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 Curriculum Assessment

• Prof. Dr. Buket Akkoyunlu
• Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education

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 Curriculum Assessment

• 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?

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 Curriculum 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?

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 Assessment

• 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.

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 Curriculum Assessment

• 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.

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 Curriculum Assessment

• We can assess a persons 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.

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 Evaluation

• When we evaluate, 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.

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 Evaluation

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• Evaluation/assesment permits the critical
  question to be asked and answered have the
  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.

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 Evaluation / 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

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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).

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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
• Rubrics
• Short answer examination

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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. 

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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).

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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.

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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

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 Evaluation / Assessment

• 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

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Reference

• Andrade, H. G. (2001). Understanding Rubrics.
  Online 18 August 2008 lthttp//www.middleweb.com
  /rubricsHG.htmlgt.
• Mager, R.F. (1984). Preparing instructional
  objectives. (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA David S. Lake.

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• Thank you .