Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

There is no "one size fits all" approach to assessing student's learning. It varies based on the teacher, subject, and students. I have always believed that asking students to regurgitate what they have learned in class onto an exam is not beneficial to them or to the teacher. First of all, do students actually know the information or have they simply memorized it for a particular exam? Secondly, how do teachers know that students actually know the material? What if a student understands the material  but is a horrible test taker? How does a teachers evaluate what that student actually knows?

While every teacher has a different idea about how best to assess and evaluate students' learning, I believe that it should be varied. Students should not only take multiple-choice tests after each unit. There should be other forms of assessment such as journals, portfolios,projects, essays, or presentations. Moreover, these assessments need to focus on "knowing how" instead of "knowing what." In other words, students may be able to perfectly recite the definition of a verb, but not be able to provide an example. Additionally, not all assessments need to be graded based on right and wrong answers. I think that grading students on completeness instead of correctness will prove to have better results. Students often feel pressured when they know an assignment is worth x amount of points. In contrast, if students are asked to complete the assignment they feel more at ease. For example, knowing that I am only being graded on whether I complete this blog post on time instead of grammar, punctuation, and spelling allows me to breathe a sigh of relief and type my thoughts freely.

Teachers need to provide a rubric so that students know what they are being assessed on. This rubric should only assess students on material and content that has been covered in class. It should not be full of surprises. After students turn in an assessment, they must receive feedback as soon as possible. I cannot count how many times teachers and professors have simply taken away points without giving me a clear explanation. How can students be expected to improve when they have no idea what they did wrong in the first place? I know that teachers already have a lot of responsibilities and they cannot be expected to write detailed comments on each assessment, but  giving a short explanation should not be too much to ask for. Similar to how teachers expect students to turn in their work on time, teachers need to give feedback promptly.