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Assessment depends of purpose. (Learning or testing).

They are both important but suits different needs.

In singapore,  we can sometimes be to caught up with AoL at the expense of AfL.

If we want to develop 21CC in students there must be opportunities and time given. We tend to be pragmatic in terms of learning in school . ICT and 21CC are often treated like dessert. Can be taken up if there is still space - but not necessary?

Enforcing some kind of measurements also defeats the purpose as it becomes a numbers game. How can we motivate teachers and school leaders to provide time, space and resource for this?

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It has been the longest debate to drive towards holistic assessment versus just on formative or summative assessments to determine a learner's performance or desired learning outcomes.

It is still a challenge to tackle as we blazed thru' 21st century and getting over the state of "Assessment" may still be a in pursuit of a perfect solution but still not perfect yet.

Is there a better method to "assess" a learner's ability Or "learner's potential. One is short term, and the other is long term. If Assessment at different education level takes on the role of "Health Checks" of the learner's ability is in a healthy state that allows him to perform duties within his means, then "Invisible Assessment" will be more of observing his success in life as the learner's potential.

niggling thought: Can we ever overcome the fact not to assess learners when there are always many camps of thoughts over assessment.

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Learned:
1. five major features define the elements of assessment systems :
Assessment of Higher-Order Cognitive Skills ;  High-Fidelity Assessment of Critical Abilities ; Standards that are Internationally Benchmarked ;  Use of Items that are Instructionally Sensitive and Educationally Valuable ;  Assessments that are Valid, Reliable, and Fair

2.  I learned that the Assessment Triangle contains observation, cognition and interpretation.
"The interpretation vertex of the triangle encompasses all the methods and tools used to reason from fallible observations. It expresses how the observations derived from a set of assessment tasks constitute evidence about the knowledge and skills being assessed. In the context of large-scale assessment, the interpretation method is usually a statistical model, which is a characterization or summarization of patterns one would expect to see in the data given varying levels of student competency.  "
" The cognition corner of the triangle refers to theory, data, and a set of assumptions about how students represent knowledge and develop competence in a subject matter domain (e.g., fractions; Newton’s laws; thermodynamics). In any particular assessment application, a theory of learning in the domain is needed to identify the set of knowledge and skills that is important to measure for the intended context of use, whether that be to characterize the competencies students have acquired at some point in time to make a summative judgment, or to make formative judgments to guide subsequent instruction so as to maximize learning "

niggling doubt:
how do we differentiate the assessment between the individual-level and the group-level.  “students’ competence may be misestimated in group assessment, but some groups may produce more misestimation that others”

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Share two things you have learned about assessment.

1.     The way we conduct assessment has changed over time to suit the needs of the economy. From individualistic brilliance to collaborative competency. Necessary skills required in the changing economy landscape have changed the way we assess learners. What we assess has also changed. For example, collaborative skills are now heavily emphasized as a 21st century skill. It wasn’t during the last century.

2.     Assessment is one of the driving forces behind change in education. By changing the way we assess students, the designing of the lesson and curriculum will change accordingly. This will in turn lead to changes in the designing of interactive learning environments to facilitate the altered lesson approach and the changed assessment methodology.

And share one niggling doubt you have about doing assessment and doing it right!
What is assessment used for? What is the purpose of assessment? For evaluation?

In primary school’s context, nation-wide assessment such as the PSLE is seen by many as merely about getting into the ‘right’ secondary school. The impression of the term ‘assessment’ is that, usually, the learner is being assessed by someone who is more knowledgeable. And that quite often, assessment is done at the end of the course, module. Is this final assessment an accurate one? A student who does poorly in exam, what does it mean? Does it mean the student has little content knowledge? What about those who score well in exams? Does it necessarily mean they possess the skill to perform in real-world contexts using that knowledge that they are assumed to have acquired well based on that single exam?

From PISA’s point of view, currently, it is clear that the process, not just outcome, gets significant weightage. PISA’s effort in measuring the process during CPS is commendable. But, it is still a single assessment. It is not a longitudinal assessment. How can we integrate a longitudinal assessment into our school systems that measures how much the student has learnt? Will weekly reflections and oral interviews serve as a better form of assessment?

In the workplace, collaborative skills is highly valued by companies around the world. How are we preparing our students for it? How can we adopt PISA’s CPS into Singapore mainstream schools? Wouldn’t such an adoption be a closer alignment with the 21st century skills that the government hopes to achieve in future generations of learners? There is still a fixation on the traditional mode of assessment which is pen and paper. It is perceived as a more efficient way of assessing students. In addition, the traditional assessment fits well into a meritocratic system. There are no grey areas whereby assessment might be subjective, unlike PISA’s CPS which has a greater extent of subjectivity and the validity and reliability of the assessment.

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1) Assessment is a broad and complex topic or issue that consists many different contexts such as in individual classroom, in a school system, in education systems at the national level, or international assessments etc.  Different people in the systems use assessment of different forms for different purposes.

2) Assessment is a key driver of learning. Changing assessment leads to changes in students' learning (and teachers' teaching!).

Validity of assessment is a concern for me, for instance, is the evaluation criteria of the assessment task valid in evaluating a particular skill/value/property that the assessment seek to assess.

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Integrating assessment with technology pushes the whole education system towards more comprehensive ways of assessment rather than mere memory lifted to paper. I feel more value and worth if it is applied learning.

Hence the scope of assessment is less restrictive and geared towards practical solutions that works today and is ready for the future.

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Assessment is mainly to see the learner learning outcome. To verify if individual has meet their individual learning objectives.

For summative assessment, the student are tested on student cognitive aspect of learning, while formative assessment is focuses on cognitive, social, and motivational aspects of learning, often applies a multi- method approach and it leads to a profile instead of a single score.

One of the niggling thought I have was, it is fair to used group grade to determine the individual achievement.

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Norman, yes there is another approach: the ATC21S where they assess pairs of students collaborating. There is a paper in the Documents tab; you can also google ATC21S

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1. Different assessments are required to meet different needs. E.g. Formative Assessments are to help students to arrive at their final destination-- it is a form of scaffolding.  Summative  assessment help serve as an evaluative tool to see if learning had taken place and if there needs to be relook in program if needed.

2. There are four Cs to be considered for assessments throughout the students learning journey:
-  Critical Thinking
-  Collaboration
- Communication
- Creativity
I'll add the 5th C: Content Mastery

3.Doubt:
How can the above 4 Cs be accurately measured. E.g. Collaboration results may come from peer assessment. How accurate is that. Peers might succumb to peer pressure to give their group mates a grade that is not accurate to the contribution.

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1) There is no 'one-size-fits-all' assessment tool.
2) Assessment should not be based on just literacy and numeracy (acquiring information) but also student's ability to analyse, synthesize, apply what they know to design a solution, redesign ineffective solutions and collaborate effectively.

Niggling doubt:
Will I get to witness this change in my lifetime?

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1.Assessment should be authentic to truly test the big idea behind what is being tested.
2.The authenticity of assessment is largely determined by teacher because it determines how hard they work to grade students

doubt:
i am very interested to know what are the other methods to ensure CPS is properly assessed.

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Assessment is how learning can be reviewed

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Share two things you have learned about assessment.

And share one niggling doubt you have about doing assessment and doing it right!