¶ … construction of created rubrics of checklists of goals have become increasingly popular as a way of rending the educational process more effective and efficient. Student-directed assessment involves students actively in the process of assessment and achieves the dual goal of student empowerment as well as ensures that real learning has taken place. "Constructing or drawing up rubrics jointly with students prior to them undertaking the related lesson or task provides an even richer, more authentic, learner-centered and empowering authentic assessment experience than merely providing them with a teacher-designed rubric" the latter of which may not be meaningful to them (Litz 2007). This is often called "negotiable contracting" and reflects the belief that "students who are given a role in the assessment process and provided with the appropriate direction by their teachers are able to accurately evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and better pinpoint areas where they need to focus their efforts for improvement"(Litz 2007). It is often said that the best way to truly learn something is to teach it and student-directed assessment actively involves the student in the process of instruction and curriculum construction. References

Litz, D. (2007). Student-directed assessment...

TESL Journal, 13 (11). Retrieved from: http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Litz-StudentDirectedAssessment.html
Q2. Student assessment is ideally part of the 'conversation' teachers have with their students. Assessment tells teachers what students know. This is why formative as well as summative assessments are required. Formative assessments provide feedback to teachers for lesson planning and future assignments. These take the form of quizzes, short answers, discussions and group projects and other ways of determining how much material students are absorbing. Summative assessments which assess the overall state of student knowledge after a lesson are also necessary but the focus should not exclusively be on summative assessments. Unfortunately, in the era of No Child Left Behind, the emphasis has been on summative means of evaluating knowledge. "The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning… The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark" (What is the difference between formative and…