Student assessment can include various procedures to measure performance, such as tests, projects, essays, and other assignments. Assessment can be formative, occurring throughout a course, or summative, concluding a course. Descriptive tests like essays measure complex achievement through open-ended responses, while objective tests use short answers, true/false questions, matching, and multiple choice to assess knowledge. When constructing questions, essay items should allow for higher-order thinking while being timed appropriately, whereas objective items need plausible distractors and a clear single correct answer. A variety of assessment methods and question types are necessary to fully evaluate student learning.

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Student Assessment

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•Assessment includes any of a variety of procedures
used to obtain, quantify, and describe information
about student performance.
•Assessment can include numerous types of
measurement of knowledge skills and performance
(tests, projects, essays).
•Assessment can be formative (ongoing) and
summative (conclusive).

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Assignment
Quiz
Project
Presentation
Class participation/attendance
Mid-term
Final exam

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Exam:
If the paper is divided into two sections:
descriptive and objective, marks distribution
must be as under:
Descriptive 60%
Objective 40%

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Type of Tests
Descriptive Tests ……Essay Types Items
Objective Tests
Short Answers & Completion Items
True False
Matching Exercise
MCQs

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Descriptive Tests
Essay Type items
Measurement of complex achievement
Freedom of Reponses
Measure Knowledge of factual information

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Descriptive Tests
Types of essay items:
Restricted-Response Essays Questions
Limits both the content and the response
Extended-Response Essays
Freedom of responses

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Essay Items
Advantages:
 Measures higher learning levels (synthesis, evaluation)
 Easier to construct
 Reduce the chance of guessing
 Require superior study methods
 Offer students an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to:
 Organize knowledge
 Express opinions
 Foster creativity

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Essay Items
Disadvantages:
May limit the material covered
Tends to reduce validity of the test
Subjective unreliable nature of scoring
Written expression
Handwriting legibility
Grammatical and spelling errors
Time consuming

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Essay Items
Tips for constructing Essay Questions:
 Provide reasonable time limits for each question
 Avoid permitting students a choice of questions
 A definite task should be put forth to the students
 Use critical words in questions such as compare, contrast, analyze,
evaluate

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Objective Tests
Short Answers & Complete the Items:
Answered by a word, Phrase, Number or symbol
True False:
Consist of declaratives statements
Ability to identify the correctness of statement facts, principles
and definitions of terms etc.

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Objective Tests
Matching Exercise
Consists of two parallel Columns
 premises (Match is sought)
Responses( Selection is made)
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
Consists of a problems and list of suggested solutions
 Stem
Distracters

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Multiple-Choice Items
Advantages
 Extremely versatile
 measure the higher level mental processes (application, analysis,
synthesis and evaluation)
Free from response sets
Greater Reliability per item
Tend to be Higher Quality than other test items
 Can cover a wide range of content
Disadvantages
– Difficult to construct plausible alternative responses

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Suggestions for Constructing
Multiple-Choice Items
Stem should be meaningful and present a definite problem
Use a question format or a complete statement
Free of irrelevant material
Distracters grammatically consistent with stem
There must be only one correct answer

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Bloom’s Taxonomy

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Cont.…
Items measuring UNDERSTANDING should
contain some novelty
Avoid verbal associations between the stem and
correct answer
Avoid the relative Length of the alternatives
Random placement of correct answers

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Examples
Poor item:
Quaid-e-Azam was born in………………
(possible answers are: the year, the city)
Better item:
Quaid-e-Azam was born in
1875
1876
1877
1878
b is the correct answer

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Examples
Better item:
The statement made by a scientist, which may be the
possible answer to the problem is called:
a. Deduction
b. Theory
c. Hypothesis
d. Law
C is the correct answer

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Lets try to be better
assessors!!