This document discusses the four main types of assessment: prognostic, diagnostic, formative, and summative. Prognostic assessment predicts future performance. Diagnostic assessment identifies strengths and weaknesses before instruction. Formative assessment provides feedback during instruction. Summative assessment evaluates learning at the end of a course and determines if objectives were achieved. Each type of assessment serves a different purpose in evaluating and supporting student learning.
2. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
ASSESSMENT:The term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that
educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress,
skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT:
There are four types of assessments
1) Prognostic assessment
2) Diagnostic assessment
3) Formative assessment
4) Summative assessment
1) PROGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT:
Prognostic assessments act as a means of estimation and prediction of the future career.
Prognostic assessmentcombines basic aspects taken from an assessment of learning processes
and an assessment of learning achievements and tries to formulate a diagnosis for the student’s
future.
It is based on those concepts and skills which are to play a predictive role in the new
course.Theseskills may be of various types. They may be general intelligence, physical ability,
possessionof an appropriate fund of knowledge or attitude .
It asks questions like: how can we supportthe individual development and the positive learning
processes?Prognostic assessments becomevery important at different stages in a student’s
academic life:
school enrolment;
repetition of a year;
switching classes/schools;
transfer to a different type of school(for example, special education);
Transfer to a higher school.
2) DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT:
Diagnostic assessmentcan help you identify your students’ current knowledge of a subject,
their skill sets and capabilities, and to clarify misconceptions before teaching takes place.
3. Knowing students strengths and weaknesses can help to better plan what to teach and how to
teach it.
Types of Diagnostic Assessments:
Pre-Tests(on content and abilities)
Self-assessments (identifying skills and competencies)
Discussion board responses (on content-specific prompts)
Interviews (brief, private, 10 minute interview of each student)
3) FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT:
It is an essential part of teaching and learning.
Formative assessment is carried out during a courseof instruction for providing continuous
feedback to both the teachers and the learners for taking decisions regarding appropriate
modifications in the transactional procedures and learning activities, while learning is taking
place and while learning is occurring.
This process enables teachers to track each students progress in academic subjects as well as
co-scholastic areas such as life skills, attitudes and values and extra- curricular activities.
A primary focus of formative assessmentis to identify areas that may need improvement.
Schools and teachers are advised not to restrict formative assessment to paper-pencil tests.
Teachers are mandated to use other means of testing such as quizzes, puzzles, project work,
practicals and assignments.
Teachers have the descretion to enhance a student’s academic grades (in a maximum of two
subjects by one grade) if she has performed well in Non-Scholastic activities.
4) SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT:
Summative Assessment is carried out at the end of a course of learning. It measures or sums-
up how much a student has learned from the course.
It is usually a graded test i.e it is marked according to a scale or set of grades.
The aim of these tests is not to monitor the progress of the student during instruction but to
assess the overall performance of students and grading the performance of the learner at the
end of the course.
It is designed to determine the extent to which the instructional objectives have been achieved.
It also provides information for judging the appropriateness of the courseobjectives and the
effectiveness of the instruction.
4. REFERENCES:
Goswami.M (2011), Measurementsand Evaluation in Psychology and Education, New Delhi:
Neelkamal Publications Pvt.Ltd
Assessment (2014) retrieved from
https://www.edglossary.org/assessment/
Meaning and Types of Assessment (2019) retrieved from
https://www.toppr.com/bytes/types-of-assessment/