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What: Ipsative assessments are one of the types of assessment as learning that compares previous results with a second try, motivating students to set goals and improve their skills. Usually used during pre- and post-test results.

In education "ipsative” refers to comparing an individual’s performance on a measure to his or her past performances.

Normative tests will compare a person to the norm obtainable in society, ipsative tests seek to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a person.

Why: A two-stage assessment framework helps students learn from their mistakes and motivates them to do better. Plus, it teaches students learning is a process.

Puts the focus onto learning rather than meeting standards

Allows students to use feedback to improve their understanding and/or grades

Example: Record a student reading a book and discussing its contents. Then, at another point in the year, repeat this process. Next, listen to the recordings together and discuss their reading improvements.

(Younger years this activity can simply be done by recording students reading the same book at different periods throughout the year.)

In my opinion this type of assessment is often not prioritized, however I believe it is one of the most important forms of assessment, emphasizing that we should strive to be better and know more than we did the day before. While general standards and normative assessments have their place, it's important that learning is also gauged based on individual growth and improvements. I  feel that this type of assessment can be used side-by-side with other forms to paint a more holistic and accurate picture of student learning.

Advantage: Ipsative assessment measures the progress of an individual students. Students are able to see whether there is an improvement and teachers can see whether the previous feedback has been leveraged.

Reference:
Formplus Blog (2022). Ipsative Assessments: Definition, Types and Examples. https://www.formpl.us/blog/ipsative-assessment

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What: Formative assessments help teachers monitor and understand student learning while they teach. Formative assessments help teachers track how student knowledge is growing and changing in the classroom in real-time.

Best if they short, easy to grade or no-grade and are consistent.

Benefits:

help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work

help teachers recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Why:  Provide teachers with information to adjust their teaching strategies to ensure students are understanding content. Formative assessments give students evidence of their current progress to actively manage and adjust their own learning. Formative assessments give teachers the ability to provide constant feedback to our students and allow them the ability to track their own educational goals.

Some examples of formative assessments include:

Portfolios

Progress reports

Class discussions

5 finger understanding

White board tracker

Entry and exit tickets

Short, regular quizzes

Virtual classroom tools like Socrative or Kahoot!

Additional Links and Resources:
Why You Should Use Formative Assessment:
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/what-are-formative-assessments-and-why-should-we-use-them/

7 Ways to Use Formative Assessment: https://www.edutopia.org/article/7-smart-fast-ways-do-formative-assessment

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What- This assessment measures how well students apply their knowledge, skills, and abilities to authentic problems. The key feature is that it requires the student to produce something, such as a report, experiment, or performance, which is scored against specific criteria.

A comprehensive performance assessment system usually contain some variation of the following components: developmental checklists, portfolios, and summary reports.

Marc Chun from Hewlett Foundation described the features of a quality performance assessment task as follows:

Real-world scenario: students assume roles in real-world scenarios.

Authentic, complex process: scenarios reflect complex and ambiguity of real-world challenges.

Higher-order thinking: requires critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and problem solving.

Authentic performance: the ‘product’ reflects what a professional would produce.

Transparent evaluation criteria: the learning outcomes drive the creation of the task.

Why- Reasons to use performance assessments may include:

Performance assessment is a critical component of creating high engagement learner-centered environment. Compared to didactic instruction and selected response tests, performance tasks can produce high levels of motivation and engagement.

Short performance assessment can be incorporated into units of instruction to check for understanding.

Longer and more comprehensive performance assessments can serve as a matriculation gateway in a competency-based environment.

Performance assessments are often the best way to apply knowledge and skills–particularly those difficult to measure in traditional ways such as critical thinking, collaboration, effective communications, and academic mindset.

Examples of Performance Assessment-
The broadest use of performance assessment is project-based learning. Some schools assign projects to students both as a learning experiences and a form of assessment. For example, asking students to explore–and often solve–real problems faced by community members or asking students to produce and present work product to audiences. Other examples may be short and long constructed response, drawings and videos, interview.

Reference:

Tom V. A. (2013).What is Performance Assessment? Retrieved from https://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/12/26/performance-assessment/

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What: A diagnostic assessment is a form of pre-assessment where teachers can evaluate students' strengths, weaknesses, knowledge and skills before their instruction. An identical assessment may be given post-instruction to identify if students have met a course's required learning objectives.

Help benchmark student progress

Non-graded "low stakes"

Benefit the instructor by providing a baseline for teaching

Why: When you structure diagnostic assessments around your lesson, you’ll get the information you need to understand student knowledge and engage your whole classroom.

The main purpose of a diagnostic assessment is to collect enough data about what students already know about a topic. The teacher uses this data to create a realistic roadmap that addresses any gaps of knowledge.

Diagnostic assessments make the teaching/learning process more efficient and effective by zeroing in on content that needs to be taught and mastered. It puts the students and teachers on the same page and creates a better learning experience for everyone

Some examples to try:

Short impromptu quizzes

Entry tickets

Calling up students to informally discuss what they know about a topic

Pretests

Surveys

Journal entries

Student interviews

Student reflections

Classroom discussions

Graphic organizers (e.g., mind maps, flow charts, KWL charts)

**Consider giving the same assessment at the end of the unit so students can see how far they’ve come!

Diagnostic assessment is a great way to gauge the level of a student's knowledge and to discover any learning gaps they might have.

Advantages:

1. It helps you to tie learning outcomes to specific goals and objectives.

2. Diagnostic assessments provide substantial data for creating an effective curriculum that improves learning outcomes for students.

3. It makes the teaching and learning process more efficient by zeroing in on content that needs to be taught.

4. It creates a rewarding and amicable learning environment for the teacher and the students.

5. Diagnostic assessment allows the teacher to map out a meaningful and efficient instruction plan for the course duration.

6. It creates a baseline for future assessment. At the end of the course, the teacher can compare students’ performance viz a viz their level of knowledge at the beginning of the course, and record any improvements.

7. Diagnostic assessment allows the teacher to individualize instruction. From the data, you can identify students who need extra tutoring on a particular portion of a unit or course of study. In the same vein, if a teacher discovers that a group of students has already mastered a large portion of a unit of study, he can design activities that allow that group to go beyond the standard curriculum for that topic through independent or small group study.

Disadvantages:

1. Difficult to do with larger classes

2. Time-consuming

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What- Criterion-referenced assessments (CRA) is the process of evaluating and grading the learning of students against a set of pre-specified qualities or criteria, without reference to the achievement of others (Brown, 1998; Harvey, 2004).

The pre-specified qualities or criteria are what students have to do during assessment in order to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning outcomes. There are many ways to score such an assessment. Among them, we can find:

Percent accurate;

Rating scales;

Rubrics;

Grades;

Checklists, etc.

Why- Criterion referenced assessment is an important assessment tool because when well done, it:

provides a shared language between students, teachers, and assessors about assessment

identifies what is valued in a curriculum and ensures that what is measured by assessment is the same as the skills, knowledge and understandings defined by the intended learning outcomes

makes explicit to students and assessors what evidence of achievement is expected at each of the grade standards

supports students to develop strong self-evaluation capacity, providing tools for them to review, refine, and improve their own work

Examples of CRA-Well-known examples of criterion-referenced tests include Advanced Placement exams and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which are both standardized tests in the United States.

Another example of criterion-referenced test seen in our daily life is driving test, which aims to see whether the examinee has enough skills to receive a driver’s license.

References:
Brown, S. (1998). Criterion-referenced assessment: What role for research. In H. Black & W. Dockerell (Eds.), New developments in educational assessment. British Journal of Educational Psychology, Monograph Series No. 3, 1-14.

Harvey, L. (2004). Analytic quality glossary. Retrieved from http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/glossary/#c