Curriculum Assessment Prof. Dr. Buket Akkoyunlu Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education

Curriculum Assessment

Prof. Dr. Buket AkkoyunluHacettepe University, Faculty of Education

UNESCO Training the Trainers in Information Literacy Workshop September 3-5 Ankara Turkey 2

• What types of evidence or data indicate that the curriculum is effective? What types of measures can be used in assessment?

• How can educators best assess objectives of the delivered curricula have been obtained?

• Who should be in charge of assessing if and how learning has taken place?

Curriculum AssessmentCurriculum Assessment


• Who should be responsible for evaluating the effectiveness of curricula and for collecting and documenting assessment data?

• How should assessment and evaluation data be used to improve future curricula?



Assessment is a process by which information is obtained relative to some known objective. Assessment is a broad term that includes testing.

A test is a special form of assessment. Tests are assessments made under contrived circumstances especially so that they may be administered. In other words, all tests are assessments, but not all assessments are tests.

AssessmentAssessment


• We test at the end of a lesson or unit. We assess progress at the end of a school year through testing, and we assess verbal and quantitative skills through such instruments as the SAT and GRE. Whether implicit or explicit, assessment is most usefully connected to some goal or objective for which the assessment is designed.



• We can assess a person’s knowledge in a variety of ways, but there is always a leap, an inference that we make about what a person does in relation to what it signifies about what he knows. In the section on this site on behavioral verbs, to assess means to stipulate the conditions by which the behavior specified in an objective may be ascertained.



When we evaluateevaluate, what we are doing is engaging in some process that is designed to provide information that will help us make a judgment about a given situation.

Generally, any evaluation process requires information about the situation in question. A situation is an umbrella term that takes into account such ideas as objectives, standards, procedures, and so on.

When we evaluate, we are saying that the process will yield information regarding the worthiness, appropriateness, goodness, validity, legality, etc., of something for which a reliable measurement or assessment has been made.

EvaluationEvaluation


To sum up, we assess learning, and we evaluate results in terms of some set of criteria. These two terms are certainly connected, but it is useful to think of them with connected ideas and processes.

EvaluationEvaluation


Evaluation/assesment permits the critical question to be asked and answered: have the objectives objectives of new curriculum have been met?

• It assesses individual achievement to satisfy external

requirements, and provides information that can be used to improve curriculum, and to document accomplishments or failures.

• Evaluation / assesment can provide feedback and motivation for continued improvement for learners, faculty, and innovative curriculum developers.

• To ensure that important questions are answered and relevant needs met, it is necessary to be methodical in designing a process of evaluation.

Evaluation / AssessmentEvaluation / Assessment


The purposes of evaluation/assessment include to

• facilitate learning • describe / measure learning • diagnose learning gaps • provide a structure for learning • provide opportunities for students and teachers

to talk about learning • provide information for the evaluation of teaching



There are several ways to assess learning of disciplinary content, skills and processes. They include essays, tests, seminars, portfolios, journals, projects, reports, performances, theses, professional experiences, and observations.

Those who assess could be the educator, student and peers.

Assessment can be informal, such as giving verbal feedback during class, or formal tasks intended to fulfill the requirements of the subject.

Assessment can serve both formative and summative purposes



The formative evaluation provides feedback to learner identifying areas and provides suggestions for improvement, on the other hand,

summative evaluation measures whether specific performance objectives were accomplished, certifying competency or its lack in performance in a particular area, and measures the success of a curriculum in achieving learner and process objectives.



Any effective instructional program must begin with the skills related to objectives, "a description of a performance you want learners to be able to exhibit before you consider them competent" (Mager, 1984, p. 3). Each objective will specify the performance, the conditions, and the criterion of acceptable performance (Mager, 1984, p. 3).



There are possible measurement technics for formative and summative evaluations.

Some examples;

• Annotated bibliography with search strategy discussion included• Collaborative learning exercise in class• Critique of a classmate's completed search/bibliography• Essay examination• Multiple choice examination

Practicum examination• Research journal

Research portfolio• Research paper proposal• Research worksheet• RubricsRubrics• Short answer examinationShort answer examination



The rubric is formative type of assessment because it becomes an ongoing part of the whole teaching and learning process. Students themselves are involved in the assessment process through both peer and self-assessment.

Multiple choice examination is summative type of assessment because measures the success of a curriculum in achieving learner and process objectives.



The rubric is authentic assessment tool used to measure students' work. It is a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score.

A rubric is a working guide for students and teachers, usually handed out before the assignment begins in order to get students to think about the criteria on which their work will be judged.



Rubrics offer several advantages

• Rubrics help students become better judges of the quality of their own work.

• Rubrics allow assessment to be more objective and consistent.

• Rubrics force the teacher to clarify his/her criteria in specific terms.

• Rubrics reduce the amount of time teachers spend evaluating student work.



Rubrics offer several advantages

• Rubrics promote student awareness about the criteria to use in assessing peer performance.

• Rubrics provide useful feedback to the teacher regarding the effectiveness of the instruction.

• Rubrics provide students with more informative feedback about their strengths and areas in need of improvement.

• Rubrics accommodate heterogeneous classes by offering a range of quality levels.

• Rubrics are easy to use and easy to explain.



Students themselves are involved in the assessment process through both peer and self-assessment.

As students become familiar with rubrics, they can assist in the rubric design process. This involvement empowers the students and as a result, their learning becomes more focused and self-directed. Authentic assessment, therefore, blurs the lines between teaching, learning, and assessment (Andrade. 2001).



When students receive rubrics beforehand, they understand how they will be evaluated and can prepare accordingly.

Developing a grid and making it available as a tool for students' use will provide the scaffolding necessary to improve the quality of their work and increase their knowledge.



Assessment is the most powerful tool available to educators to direct and facilitate student learning.

It is therefore essential that information literacy learning outcomes are embedded in the assessment tasks for courses of study.



Examples:

Objective: An individual who operates at the basic level of information literacy

Outcome: Student will be able to describe the wide array of information sources available and discuss their appropriateness for a given information problem.

Possible Measurement Techniques: • Essay examination

• Oral report

• Practicum in the library

• Written evaluation assignment



Examples:

Objective: Recognizes the need for information to solve a specific problem and knows what kind of information to seek.

Outcome: Given a topic of interest, student will be able to refine it and formulate a research question.

Possible Measurement Techniques: • Collaborative learning exercise in class

• Essay examination

• Practical problem to solve



ReferenceReference

• Andrade, H. G. (2001). Understanding Rubrics. [Online] 18 August 2008 <http://www.middleweb.com/rubricsHG.html>.

• Mager, R.F. (1984). Preparing instructional objectives. (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: David S. Lake.


Thank you ….

Documents

Curriculum Assessment Prof. Dr. Buket Akkoyunlu Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education