Continuous assessment to support learning

https://slideplayer.com/slide/13404138/

Continuous assessment

Evaluating the learning process or the progress of the student at regular intervals during the academic year , to see to what extent he / she has already achieved the learning objectives of your course. With continuous evaluations you can activate students in the meantime and encourage them to be busy with the learning content during the semester. For example, the interim  feedback for the students can have a positive effect on later evaluations.

How to organize continuous assessment

In continuous evaluation, both summative and formative objectives often come together. Finding a balance in this is not always an easy exercise: too much focus on one can have negative consequences for the other. Therefore, use permanent evaluation mainly to encourage and support student learning, from the so-called  “learning-oriented evaluation” perspective. (Hernández, 2012) .

Ask yourself the following questions when choosing an appropriate permanent evaluation variant:

- Which learning objectives do I pursue? Why do I want to implement permanent evaluation, what do I want to achieve with it? Do I mainly want to activate students? Do I mainly want to give feedback? 

- Which teaching methods do I use and how do they tie in with the permanent evaluation?

- Which evaluation methods are in line with the working methods used? Do I only have the goal of evaluating summatively or am I mainly looking for a formative way to guide the learning process?

- How will I give students feedback ? How will I ensure that students get started with feedback? 

- Do I assign scores to the evaluations? If so, how do these scores relate to the final score? Does every evaluation weigh equally? Are there any bonus points to be earned? Or do I wish to work with pass / fail?

- Which context and boundary factors can I consider? 

- Have my students already been confronted with continuous evaluation in other OPOs? In what shape? 

- What is the size of my student group?

- Am I alone or do I have a didactic team?

- What degree of independence can I expect from the student group? 

- What technical limitations / possibilities are there with regard to computer facilities, classrooms,…

- What possibilities are there with regard to the time use of the students? What other activities are expected from students? Can I make contact time available? 

How often do I want to conduct a permanent evaluation? 

In her review, Bruijns (2014) concludes that one or two interim tests are sufficient to achieve a positive effect on a student's performance. Ensure a balance between test moments and moments when students have time to independently process the learning material so that activation does not lead to stress. 

Forms of continuous assessment

In principle, all forms of evaluation can also be used for continuous evaluation. Determine which learning objectives you want to evaluate and what purpose the permanent evaluation serves to make a choice. Below are some options:

- Assessment of tasks and assignments

- Intermediate (electronic) tests and exercises

- Preparation and processing of contact moments

- Cooperation during contact moments: such as active listening of the students, asking and answering questions, presenting, participating in group discussions, and so on. 

- Contributions to an electronic discussion forum

- (E) Portfolio