The guide to methods of assessment and their everyday use

Why are assessment methods important?

It is simply impossible to teach students and trainees without assessing their skills and knowledge. The insights that they provide into the performance of whole groups and individual members are simply irreplaceable.

If you want to base your educational decision only on solid information, you must start the assessment process by selecting an appropriate data-collection method. Only by gathering insights about the strengths and weaknesses of your learners, can you bolster their successes and offer them help when they’re lacking.

Assessments are beneficial to both educators and their students

Quizzes, tests and exams, are all assessment types and methods used in business and educational environments because of their advantages:

• They measure learners' skills, abilities, and how they progress over time. They also give educators reliable information on the learning curve and how successful their teaching methods are.

• They offer students invaluable insights into their current knowledge and the ability to learn. Quizzes, tests and exams pinpoint topics which learners should rehearse to increase their performance the next time they are assessed or evaluated.

• Finally, they provide a good source of motivation for the learners to pursue their goals. There is very little that can make you study hard, (especially before an important assessment) than the thought of it being just days away.

As helpful as they are, assessments also have some drawbacks

We must also stress that assessments and evaluations, in general, have some clear disadvantages that all educators should take into account when preparing to verify their learners' skills and knowledge:

• Most ways of judging skills and knowledge do it only here and now. It means that even though a test or an exam provides solid information about learners’ performance it only shows the results of their work on a particular day.

• Learners’ performance might suffer as a result of their physical, and emotional condition and the ultimate grade might not reflect a person’s real level of achievement.

• As a result, evaluations might (and very often are) be perceived as unfair. Meanwhile, some assessments, especially formative, offer an overview of the entire educational process and give educators a wealth of insights into the performance of their learners.

• The more complex and formal they are, the bigger burden they put on the educators and administration. Assessment organizers must ensure a proper venue, find time, and most importantly, prepare it in a way that ensures maximum credibility of results.

• Bad results can negatively affect learners’ motivation and self-esteem. It is especially relevant in the case of evaluations, such as medium or high-stakes tests and exams.

Different assessment methods

Quizzes definition and applications

For the learners, it offers feedback necessary to improve their performance. For educators, it is a source of actionable data on how well the teaching progresses and if anything has to change for the students and trainees to understand concepts better.

Having a quiz helps learners concentrate, easily identifies gaps in knowledge, and builds confidence. Unlike tests, which can cover the content of a unit or exams, and evaluate a term or a year, quizzes focus on a small amount of material.

It might be one lesson or a specific concept that the educator was explaining. Educators might also use quizzes as a way of providing practice before a more important assessment, such as a test.

Apart from the obvious application in the educational world, quizzes are also very helpful in the business environment and everyday life. Firms can effectively use them for lead generation, and ordinary people can take trivia quizzes online or in newspapers mainly for fun.

The word quiz is used as a name for school evaluation only in American English. It is commonly used in the educational system there and in Canada. Across the Atlantic, its British English equivalent is a short test.

So while a high school teacher from New York would say: “I’m doing a math quiz today”, his colleague from London would define a quiz in a slightly different way: “a maths short test” (also notice the difference between math and maths).

By definition of quizzes as a form of verifying knowledge, they are:

• short,

• casual,

• graded or ungraded,

• common,

• often unannounced (pop quizzes)

Why are quizzes short?

A short time span of a quiz is its inherent feature. The definition of quiz is that this knowledge-measuring method is supposed to be brief and often takes no more than 15 minutes. There are usually no more than 10 questions, mainly true or false, multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank.

Entry and exit slips, which are one form of a quiz, are even shorter. Their main goal is to give educators precise information about how learners comprehend the topic covered during the lesson. They only require about 3 questions to deliver actionable results.

Why are quizzes common?

They are informal and short, so teachers can use this kind of knowledge assessment whenever they feel the need. Quizzes require hardly any preparations.

Even if an educator decides to have one suddenly, at the end of a lesson, they will probably come up with questions without any planning at all.

Should quizzes be graded or not?

The principal purpose of quizzes is not usually to measure the level of knowledge. It is to facilitate the retention of knowledge. In other words, frequent quizzes help students memorize and understand the topics that the teacher covers in the classroom. For that purpose, grading is unnecessary.

On the other hand, when learners know from the quiz definition that the outcome will not affect their grade in any way, they might not treat it seriously enough. In this case, they will not benefit from the assessment.

One solution is to abandon the traditional grade scale and award pluses (+) or minuses (-) for successful or failed quizzes, respectively. Students may get an A for 3 or 5 pluses, and an F for the same number of minuses obtained. In this scenario, quizzes are low-stakes, as they should be, but still, they have some importance.

Ungraded quizzes (and ungraded tests, too) can be self-assessed and therefore play a crucial role as a formative assessment tool.

Quizzes. Announced or unannounced?

Although it seems counterintuitive, some research suggests that pop quizzes yield better results. Unannounced evaluations are relevant to learners’ performance as they motivate students to recap the previous lessons before the next class. In that respect, they provide the motivation that some students need to make their learning more systematic.

On the other hand, we all know that any unannounced evaluation or assessment is stressful. Some learners do well in class, but their performance decreases when the tension kicks in. For them, a pop quiz is not the best form of judging knowledge, so a teacher should consider using other means of measuring their knowledge level.

Apparently, a good way to reduce pop quiz anxiety among learners is not to grade them. When learners know that their teachers will look closely into their answers, but won’t grade them, they will still strive to perform without the fear of getting a bad grade.

What are tests?

Unlike quizzes, tests can cover and verify large amounts of material. They usually happen at the end of a whole unit or section and are highly evaluative. Their purpose is to grade, not train or provide extensive feedback.

In the business world, tests judge and quantify f.ex. the understanding of employees’ responsibilities and procedures, especially when those change. They are also used during professional training to determine the starting point and then prove that the group comprehends new knowledge.

Tests usually consist of up to 50 questions of various types. They can be true or false, single choice, multiple choice, fill in the blank, as well as math formulas, short open-ended and descriptive questions. A bigger number of questions is typical for an exam.

Tests as a form of verifying knowledge are:

• medium-length,

• casual or formal,

• usually graded,

• periodical,

• usually announced.

Why are tests medium-length?

The length of a test depends on its organizer, both when it comes to the number of questions and the time frame. As mentioned before, tests typically take about an hour and are much longer than quizzes and shorter than exams.

Why can tests be either casual or formal?

Again, it depends on the type and purpose of a particular test. Some educators treat tests as a way of retaining knowledge and providing feedback, more than performance quantification necessary for grading.

There are also high-stakes tests which determine whether learners receive a passing grade and can proceed to another unit. The difference is completely at the educators’ discretion.

Why are most tests graded?

While quizzes are often informal and casual, learners should treat tests more seriously. That’s why their results are often described in the form of a grade. A grade is vital information to both the educators and the students or trainees.

Teachers and trainers use grades to measure the progress of their educational strategies, while for the learners they are a source of feedback, an indication of which parts of material they have already mastered, and which require more effort.

Why are tests periodical?

Most tests take place after the learners have finished a particle unit. There is an important reason behind it. Tests mark the end of an important chapter and provide a review of its content.

Why are tests usually announced?

Quizzes can be unannounced because they take very little time and are either ungraded or the grade is of little importance for the learner’s final grade. On the other hand, tests tend to cover much more material and require more study. Knowing a date before helps in preparations.

Their stakes tend to be much higher than in the case of quizzes, so unannounced tests that can have a huge impact on the final score could cause extreme anxiety and limit learners’ performance. Announcing a test date makes it easier for students and trainees to cope with the pressure and come prepared.

How do you define exams?

One significant difference between exams and other assessment and evaluation types is their complexity. They are always big tasks for school and university teachers, who prepare exams for students and for governmental and non-governmental organizations, who are examining bodies for professional assessments and certifications.

Exams typically cover the entire course material from the ending term or year. Most of them are either high- or middle-stakes and their results have severe consequences on the future education or even an individual's life.

This form of judging knowledge is the longest and the most complex. It takes a lot of time, and educators work to prepare a good exam that provides actionable information on learners' performance.

Of all the assessment methods mentioned here, exams are the least formative. They offer some feedback to the learners, but it’s not their main job. They are to evaluate and measure skills, knowledge or performance and return a quantified estimation of the outcome of the educational process.

Exams are not supposed to help students retain information or facilitate memory retrieval. Instead, they conclude the educational process. As such, the exam result is little more than a confirmation of the achievement, needed for administrative and certification purposes.

Exams as a form of verifying knowledge are:

• long,

• complex,

• formal,

• always graded,

• always announced.

Why are exams long?

Exams are typically the longest of all kinds of assessments and evaluations. Some take hours, while others might even take days. For example, university admission processes, often called exams, consist of several parts, including interviews and aptitude tests, which may be days or even weeks apart.

The school final exam is another example of an evaluation that takes a lot of time and is incredibly complex to prepare and execute, due to its high stakes.

Why are exams complex?

As an exam can have a huge impact on the future life of a learner, it must be prepared in a way that ensures that the evaluation is fair, substantive and delivers accurate results. Consequently, preparing an exam takes time and requires qualified specialists.

Exams’ impact is incomparable to other forms of assessments and evaluations. Quizzes, tests and other assignments have almost insignificant consequences compared to exams. For these reasons, exams are the most stressful form of judging performance.

Why are exams formal?

As mentioned before, exams are usually high-stakes evaluations. That feature makes them formal, hierarchical and strict in terms of proctoring.

It is also customary for exams to have a dress code. Even though it makes no difference in performance, exam organizers agree that you should dress up as a show of respect.

Why are exams always graded?

Exams are always graded because only a grade or score can demonstrate the participant’s skills and knowledge objectively. This, in turn, is necessary for educators to clearly support a pass or fail grade for a learner.

The mark that students get is usually a letter (f.ex. A - F) or a number (1-6), that indicates the level of achievement. A grade is based on the percentage of correct answers. Some exam outcomes can also be presented only in the form of a percentile score (0-100%).

Grading exams helps to evaluate a particular student’s skills and knowledge. It doesn’t provide comments on the performance or what learners should do to get better grades in the future.

Test vs. assessment

Even though the two words test and assessment are used as synonyms, they are not the same.

Assessment has a much wider meaning as it signifies a continuous process of monitoring learners and their performance. Assessing provides a teacher with vital information about how the learners react to the teaching. It also allows students to give feedback to the teacher, to make their work more effective.

Assessments gather the most important insights into the educational process. They measure each learner’s knowledge, along with its strong and weak points.

Teachers and trainers then use the gathered information to adjust their teaching efforts. Ideally, those changes help students better understand the topics covered during lessons or training and produce better outcomes.

Tests, on the other hand, are nothing more than one of many methods used in the processes of assessing learners. A test is a procedure designed to give educators the data needed for grading and the successful implementation of educational processes.

Tests are the most generic form of assessment, and other methods, such as quizzes and exams are often called tests as well. However, there are important differences that we describe in detail below in the tables.

Quiz vs. test

Differences between quizzes and tests are very often arbitrary. Teachers and trainers can use the same assessment interchangeably for both roles, with only slight modifications. It is ultimately up to them whether they call specific judging of skills and knowledge a quiz or a test.

The main difference between a quiz and a test is the assessment duration and the number of problems that the learners must face.

Test vs. exam

Are tests and exams the same thing? The main difference between a test and an exam is how they impact learners' future education and life (low, medium and high-stakes). There are, of course, other differences too. We will cover the test and examination in the table below.

Quiz vs. exam

The difference between a quiz and an exam is the easiest to distinguish. They serve different purposes, have different structure and their impact on the future of a learner is also disparate.

Summary

Otherwise, the results you receive might not be reliable and actionable enough. Remember, you need a constant flow of fail-proof data to ensure that your teaching efforts are productive and that your learners receive exactly what they need to grow.