Week 3: Types of Assessment Mind Map
Note: All of my assessments are teacher-constructed. Since I do not have an end of year SOL test, I do not receive tests from the county that I have to give to my students (such as a county benchmark test). I did not include two types of assessment in my map: criterion-referenced and norm-referenced. These types of assessment were omitted because, based on our textbook's definitions, I do not believe I use them in that I calculate my grades on a total points scale.
Source
Banks, S.R. (2005). Classroom assessment issues and practices. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Shannon- I like your mind map. I especially like how you color coded it; it was very easy to read! You had some great examples of assessments that you use. I think that we often do informal assessments without even thinking about it. I know that this assignment really made me think about each type of assessment that I use in my class. Great job !
Mike- Shelly, I agree with Shannon, your mind map was very easy to read, and I think the color coding really helped. As a matter of fact, I started doing mine on paper, and found myself trying to color code mine as well-simply to keep it in order (any organization helps)-so I color-coded mine as well, but it is not as exciting as yours. I REALLY like it!
Teresa - I have to agree, this visual picture provides us with a good idea of what we are doing right now. I like that as well. Shelly, you have done a nice job tying the chapter and what you are doing now together in a visual format that provides us - and hopefully you, a good picture of assessment in your class.
Types of Assessment Mind Map
Note: All of my assessments are teacher-constructed. Since I do not have an end of year SOL test, I do not receive tests from the county that I have to give to my students (such as a county benchmark test). I did not include two types of assessment in my map: criterion-referenced and norm-referenced. These types of assessment were omitted because, based on our textbook's definitions, I do not believe I use them in that I calculate my grades on a total points scale.
Source
Banks, S.R. (2005). Classroom assessment issues and practices. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Leslie- I like your mind map. You included specific examples of the ways that you use the various types of assessment without overloading me with all the details that the book included. The only thing that I see, and maybe I'm misinterpreting the book, is that you most probably do use criterion-referenced assessments in order to assign grades. Since we have a certaing range of scores that corresponds with the letter grade we give the students, most of our grading is criterion-referenced.Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I'm reading this section of the chaper, p.31.
Teresa - criterion-referenced test allows us - the teacher to - translate a test score into a statement about the overall expected This is a comparison of other students in the class who took the test.behavior of our student about a given topic or a given score. Did a student answer the questions correctly or incorrectly. Most tests and quizzes that are created by teachers are criterion-referenced tests. The objective of criterion-referenced test is to see whether or not the student has learned the material. A norm-referenced test determines whether a student did better or worse than other students who took the test. I like the example on this Web site - 1st two paragraphs
Item Analysis of a Multiple Choice Test
For my analysis, I used the midterm exam I gave to my students last week. This test consisted of 100 multiple choice questions. The first 50 questions corresponded with vocabulary and the names of landforms that we have studied thus far. The second 50 questions were map identifications of countries and physical features. Prior to the exam, the students were given a study guide that contained basically everything that was on the test including maps of the 50 features they needed to know. The study guide questions were fill-in-the-blank as opposed to multiple choice. I chose to do the analysis on my fifth period class which consists of 26 general education students. I chose this period because it is a good mixture of high and low achieving students.
Teresa - I like the idea of providing a study guide. This is a good strategy to help prepare students and identify what is important. I also like that the study guide provided students with the same type of questions. Again, preparing students for the test - practice.
- Item Difficulty
Because the exam consisted of 100 questions, the students used scantron forms for their answers. The scantron also made the item difficulty analysis a little less time consuming because the scantron machine calculates the number and percent of students that answer a question incorrectly. After the calculations, there was not one question that fewer than 25% of the students answered correctly. However, 87 of the 100 questions were answered correctly by more than 75% of the students. Based on the analysis, I guess my midterm exam was too easy. However, I did not want the exam to be that difficult because it only counts for 10% of the semester grade. So, the fact that the item analysis showed my test to be easy, the midterm exam is accomplishing the purpose I set out to achieve. I wanted to make a test for the students where, if they used their study guide to prepare, they could earn a high score. None of the students in my fifth period failed the exam, but there were a couple Cs and Ds.//
Teresa - Item difficulty is important to consider when creating our tests. We need to figure out why students answer some questions better than others. There may be many reasons. Each of us have probably experienced or encountered many of them - from, us having a bad day when we went over that material, the student having a bad day during the review or during the test. The question being confusing or irrelevant, etc. We need to be conscious of item difficulty.
- Item Discrimination
Of the 100 questions, 19 were found to be successfully discriminated. So, as a whole, I would not say that the midterm exam discriminates very well. Also, one question was found to have zero discrimination in that the same number of students in the top group chose the right answer as those that chose a wrong answer. In addition, for the same question, more students in the low group chose a wrong answer instead of the correct choice. Interestingly, for two of the questions, there was a sort of reverse discrimination. More students in the low group answered the question correctly than the top group.
In summary, my midterm exam was really easy and did not discriminate that much between my top group and my low group.
Leslie- I like that you took the information that the analysis provided to you and made your own interpretations of it. I agree that a mid-term should be a test where a student actually has a good chance of making a high grade. They count for such a large percentage of the student's grade, so I don't think that you actually want the difficulty analysis to work out as it says it should. Kudos on making your own decisions in your classroom!
You had a motive for this test - motivation. But again, it is important to also critically look at our questions to determine why they may have been to easy. It is not bad to have students think about answers - to critically look at distractors in a question to determine which one best answers the question. It is interesting that more students in the low group chose the wrong choice. I wonder why this is?
Buros Review
I reviewed the SAQ-Adult Probation III test, which assesses adult substance abuse in probation and parole clients. The reliability estimates are sketchy for this test due to a lack of data. The reviewer noted that a similar test found a "test-retest correlation coefficient of .71," but the sample was a group of college students not probation or parole clients. The reviewer did not find much evidence to support validity either. The test developer correlated the SAQ with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). According to the reviewer, this "does not suffice as a rationale for use of MMPI to support concurrent validity." The overall opinion of the reviewer was that this test is neither reliable or valid. Because I am not very familiar with this type of information, I found the review to be a bit confusing. However, maybe because it was confusing, I agree with the reviewer's claim that the test does not meet reliability or validity.
Teresa - this is a good test to review. Yes, it can be a bit confusing.// But in this example, the test group was not the audience that the test was created for. It would be like giving a math exam to English students. You need to test a test on a similar population. Your geography test could be tested with next year's geography students of the same grade. Over time, you could determine the tests reliability and validity.
Note: All of my assessments are teacher-constructed. Since I do not have an end of year SOL test, I do not receive tests from the county that I have to give to my students (such as a county benchmark test). I did not include two types of assessment in my map: criterion-referenced and norm-referenced. These types of assessment were omitted because, based on our textbook's definitions, I do not believe I use them in that I calculate my grades on a total points scale.
Source
Banks, S.R. (2005). Classroom assessment issues and practices. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Types of Assessment Mind Map
Note: All of my assessments are teacher-constructed. Since I do not have an end of year SOL test, I do not receive tests from the county that I have to give to my students (such as a county benchmark test). I did not include two types of assessment in my map: criterion-referenced and norm-referenced. These types of assessment were omitted because, based on our textbook's definitions, I do not believe I use them in that I calculate my grades on a total points scale.
Source
Banks, S.R. (2005). Classroom assessment issues and practices. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Leslie- I like your mind map. You included specific examples of the ways that you use the various types of assessment without overloading me with all the details that the book included. The only thing that I see, and maybe I'm misinterpreting the book, is that you most probably do use criterion-referenced assessments in order to assign grades. Since we have a certaing range of scores that corresponds with the letter grade we give the students, most of our grading is criterion-referenced.Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I'm reading this section of the chaper, p.31.
Teresa - criterion-referenced test allows us - the teacher to - translate a test score into a statement about the overall expected This is a comparison of other students in the class who took the test.behavior of our student about a given topic or a given score. Did a student answer the questions correctly or incorrectly. Most tests and quizzes that are created by teachers are criterion-referenced tests. The objective of criterion-referenced test is to see whether or not the student has learned the material. A norm-referenced test determines whether a student did better or worse than other students who took the test. I like the example on this Web site - 1st two paragraphs
http://www.valparint.com/criterio.htm
Item Analysis of a Multiple Choice Test
For my analysis, I used the midterm exam I gave to my students last week. This test consisted of 100 multiple choice questions. The first 50 questions corresponded with vocabulary and the names of landforms that we have studied thus far. The second 50 questions were map identifications of countries and physical features. Prior to the exam, the students were given a study guide that contained basically everything that was on the test including maps of the 50 features they needed to know. The study guide questions were fill-in-the-blank as opposed to multiple choice. I chose to do the analysis on my fifth period class which consists of 26 general education students. I chose this period because it is a good mixture of high and low achieving students.
Teresa - I like the idea of providing a study guide. This is a good strategy to help prepare students and identify what is important. I also like that the study guide provided students with the same type of questions. Again, preparing students for the test - practice.
- Item Difficulty
Because the exam consisted of 100 questions, the students used scantron forms for their answers. The scantron also made the item difficulty analysis a little less time consuming because the scantron machine calculates the number and percent of students that answer a question incorrectly. After the calculations, there was not one question that fewer than 25% of the students answered correctly. However, 87 of the 100 questions were answered correctly by more than 75% of the students. Based on the analysis, I guess my midterm exam was too easy. However, I did not want the exam to be that difficult because it only counts for 10% of the semester grade. So, the fact that the item analysis showed my test to be easy, the midterm exam is accomplishing the purpose I set out to achieve. I wanted to make a test for the students where, if they used their study guide to prepare, they could earn a high score. None of the students in my fifth period failed the exam, but there were a couple Cs and Ds.//
- Item Discrimination
Of the 100 questions, 19 were found to be successfully discriminated. So, as a whole, I would not say that the midterm exam discriminates very well. Also, one question was found to have zero discrimination in that the same number of students in the top group chose the right answer as those that chose a wrong answer. In addition, for the same question, more students in the low group chose a wrong answer instead of the correct choice. Interestingly, for two of the questions, there was a sort of reverse discrimination. More students in the low group answered the question correctly than the top group.
In summary, my midterm exam was really easy and did not discriminate that much between my top group and my low group.
Buros Review
I reviewed the SAQ-Adult Probation III test, which assesses adult substance abuse in probation and parole clients. The reliability estimates are sketchy for this test due to a lack of data. The reviewer noted that a similar test found a "test-retest correlation coefficient of .71," but the sample was a group of college students not probation or parole clients. The reviewer did not find much evidence to support validity either. The test developer correlated the SAQ with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). According to the reviewer, this "does not suffice as a rationale for use of MMPI to support concurrent validity." The overall opinion of the reviewer was that this test is neither reliable or valid. Because I am not very familiar with this type of information, I found the review to be a bit confusing. However, maybe because it was confusing, I agree with the reviewer's claim that the test does not meet reliability or validity.
Source
Buros Institute of Mental Measurements. SAQ-Adult Probation III. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from http://www.unl.edu/buros/bimm/html/reviewsample.html#saq.