¶ … personal experiences with assessments is an ongoing and continuous life event; every individual on earth is either assessing or being assessed in almost every interaction one can think of. Assessment is especially important in the educational communities. Heeneman, Oudkerk Pool, Schuwirth, Vleuten, & Driessen (2015) found that most experts agree with the viability of student assessments saying that "it is widely acknowledged that assessment can affect student learning" (p. 487). If what Heeneman et al. found to be true, is true, then assessing student progress (or lack thereof) through the use of assessments benefits the students by helping them learn.
My personal experience with being assessed and with creating assessments is quite extensive. Throughout my educational career I have taken (and done quite well overall) a large number of assessments in an equally as large number of courses, clinics and programs. Some of the most effective assessments that I can recall are the ones that had me interacting in a verbal manner with the instructor/teacher. These interactive assessments were much more beneficial to me and I must not be the only person to believe so; a recent article confirms that "a 5th-grade teacher at an independent boy's school gives a first-person account of how her constant assessments and requirement that her students be active participants in their own learning gainsays the need for high-stakes, standardized testing" (Suskind, 2015, p. 38). The teacher believes that her type of assessments are intertwined, interactive and instructive, and my personal experiences provides substance to her assertion. I would personally much rather stand in front of a group of students, teachers or administrators and be assessed on my performance and knowledge, than I would prefer to take a standardized test with a list of yes/no questions.
Schools should be (and I believe that...
That schools offer standardized testing on such a large scale belies that belief. Individual classrooms and teachers are much more apt to providing assessments in a more creative environment than do the schools and school districts where they work. One of the main reasons why teachers have more options available to them, is due to the responsibility the teachers are given to teach "to the test." Some teachers feel that teaching to the test requires them to disseminate specific questions that can be found on the test, whilst other teachers teach the students to think for themselves. It would be interesting to determine which method is most effective over the long run. My personal beliefs are that we should teach students to learn and to think, not teach them to answer standardized questions with rote material.
The most difficult type of assessment to create is a final exam that covers the entire course curriculum. Not only is the final exam the most difficult to create, it is also the most difficult method for discerning student learning. Saint, Horton, Yool and Elliott (2015) found that both the learning outcome and the quality of the course(s) were enhanced by increasing the frequency of examinations. This finding would tend to downplay the importance of the final exam and would also enhance the importance of providing consistent assessments throughout the duration of the course(s) instead of relying so heavily on a final exam that is difficult to create in the first place.
I prefer assessments that are objective and allow for creativity. For example; assessing the knowledge that I have gained from reading a particular manuscript or text by having me verbally explain what I learned. Since I am a fairly intelligent human being, and am quite capable of describing and defining my thoughts and thought process, the type of assessment…
