced Assessments

These types of assessments do compare student achievement with that of their peers. Students receive a ranking based on their score and potentially on other factors as well. Norm-referenced assessments usually rank on a bell curve, establishing an “average” as well as high performers and low performers.

These assessments can be used as screening for those at risk for poor performance (such as those with learning disabilities) or to identify high-level learners who would thrive on additional challenges. They may also help rank students for college entrance or scholarships, or determine whether a student is ready for a new experience like preschool.

Learn more about norm-referenced assessments here.

Ipsative Assessments

In education, ipsative assessments compare a learner’s present performance to their own past performance, to chart achievement over time. Many educators consider ipsative assessment to be the most important of all , since it helps students and parents truly understand what they’ve accomplished—and sometimes, what they haven’t. It’s all about measuring personal growth.

Comparing the results of pre-tests with final exams is one type of ipsative assessment. Some schools use curriculum-based measurement to track ipsative performance. Kids take regular quick assessments (often weekly) to show their current skill/knowledge level in reading, writing, math, and other basics. Their results are charted, showing their progress over time.

Learn more about ipsative assessment in education here.

Have more questions about the best types of assessments to use with your students? Come ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, check out creative ways to check for understanding ..

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What Is Formative Assessment and How Should Teachers Use It?

Check student progress as they learn, and adapt to their needs. Continue Reading

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Essay assessments ask students to demonstrate a point of view supported by evidence. They allow students to demonstrate what they've learned and build their writing skills.

An essay question prompts a written response, which may vary from a few paragraphs to a number of pages.

Essay questions are generally open-ended. They differ from short answer questions in that they:

• require more time
• are less structured
• require students to integrate information and interpretation.

When to use an essay

Essays can be used to test students' higher order thinking.

Advantages and limitations

• Limitations
• Test analysis, reasoning, synthesis and evaluation skills.
• Are open ended. This allows students to answer the question in a variety of ways and demonstrate depth and creativity.
• Allow for deep learning and connections.
• Allow students to draw on research and reasoning to provide justification and show integration.
• Opportunity to assess a student’s writing ability.
• Can be quicker to prepare than other item/assessment types.
• Can be structured in different ways.
• Can limit the range of assessable content and the number of assessment items that can be used.
• Favour students with good writing skills.
• not too open ended
• align with content and learning outcomes.
• Can allow for plagiarism.
• Can be difficult to moderate.
• Time consuming to assess.
• Markers need to identify knowledge and understanding, despite levels of expression, i.e. elegant language can mask superficial thinking, while clumsy language can disguise understanding of ideas.

Guidelines for developing essay assessments

Essay question.

Effective essay questions provide students with a focus (types of thinking and content) to use in their response.

Make sure your essay question:

• is aligned with the intended learning outcome
• is an appropriate length
• contains a clear task or a specific problem situation
• is worded and structured in such a way that it will be clear to the students what they are expected to do
• is not indeterminate, vague or open to numerous and/or subjective interpretations
• contains verbs that match the intended learning outcomes (if you use verbs like discuss or explain , indicate which points should be discussed/explained)
• defines the scope of the task to avoid students going off on an unrelated tangent
• allows for answers at different levels, i.e. a basic, satisfactory response and an extended, high level response
• includes differentiating aspects in the way the question is written.

Review the question and improve using the following questions:

• Does the question align with the learning outcome?
• Is the focus clear?
• Is the scope specific and clear enough?
• Is there enough direction to guide the student to the expected response?

Alignment to learning outcomes

To ensure the assessment item aligns with learning outcomes:

• prepare a model answer or an outline of major points that should be included in the answer
• critically review the essay item for clarity
• check the question is aligned with the intended learning outcome and model answer.

Student preparation

Make sure your students are prepared by:

• teaching them how to approach essays
• scaffold learning so there are opportunities to guide and practise essay writing
• ensuring students know the recommended time for completing their answer
• ensuring students know the weighting of the essay.

Examples of essay question verbs

In the table below you will find lists of verbs that are commonly used in essay questions. These words:

• relate to learning outcomes
• can be thought of as aligning with critical essay questions or descriptive essay questions
• can be used as starting points for the development of essay questions.

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17.6: What are the benefits of essay tests?

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• Jennfer Kidd, Jamie Kaufman, Peter Baker, Patrick O'Shea, Dwight Allen, & Old Dominion U students
• Old Dominion University

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the benefits of essay questions for both Students and Teachers
• Identify when essays are useful

Introduction

Essays, along with multiple choice, are a very common method of assessment. Essays offer a means completely different than that of multiple choice. When thinking of a means of assessment, the essay along with multiple choice are the two that most come to mind (Schouller).The essay lends itself to specific subjects; for example, a math test would not have an essay question. The essay is more common in the arts, humanities and the social sciences(Scouller). On occasion an essay can be used used in both physical and natural sciences as well(Scouller). As a future history teacher, I will find that essays will be an essential part of my teaching structure.

The Benefits for Students

By utilizing essays as a mean of assessments, teachers are able to better survey what the student has learned. Multiple choice questions, by their very design, can be worked around. The student can guess, and has decent chance of getting the question right, even if they did not know the answer. This blind guessing does not benefit the student at all. In addition, some multiple choices can deceive the student(Moore). Short answers, and their big brother the essay, work in an entirely different way. Essays remove this factor. in a addition, rather than simply recognize the subject matter, the student must recall the material covered. This challenges the student more, and by forcing the student to remember the information needed, causes the student to retain it better. This in turn reinforces understanding(Moore). Scouller adds to this observation, determining that essay assessment "encourages students' development of higher order intellectual skills and the employment of deeper learning approaches; and secondly, allows students to demonstrate their development."

"Essay questions provide more opportunity to communicate ideas. Whereas multiple choice limits the options, an essay allows the student express ideas that would otherwise not be communicated." (Moore)

The Benefits for Teachers

The matter of preparation must also be considered when comparing multiple choice and essays. For multiple choice questions, the instructor must choose several questions that cover the material covered. After doing so, then the teacher has to come up with multiple possible answers. This is much more difficult than one might assume. With the essay question, the teacher will still need to be creative. However, the teacher only has to come up with a topic, and what the student is expected to cover. This saves the teacher time. When grading, the teacher knows what he or she is looking for in the paper, so the time spent reading is not necessarily more. The teacher also benefits from a better understanding of what they are teaching. The process of selecting a good essay question requires some critical thought of its own, which reflects onto the teacher(Moore).

Multiple Choice. True or False. Short Answer. Essay. All are forms of assessment. All have their pros and cons. For some, they are better suited for particular subjects. Others, not so much. Some students may even find essays to be easier. It is vital to understand when it is best to utilize the essay. Obviously for teachers of younger students, essays are not as useful. However, as the age of the student increase, the importance of the essay follows suit. That essays are utilized in essential exams such as the SAT, SOLs and in our case the PRAXIS demonstrates how important essays are. However, what it ultimately comes down to is what the teacher feels what will best assess what has been covered.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

1)What Subject would most benefit from essays?

B: Mathematics for the Liberal Arts

C: Survey of American Literature

2)What is an advantage of essay assessment for the student?

A) They allow for better expression

B) There is little probability for randomness

C) The time taken is less overall

D) A & B

3)What is NOT a benefit of essay assessment for the teacher

A)They help the instructor better understand the subject

B)They remove some the work required for multiple choice

C)The time spent on preparation is less

D) There is no noticeable benefit.

4)Issac is a teacher making up a test. The test will have multiple sections: Short answer, multiple choice, and an essay. What subject does Issac MOST LIKELY teach?

References Cited

1)Moore, S.(2008) Interview with Scott Moore, Professor at Old Dominion University

2)Scouller, K. (1998). The influence of assessment method on students' learning approaches: multiple Choice question examination versus assignment essay. Higher Education 35(4), pp. 453–472

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Applications Selected for FY 2024 Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment, Cleanup Grants, RLF Supplemental Funding, and Technical Assistance

Today, EPA is announcing that 178 communities were selected to receive 181 grant awards for a total of $231 million in funding for Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment, and Cleanup (MAC) Grant programs. These Brownfields Grants will be used to assess, clean up and redevelop underutilized properties while protecting public health and the environment. 

EPA is also announcing $68 million in supplemental funding to 31 existing Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Grant recipients who have demonstrated success in their work to clean up and redevelop brownfield sites. Supplemental funding for RLF Grants is available to recipients that have depleted their funds and have viable cleanup projects ready for work. RLF supplemental funding helps sustain and increase the great progress these communities have made in cleaning up brownfield sites, while also helping them become stronger, healthier, and more economically competitive.

May 20, 2024 EPA News Release

List of Selected FY 2024 MAC and RLF Supplemental Grant Recipients (pdf) (311.4 KB)

Fact Sheets for FY 2024 Selected MAC Grant Applicants

FY 2024 RLF Supplemental Funding Fact Sheets (pdf) (208.3 KB)

FY 2024 MAC Grant Applications

EPA also selected an RLF Technical Assistance provider, Grow America, for $3 million. The goal of the assistance is to increase the capacity of EPA-funded Brownfield RLF programs nationwide.

RLF Technical Assistance Provider Grow America

These investments, totaling more than $300 million, are part of President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda. This announcement includes approximately $231 million from the historic once-in-a generation $1.5 billion investment from the  Bipartisan Infrastructure Law  to help turn brownfield sites across the nation into hubs of economic growth. 

EPA has selected these organizations to receive funding to address and support the reuse of brownfield sites. EPA anticipates making the awards once all legal and administrative requirements are satisfied.

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Guidance for submitting whole genome sequencing (WGS) data to support the pre-market assessment of novel foods, novel feeds, and plants with novel traits

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to industry on the use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to generate data for pre-market submissions for genetically modified plants. Commercial platforms for high-throughput sequencing were launched in the mid-2000s and continue to undergo rapid development. These platforms are now increasingly affordable, and with over a decade of experience, they are also more reliable and accessible to developers with different levels of resources. Adoption of WGS has been widespread in biological, medical and agricultural research, and more recently in clinical diagnostics and epidemiology. Canadian regulatory agencies and our international counterparts have and continue to receive pre-market submission packages that include WGS data. Given the complexity of WGS data, industry has requested guidance that will enable them to compile pre-market submission packages that facilitate the regulatory review process. The use of WGS technology is optional and data generated using traditional molecular biology methods are still acceptable.

On May 31, 2017, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) published a draft guidance document on the Health Canada website, requesting comments on this guidance from the larger stakeholder community. Comments were accepted until 12:00 a.m. EST on July 30, 2017. This final document includes minor editorial changes incorporated as a result of the comments received.

Early stages of the guidance document were developed following discussions of the Canada, United States, and Mexico Trilateral Technical Working Group (TTWG), and the perspectives of Canada's regulatory counterparts aided in developing this document. To the knowledge of Health Canada and the CFIA, this guidance document is the first to address the submission of WGS data for the pre-market assessment of genetically modified plants.

Novel Foods, Novel Feeds, and Plants with Novel Traits (PNTs) are required to undergo a mandatory pre-market assessment. Published guidance documents Footnote  1 for developers of these products list the information and data that is required in a pre-market submission, typically including a full molecular characterization. The aim of the molecular analysis is to (i) show the changes introduced into the event genome, (ii) ascertain their stability, and (iii) assist in predicting the molecular or biochemical mode of action, or in other words, the mechanisms by which the genetic changes give rise to the novel phenotypes or traits.

Data generated using classical molecular techniques, such as Southern blotting, Sanger sequencing and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) –based assays, are routinely submitted by petitioners in support of their pre-market applications. These data inform on the molecular characterization end-points that regulators consider in completing their assessments, namely characterization of:

• the DNA that was inserted, deleted or modified
• the number of complete or partial copies of the inserted DNA
• the organization of any inserted or altered genetic elements, including coding, regulatory and other non-coding regions; this may include sequence data of the inserted DNA and surrounding regions, where appropriate (example, to characterize a partial insertion or rearrangement)
• the mode of inheritance and stability of the genetic change(s)

Taken together, the molecular data presented in a submission contribute evidence for the unambiguous interpretation of the nature and stability of the genetic changes contained in the event.

In recent years, a technological leap has been made with the development of massively parallel sequencing, also commonly referred to as high-throughput sequencing, next generation sequencing (NGS) or whole genome sequencing (WGS). In this guidance document the term WGS will be used. Several platforms have been developed that enable the rapid generation of large quantities of DNA sequence data. This highly automated technology is becoming increasingly accessible and affordable, and petitioners may wish to use them to generate data in support of the molecular characterization of their products.

In essence, all WGS methods involve collecting large scale genome Footnote  2 sequence data at single nucleotide resolution, usually a collection of fragments that require curation and often sophisticated computational analysis to interpret. WGS technologies and analytical methods are improving rapidly, and petitioners are advised to consult the scientific literature and device manufacturers' websites for information on the latest developments. For regulators, it is not the raw data but rather the demonstration of overall sequence quality, description and validation of the in silico (such as, computational) analysis, and data presentation that are of principal value to inform the assessment. As with any scientific data submission prepared for pre-market review, regulators reserve the right to ask for the raw data should the need arise.

In light of rapid ongoing changes in the field of sequencing, there is an absence of standardized procedures for producing and analyzing WGS data that would apply universally across all platforms and all applications of these techniques. A need was identified to set forth in a guidance document the principles and good practices that petitioners should consider in organizing and presenting a WGS based analysis as part of a pre-market submission. The aim is to ensure that the WGS data submitted to regulators is produced through a well-documented analysis and is demonstrably at least as robust as the molecular data obtained using traditional molecular biology methods. This guidance describes the expectations for information to be included in a submission with regard to the WGS study design and methodologies, data analysis and data presentation.

I. WGS vs traditional molecular biology techniques

Examples in the literature have shown how WGS data can be useful as an alternative to Southern blots in the characterization of DNA insertions (Kovalic et al., 2012; Zastrow-Hayes et al., 2015) and may be applied to transgenic or cisgenic events. For different molecular characterization end-points (example, for products of mutagenesis and/or selection, and in general for studies of trait inheritance), the use of classical methods may be more appropriate. Data produced using classical molecular methods remain acceptable for use in pre-market submissions and can be presented alone or in combination with WGS data for molecular characterization, regardless of the method of development used to produce the event.

When petitioners present data produced using traditional molecular techniques, the descriptions of the methodology and analysis are generally uncomplicated because the techniques are in widespread use and the data interpretation is typically straightforward. With WGS, each analysis can be unique and the sequence reads require customized and often sophisticated handling in order to generate interpretable results. For this reason, all manipulations applied to the sequence data have to be explained in a submission and any sequence that is eliminated from analysis requires justification.

It is up to the petitioner to demonstrate that the presented sequencing data accurately represents the event genome. Appropriate metrics, quality analyses and/or controls should be included and explained in order to give confidence to the regulator that the WGS characterization has been performed rigorously and that the results capture the genome structure and modifications accurately and completely.

II. WGS study design and methodologies

The overall strategy of the WGS study and motivation for the choice of methodology should be clearly explained. It should also be stated in the submission what molecular characterization end-points are addressed using the chosen methodology.

There are several sequencing platforms available, each offering a suite of models that are frequently updated. In addition to the instrumentation, DNA preparation kits and on-board software are optimized regularly. WGS technologies in general are powerful and versatile, however each setup has its strengths and limitations, and some are better suited than others to different sequencing challenges. The submission should state the instrument make and model, as well as the version of the on-board software.

A description of how the DNA sample was prepared should include the distribution of the fragment sizes. If a commercial kit is used, this can be stated as well, with a mention of any known performance limitations and any steps that were taken to account for these.

In the context of WGS, bias can occur where the target sequence (or sequence of interest) contains any regions (for example, GC or AT rich, low complexity, or repetitive sequences) that give rise to sequencing artifacts with the result that they are over- or underrepresented in the data. Petitioners should mention and explain if any steps were taken prior to sequencing or afterwards during the analysis to account for such biases.

Similarly, if the WGS experimental design calls for the use of controls, these should be explained. One example might be the sequencing of a reference genome spiked with target sequence, which is analogous to a positive control used in Southern blot analysis to show probe specificity.

Overall, the submission should include a clear description of the WGS study's intent and rationale. Laboratory protocols may be provided as supporting material (for example, in an appendix) and referenced in the overview of the methodology.

III. WGS data analysis

Depending on the molecular characterization end-point(s) being addressed, WGS sequence reads can be processed in different ways. The ultimate purpose of the data analysis is to generate tables and figures to present the key information distilled from the sequencing data that clearly supports the petitioner's conclusions regarding the molecular characterization end-points. Submissions should include a stepwise description of the data analysis pipeline, organized in order to facilitate the interpretation of the presented results.

The use of schematics to accompany the narrative description of the data analysis pipeline is encouraged. As appropriate, the following aspects should be included:

• an explanation of any data cleaning and/or error correction applied to the read output, with disclosure of any eliminated outliers
• a data quality report (for example, FASTQC Footnote  3 ). These reports present basic statistical data such as the range of read lengths, number of reads, GC content, etc., as well as charts that present quantitative measures of the overall data quality
• literature citations for any programs or algorithms used. If new computational tools are developed by the petitioner, validation studies should be included.
• the purpose of each step in the pipeline, for example, searching, parsing, aligning, mapping, assembly, etc. The choice of parameters, including defaults, at each computational step should be justified or explained
• the outcome of each step in the pipeline should be stated
• for cases in which a reference sequence is used to map reads generated from the event genome, the petitioner should identify the reference strain or variety and present a rationale for the choice of reference

Coverage depth, breadth and uniformity are key considerations for data analysis and interpretation. There is no set threshold for coverage as this will depend on the specific case. By way of example,a relatively low average coverage may be sufficient to show that a sequence of interest is present in the event genome. In order to support any conclusion that hinges on having sampled the entire genome (such as, breadth of coverage approaching 100 percent), this should be demonstrated empirically using controls or other metrics. The factors that contribute to achieving a breadth of coverage that is appropriate for different applications are reviewed by Sims et al. (2014). In any WGS study, the petitioner needs to justify why the genome coverage is adequate for their conclusions. Any gaps in coverage or regions that have either shallower or deeper coverage compared to the average may require explanation or further characterization.

IV. Presentation of the WGS data

The choice of how to present WGS data in tables and figures depends on the molecular characterization end-points addressed. Some examples can be seen in Kovalic et al. (2012) and Zastrow-Hayes et al. (2015), but petitioners are by no means limited to using these as models. The narrative text in a submission should explain and interpret the data and rationales that support the petitioner's conclusions. Information that can be presented, as relevant, include:

• charts from the FASTQC report (Section II) or similar analyses that show the quality of the read output data
• coverage maps showing the variation in read coverage over the loci of interest.
• if unexpected sequence variants, substitutions, insertions, or deletions are observed in the event genome, these should likewise be explained and/or further characterized
• if traditional molecular biology techniques are used to complement or clarify any ambiguity in interpreting the WGS data, the combined weight of evidence should be clearly explained

Glossary of terms

Kovalic, D., et al. (2012) "The Use of Next Generation Sequencing and Junction Sequence Analysis Bioinformatics to Achieve Molecular Characterization of Crops Improved Through Modern Biotechnology." Plant Genome 5(3): 149-163. doi: 10.3835/plantgenome2012.10.0026

Sims, D., et al. (2014) "Sequencing depth of coverage: key considerations in genomic analysis." Nature Reviews Genetics 15:121-132. doi:10.1038/nrg3642

Zastrow-Hayes, G.M., et al. (2015) "Southern-by-Sequencing: A Robust Screening Approach for Molecular Characterization of Genetically Modified Crops." The Plant Genome 8(1). doi:10.3835/plantgenome2014.08.0037