The effectiveness and reliability of tests play a crucial role in determining the performance of individuals and laboratories. Good tests are designed to be both valid and reliable, ensuring they fulfill their intended purpose and are trusted by both test-takers and evaluators.
Good tests are those that do the job they are designed
to do and which convince the people taking them and
marking them that they work. This means they should
be valid and reliable
Testing: direct and indirect
Indirect: Indirect testing attempts to measure the abilities that underlie the skills in which we are interested. Perhaps
the main appeal of indirect testing is that it seems to
offer the possibility of testing a representative sample of
a finite number of abilities which underlie a potentially
indefinite number of manifestations of them
Direct: Is direct when it requires the candidate to
perform precisely the skill that we wish to measure.
Formative assessment
Is in line with assessment for learning, where
assessment processes are carried out collaboratively, and the assessment decisions are primarily about the direction in which teaching and learning should go.
Outcomes
Learning outcomes state what our students should know and be able to do at the end of a course, as a result of all of our activity - lessons, assignments, feedback and tests. Learning outcomes are explicit statements of expectations (or criteria) that describe the skills, knowledge, attitudes and capabilities that our students should achieve as a result of our work with
them during a course.
example: Activity: An online training session for new product management software. Learning outcome: Learners are able to operate software and explain the functions that they are using.
Placement
Is a test given by a school to determine the academic or
skill level of a student, especially a new student, to place them in the correct class. Students are required to take placement tests before registering.
Releavility
The consistency, stability, and dependability of the assessment results are related to reliability. For example, reliability is the indicator of the number of errors we are making in marking students’ work and how consistent our marking is
Test: cons and pros
Pros: •Tests help teachers decide if their teaching has been
effective and highlight what needs to be reviewed.
•Tests can give students a sense of accomplishment as
well as information about what they know and what they
need to review.
•Tests encourage students to review material covered in
the course.
•The feedback after a test can be invaluable in helping
students to understand something they couldn't do during
the test. Thus the test is a review in itself.
Cons: •Some students become too nervous and they don't give a
true account of their knowledge or ability.
•Other students can do well just with last-minute cramming.
•Once the test has finished, students can just forget all that
they have learned.
•Students become focused on passing tests rather than
learning to improve their language Skills.
Continuous assessment
The students' progress is measured as it is
happening, and the measure of a student's achievement is the work done all through the learning period and not just at the end. This usually requires designing grids or any other kind of document to keep track of the students'progress, along with selecting tasks that will help us assess this progress.
Summative assessment
Is used to evaluate student learning, skill
acquisition and academic.
Diagnostic
Are sets of written questions (multiple choice or short
answer) that assess a learner's current knowledge base or current views on a topic/issue to be studied in the course. ... This method allows instructors and students to chart their learning progress by comparing pre-and post-tests
results.
Proficiency
Determines the performance of individual laboratories for
specific tests or measurements and is used to monitor laboratories' continuing performance.
Assessment vs testing
The differences between assessment and testing are that assessment is all kinds of methods or tools used to evaluate and testing is a test that measures achievement in subjects of study