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What is the Difference Between Assignment and Assessment

The main difference between assignment and assessment is that assignments refer to the allocation of a task or set of tasks that are marked and graded while a ssessment refers to methods for establishing if students have achieved a learning outcome, or are on their way toward a learning objective.  

Assignments and assessment are two important concepts in modern education. Although these two words are similar, they have different meanings. Assignments are the pieces of coursework or homework students are expected to complete. Assessment, on the other hand, refer to the method of assessing the progress of students. Sometimes, assignments can act as tools of assessment.

Key Areas Covered

1. What is an Assignment       – Definition, Goals, Characteristics 2. What is an Assessment      – Definition, Characteristics 3. Difference Between Assignment and Assessment      – Comparison of Key Differences

What is an Assignment

Assignments are the pieces of coursework or homework given to the students by teachers at school or professors at university. In other words, assignments refer to the allocation of a task or set of tasks that are marked and graded. Assignments are essential components in primary, secondary and tertiary education.

Assignments have several goals, as described below:

– gives students a better understanding of the topic being studied

– develops learning and understanding skills of students

– helps students in self-study

– develops research and analytical skills

– teaches students time management and organization

– clear students’ problems or ambiguities regarding any subject

– enhance the creativity of students

Generally, educators assign such tasks to complete at home and submit to school after a certain period of time. The time period assigned may depend on the nature of the task. Essays, posters, presentation, annotated bibliography, review of a book, summary, charts and graphs are some examples of assignments. Writing assignments develop the writing skills of students while creative assignments like creating posters, graphs and charts and making presentation enhance the creativity of students. Ultimately, assignments help to assess the knowledge and skills, as well as the students’ understanding of the topic.

What is an Assessment

Assessment refers to methods for establishing if students have achieved a learning outcome, or are on their way toward a learning objective. In other words, it is the method of assessing the progress of students. Assessment helps the educators to determine what students are learning and how well they are learning it, especially in relation to the expected learning outcomes of a lesson. Therefore, it helps the educator to understand how the students understand the lesson, and to determine what changes need to be made to the teaching process. Moreover, assessment focuses on both learning as well as teaching and can be termed as an interactive process. Sometimes, assignments can act as tools of assessment.

There are two main types of assessment as formative and summative assessment . Formative assessments occur during the learning process, whereas summative assessments occur at the end of a learning unit. Quizzes, discussions, and making students write summaries of the lesson are examples of formative assessment while end of unit tests, term tests and final projects are examples of summative assessment. Moreover, formative assessments aim to monitor student learning while summative assessments aim to evaluate student learning.

Difference Between Assignment and Assessment

Assignments refer to the allocation of a task or set of tasks that are marked and graded while assessment refers to methods for establishing if students have achieved a learning outcome, or are on their way toward a learning objective. 

Assignments are the pieces of coursework or homework students have to complete while assessment is the method of assessing the progress of students

Goal                

Moreover, assignments aim to give students a more comprehensive understanding of the topic being studied and develop learning and understanding skills of students. However, the main goal of assessment is monitoring and evaluating student learning and progress.

Assignments are the pieces of coursework or homework students have to complete while assessment refers to the method of assessing the progress of students. This is the main difference between assignment and assessment. Sometimes, assignments can also act as tools of assessment.

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1. “Focused schoolgirl doing homework and sitting at table” (CC0) via Pexels 2. “Assessment” By Nick Youngson (CC BY-SA 3.0) Alpha Stock Images

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What Is The Difference Between Assignments And Assessments?

The two central ideas of contemporary education are assignment and assessment. Assignments and assessments are essential components of a student’s academic career. However, a lot of students are unaware of the fundamental distinction between an assignment and an assessment. Assignment refers to the distribution of the numerous tasks that students must do to receive the best grades in their academic curriculums. In comparison, a teacher will assess students by giving them a variety of assessment tasks that may be of different types and observing what information and skills they have learned. A student can get to know various outcomes of their learning and how they are progressing with learning objectives by completing the assessment activity.

For the best results in their academic work, students pursuing a variety of courses at various colleges must deal with assignments and assessments. Therefore, they must complete these two tasks using the right format and procedure. Assessments include writing assignments, class exercises, quizzes, case studies, and group activities, whereas assignments consist of writing tasks like case studies, reports, essays, etc. As a result, both are equally important but approached in different ways. 

Let’s have a look at this in detail!

What Is An Assignment? 

Assignments are pieces of writing paper or homework that a lecturer or university gives to assess your knowledge and abilities. It may also be referred to as writing assignments that must be finished and submit in before the deadlines. This is a requirement for their academic work; thus, you must conduct extensive research to finish the assignment. Numerous tasks require you to select a topic before you begin writing on it, including essays, reports, a thesis, case study assignments, and many more. It aids in the development of your comprehension and learning abilities, and you can conduct your research to finish these assignments. Additionally, it develops research and analytical skills, which will help the students in the future. 

What Is An Assessment?

Assessment refers to the process by which a teacher evaluates the scholars’ knowledge and learning outcomes. In other words, multiple assessment assignments can be used to evaluate your academic development. It aids the professor in determining a student’s aptitude and degree of curricular compliance. Because of this, an assessment is an interactive process that focuses on both teaching and learning. An assignment may occasionally serve as an assessment tool.

Formative and summative assessments are the two main types of assessment. Summative evaluation takes place after each learning unit, whereas formative evaluation is undertaken throughout the learning process. Assessment includes tests, assignments, group projects, quizzes, and summaries.

What Is The Format Of An Assignment? 

Understanding the right format and structure is essential before beginning any work. The format is crucial in capturing the reader’s interest. You’ll be able to compose the assignment extremely precisely if you follow the right format for an assignment. As a result, the most crucial assignment writing format must be used.

• Executive summary:  The executive summary is crucial for making a good first impression on the reader; therefore, when a student begins writing an assignment, he needs to focus on it. It briefly describes an academic topic, such as a project proposal or business strategy. It provides a synopsis of the case study or reports writing and a solid structure for the writing techniques you’ll employ later on. 
• Table of content:  Each subsection in this section must be listed together with the relevant page number. It will surely be helpful for the reader to skip straight to the topic’s intriguing parts. Also, they can directly jump to that topic according to their interest. 
• Introduction:  The first section of your assignment must contain all of the crucial information related to the topic you have chosen for the assignment. In this section, you have to be very precise and clear while framing it. You need to mention all those details that you are going to explain in the further assignment. Therefore an introduction must create an impact on the reader’s mind and develop an interest in reading the whole assignment. 
• Body section:  After the introduction is complete, you must start on the body section. All of the crucial information should be mentioned in the assignment’s central section. When you reach this part, you need to be familiar with the major ideas, illustrations, and statistics.
• Conclusion:  In conclusion, you must be able to present a summary of all the data once the primary steps have been completed. Never provide extra information for the assignment.

What Are The Major Steps To Complete An Assessment Task? 

• Know the purpose of evaluation:  This stage clarifies the aim of the meeting to everyone in attendance. Additionally, it establishes the meeting’s objectives and tone. It also makes it clear how questions and remarks that should be shorter for the meeting’s format will be addressed. Use our recommended introduction in the description below, or write your own.
• Determine the work provided to you:  In this phase, the learner and you will review the pertinent responses you both filled out on your assessment form. The Educator should have gone over these in advance and taken any necessary notes.
• Discuss all your work and start writing it:  Items for homework are tasks that must be finished at home. To allow the learner and Educator enough time to complete the work, they are assigned homework. To answer questions from the learner and to make expectations clear, homework is discussed in this stage so that you can get the best answers for your assessment questions. 

If you are enrolled in a course or program offered by a reputable university, you must understand the assignment and assessment differences. Since you will be dealing with both tasks during your curriculum, it will aid you in writing them correctly. You can seek assistance from our  assessment help  services if you still need help understanding the difference and are unable to complete the assignment or assessment activity. Our most experienced expert will help you correctly write your assignment or assessment work. Our highly qualified experts are skilled at assessment and assignment help and finishing them before the deadlines.

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Assessing Student Learning: 6 Types of Assessment and How to Use Them

Assessing student learning is a critical component of effective teaching and plays a significant role in fostering academic success. We will explore six different types of assessment and evaluation strategies that can help K-12 educators, school administrators, and educational organizations enhance both student learning experiences and teacher well-being.

We will provide practical guidance on how to implement and utilize various assessment methods, such as formative and summative assessments, diagnostic assessments, performance-based assessments, self-assessments, and peer assessments.

Additionally, we will also discuss the importance of implementing standard-based assessments and offer tips for choosing the right assessment strategy for your specific needs.

Importance of Assessing Student Learning

Assessment plays a crucial role in education, as it allows educators to measure students’ understanding, track their progress, and identify areas where intervention may be necessary. Assessing student learning not only helps educators make informed decisions about instruction but also contributes to student success and teacher well-being.

Assessments provide insight into student knowledge, skills, and progress while also highlighting necessary adjustments in instruction. Effective assessment practices ultimately contribute to better educational outcomes and promote a culture of continuous improvement within schools and classrooms.

1. Formative assessment

Formative assessment is a type of assessment that focuses on monitoring student learning during the instructional process. Its primary purpose is to provide ongoing feedback to both teachers and students, helping them identify areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. This type of assessment is typically low-stakes and does not contribute to a student’s final grade.

Some common examples of formative assessments include quizzes, class discussions, exit tickets, and think-pair-share activities. This type of assessment allows educators to track student understanding throughout the instructional period and identify gaps in learning and intervention opportunities.

To effectively use formative assessments in the classroom, teachers should implement them regularly and provide timely feedback to students.

This feedback should be specific and actionable, helping students understand what they need to do to improve their performance. Teachers should use the information gathered from formative assessments to refine their instructional strategies and address any misconceptions or gaps in understanding. Formative assessments play a crucial role in supporting student learning and helping educators make informed decisions about their instructional practices.

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2. summative assessment.

Examples of summative assessments include final exams, end-of-unit tests, standardized tests, and research papers. To effectively use summative assessments in the classroom, it’s important to ensure that they are aligned with the learning objectives and content covered during instruction.

This will help to provide an accurate representation of a student’s understanding and mastery of the material. Providing students with clear expectations and guidelines for the assessment can help reduce anxiety and promote optimal performance.

Summative assessments should be used in conjunction with other assessment types, such as formative assessments, to provide a comprehensive evaluation of student learning and growth.

3. Diagnostic assessment

Diagnostic assessment, often used at the beginning of a new unit or term, helps educators identify students’ prior knowledge, skills, and understanding of a particular topic.

This type of assessment enables teachers to tailor their instruction to meet the specific needs and learning gaps of their students. Examples of diagnostic assessments include pre-tests, entry tickets, and concept maps.

To effectively use diagnostic assessments in the classroom, teachers should analyze the results to identify patterns and trends in student understanding.

This information can be used to create differentiated instruction plans and targeted interventions for students struggling with the upcoming material. Sharing the results with students can help them understand their strengths and areas for improvement, fostering a growth mindset and encouraging active engagement in their learning.

4. Performance-based assessment

Performance-based assessment is a type of evaluation that requires students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities through the completion of real-world tasks or activities.

The main purpose of this assessment is to assess students’ ability to apply their learning in authentic, meaningful situations that closely resemble real-life challenges. Examples of performance-based assessments include projects, presentations, portfolios, and hands-on experiments.

These assessments allow students to showcase their understanding and application of concepts in a more active and engaging manner compared to traditional paper-and-pencil tests.

To effectively use performance-based assessments in the classroom, educators should clearly define the task requirements and assessment criteria, providing students with guidelines and expectations for their work. Teachers should also offer support and feedback throughout the process, allowing students to revise and improve their performance.

Incorporating opportunities for peer feedback and self-reflection can further enhance the learning process and help students develop essential skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.

5. Self-assessment

Self-assessment is a valuable tool for encouraging students to engage in reflection and take ownership of their learning. This type of assessment requires students to evaluate their own progress, skills, and understanding of the subject matter. By promoting self-awareness and critical thinking, self-assessment can contribute to the development of lifelong learning habits and foster a growth mindset.

Examples of self-assessment activities include reflective journaling, goal setting, self-rating scales, or checklists. These tools provide students with opportunities to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. When implementing self-assessment in the classroom, it is important to create a supportive environment where students feel comfortable and encouraged to be honest about their performance.

Teachers can guide students by providing clear criteria and expectations for self-assessment, as well as offering constructive feedback to help them set realistic goals for future learning.

Incorporating self-assessment as part of a broader assessment strategy can reinforce learning objectives and empower students to take an active role in their education.

Reflecting on their performance and understanding the assessment criteria can help them recognize both short-term successes and long-term goals. This ongoing process of self-evaluation can help students develop a deeper understanding of the material, as well as cultivate valuable skills such as self-regulation, goal setting, and critical thinking.

6. Peer assessment

Peer assessment, also known as peer evaluation, is a strategy where students evaluate and provide feedback on their classmates’ work. This type of assessment allows students to gain a better understanding of their own work, as well as that of their peers.

Examples of peer assessment activities include group projects, presentations, written assignments, or online discussion boards.

In these settings, students can provide constructive feedback on their peers’ work, identify strengths and areas for improvement, and suggest specific strategies for enhancing performance.

Constructive peer feedback can help students gain a deeper understanding of the material and develop valuable skills such as working in groups, communicating effectively, and giving constructive criticism.

To successfully integrate peer assessment in the classroom, consider incorporating a variety of activities that allow students to practice evaluating their peers’ work, while also receiving feedback on their own performance.

Encourage students to focus on both strengths and areas for improvement, and emphasize the importance of respectful, constructive feedback. Provide opportunities for students to reflect on the feedback they receive and incorporate it into their learning process. Monitor the peer assessment process to ensure fairness, consistency, and alignment with learning objectives.

Implementing Standard-Based Assessments

Standard-based assessments are designed to measure students’ performance relative to established learning standards, such as those generated by the Common Core State Standards Initiative or individual state education guidelines.

By implementing these types of assessments, educators can ensure that students meet the necessary benchmarks for their grade level and subject area, providing a clearer picture of student progress and learning outcomes.

To successfully implement standard-based assessments, it is essential to align assessment tasks with the relevant learning standards.

This involves creating assessments that directly measure students’ knowledge and skills in relation to the standards rather than relying solely on traditional testing methods.

As a result, educators can obtain a more accurate understanding of student performance and identify areas that may require additional support or instruction. Grading formative and summative assessments within a standard-based framework requires a shift in focus from assigning letter grades or percentages to evaluating students’ mastery of specific learning objectives.

This approach encourages educators to provide targeted feedback that addresses individual student needs and promotes growth and improvement. By utilizing rubrics or other assessment tools, teachers can offer clear, objective criteria for evaluating student work, ensuring consistency and fairness in the grading process.

Tips For Choosing the Right Assessment Strategy

When selecting an assessment strategy, it’s crucial to consider its purpose. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the assessment and how it will contribute to student learning. This will help you determine the most appropriate assessment type for your specific situation.

Aligning assessments with learning objectives is another critical factor. Ensure that the assessment methods you choose accurately measure whether students have met the desired learning outcomes. This alignment will provide valuable feedback to both you and your students on their progress. Diversifying assessment methods is essential for a comprehensive evaluation of student learning.

By using a variety of assessment types, you can gain a more accurate understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses. This approach also helps support different learning styles and reduces the risk of overemphasis on a single assessment method.

Incorporating multiple forms of assessment, such as formative, summative, diagnostic, performance-based, self-assessment, and peer assessment, can provide a well-rounded understanding of student learning. By doing so, educators can make informed decisions about instruction, support, and intervention strategies to enhance student success and overall classroom experience.

Challenges and Solutions in Assessment Implementation

Implementing various assessment strategies can present several challenges for educators. One common challenge is the limited time and resources available for creating and administering assessments. To address this issue, teachers can collaborate with colleagues to share resources, divide the workload, and discuss best practices.

Utilizing technology and online platforms can also streamline the assessment process and save time. Another challenge is ensuring that assessments are unbiased and inclusive.

To overcome this, educators should carefully review assessment materials for potential biases and design assessments that are accessible to all students, regardless of their cultural backgrounds or learning abilities.

Offering flexible assessment options for the varying needs of learners can create a more equitable and inclusive learning environment. It is essential to continually improve assessment practices and seek professional development opportunities.

Seeking support from colleagues, attending workshops and conferences related to assessment practices, or enrolling in online courses can help educators stay up-to-date on best practices while also providing opportunities for networking with other professionals.

Ultimately, these efforts will contribute to an improved understanding of the assessments used as well as their relevance in overall student learning.

Assessing student learning is a crucial component of effective teaching and should not be overlooked. By understanding and implementing the various types of assessments discussed in this article, you can create a more comprehensive and effective approach to evaluating student learning in your classroom.

Remember to consider the purpose of each assessment, align them with your learning objectives, and diversify your methods for a well-rounded evaluation of student progress.

If you’re looking to further enhance your assessment practices and overall professional development, Strobel Education offers workshops , courses , keynotes , and coaching  services tailored for K-12 educators. With a focus on fostering a positive school climate and enhancing student learning,  Strobel Education can support your journey toward improved assessment implementation and greater teacher well-being.

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Designing Assessments of Student Learning

Image Hollie Nyseth Brehm, ​​​​​Associate Professor, Department of Sociology  Professor Hollie Nyseth Brehm was a graduate student the first time she taught a class, “I didn’t have any training on how to teach, so I assigned a final paper and gave them instructions: ‘Turn it in at the end of course.’ That was sort of it.” Brehm didn’t have a rubric or a process to check in with students along the way. Needless to say, the assignment didn’t lead to any major breakthroughs for her students. But it was a learning experience for Brehm. As she grew her teaching skills, she began to carefully craft assignments to align to course goals, make tasks realistic and meaningful, and break down large assignments into manageable steps. "Now I always have rubrics. … I always scaffold the assignment such that they’ll start by giving me their paper topic and a couple of sources and then turn in a smaller portion of it, and we write it in pieces. And that leads to a much better learning experience for them—and also for me, frankly, when I turn to grade it .”

Reflect  

Have you ever planned a big assignment that didn’t turn out as you’d hoped? What did you learn, and how would you design that assignment differently now? 

What are students learning in your class? Are they meeting your learning outcomes? You simply cannot answer these questions without assessment of some kind.

As educators, we measure student learning through many means, including assignments, quizzes, and tests. These assessments can be formal or informal, graded or ungraded. But assessment is not simply about awarding points and assigning grades. Learning is a process, not a product, and that process takes place during activities such as recall and practice. Assessing skills in varied ways helps you adjust your teaching throughout your course to support student learning

Research tells us that our methods of assessment don’t only measure how much students have learned. They also play an important role in the learning process. A phenomenon known as the “testing effect” suggests students learn more from repeated testing than from repeated exposure to the material they are trying to learn (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). While exposure to material, such as during lecture or study, helps students store new information, it’s crucial that students actively practice retrieving that information and putting it to use. Frequent assessment throughout a course provides students with the practice opportunities that are essential to learning.

In addition we can’t assume students can transfer what they have practiced in one context to a different context. Successful transfer of learning requires understanding of deep, structural features and patterns that novices to a subject are still developing (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). If we want students to be able to apply their learning in a wide variety of contexts, they must practice what they’re learning in a wide variety of contexts .

Providing a variety of assessment types gives students multiple opportunities to practice and demonstrate learning. One way to categorize the range of assessment options is as formative or summative.

Formative and Summative Assessment

Opportunities not simply to practice, but to receive feedback on that practice, are crucial to learning (Ambrose et al., 2010). Formative assessment facilitates student learning by providing frequent low-stakes practice coupled with immediate and focused feedback. Whether graded or ungraded, formative assessment helps you monitor student progress and guide students to understand which outcomes they’ve mastered, which they need to focus on, and what strategies can support their learning. Formative assessment also informs how you modify your teaching to better meet student needs throughout your course.

Technology Tip

Design quizzes in CarmenCanvas to provide immediate and useful feedback to students based on their answers. Learn more about setting up quizzes in Carmen. 

Summative assessment measures student learning by comparing it to a standard. Usually these types of assessments evaluate a range of skills or overall performance at the end of a unit, module, or course. Unlike formative assessment, they tend to focus more on product than process. These high-stakes experiences are typically graded and should be less frequent (Ambrose et al., 2010).

Using Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a common framework for thinking about how students can demonstrate their learning on assessments, as well as for articulating course and lesson learning outcomes .

Benjamin Bloom (alongside collaborators Max Englehart, Edward Furst, Walter Hill, and David Krathwohl) published Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956.   The taxonomy provided a system for categorizing educational goals with the intent of aiding educators with assessment. Commonly known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, the framework has been widely used to guide and define instruction in both K-12 and university settings. The original taxonomy from 1956 included a cognitive domain made up of six categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. The categories after Knowledge were presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice. 

A revised Bloom's Taxonomy from 2001 updated these six categories to reflect how learners interact with knowledge. In the revised version, students can:  Remember content, Understand ideas, Apply information to new situations, Analyze relationships between ideas, Evaluate information to justify perspectives or decisions, and Create new ideas or original work. In the graphic pictured here, the categories from the revised taxonomy are imagined as the layers of a cake.

Assessing students on a variety of Bloom's categories will give you a better sense of how well they understand your course content. The taxonomy can be a helpful guide to predicting which tasks will be most difficult for students so you can provide extra support where it is needed. It can also be used to craft more transparent assignments and test questions by honing in on the specific skills you want to assess and finding the right language to communicate exactly what you want students to do.  See the Sample Bloom's Verbs in the Examples section below.

Diving deeper into Bloom's Taxonomy

Like most aspects of our lives, activities and assessments in today’s classroom are inextricably linked with technology. In 2008, Andrew Churches extended Bloom’s Taxonomy to address the emerging changes in learning behaviors and opportunities as “technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous.” Consult Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy for ideas on using digital tools to facilitate and assess learning across the six categories of learning.

Did you know that the cognitive domain (commonly referred to simply as Bloom's Taxonomy) was only one of three domains in the original Bloom's Taxonomy (1956)? While it is certainly the most well-known and widely used, the other two domains— psychomotor and affective —may be of interest to some educators. The psychomotor domain relates to physical movement, coordination, and motor skills—it might apply to the performing arts or other courses that involve movement, manipulation of objects, and non-discursive communication like body language. The affective domain pertains to feelings, values, motivations, and attitudes and is used more often in disciplines like medicine, social work, and education, where emotions and values are integral aspects of learning. Explore the full taxonomy in  Three Domains of Learning: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor (Hoque, 2017).

In Practice

Consider the following to make your assessments of student learning effective and meaningful.

Align assignments, quizzes, and tests closely to learning outcomes.

It goes without saying that you want students to achieve the learning outcomes for your course. The testing effect implies, then, that your assessments must help them retrieve the knowledge and practice the skills that are relevant to those outcomes.

Plan assessments that measure specific outcomes for your course. Instead of choosing quizzes and tests that are easy to grade or assignment types common to your discipline, carefully consider what assessments will best help students practice important skills. When assignments and feedback are aligned to learning outcomes, and you share this alignment with students, they have a greater appreciation for your course and develop more effective strategies for study and practice targeted at achieving those outcomes (Wang, et al., 2013).

Provide authentic learning experiences.

Consider how far removed from “the real world” traditional assessments like academic essays, standard textbook problems, and multiple-choice exams feel to students. In contrast, assignments that are authentic resemble real-world tasks. They feel relevant and purposeful, which can increase student motivation and engagement (Fink, 2013). Authentic assignments also help you assess whether students will be able to transfer what they learn into realistic contexts beyond your course.

Integrate assessment opportunities that prepare students to be effective and successful once they graduate, whether as professionals, as global citizens, or in their personal lives.

To design authentic assignments:

• Choose real-world content . If you want students to be able to apply disciplinary methods, frameworks, and terminology to solve real-world problems after your course, you must have them engage with real-world examples, procedures, and tools during your course. Include actual case studies, documents, data sets, and problems from your field in your assessments.
• Target a real-world audience . Ask students to direct their work to a tangible reader, listener or viewer, rather than to you. For example, they could write a blog for their peers or create a presentation for a future employer.
• Use real-world formats . Have students develop content in formats used in professional or real-life discourse. For example, instead of a conventional paper, students could write an email to a colleague or a letter to a government official, develop a project proposal or product pitch for a community-based company, post a how-to video on YouTube, or create an infographic to share on social media.

Simulations, role plays, case studies, portfolios, project-based learning, and service learning are all great avenues to bring authentic assessment into your course.

Make sure assignments are achievable.

Your students juggle coursework from several classes, so it’s important to be conscious of workload. Assign tasks they can realistically handle at a given point in the term. If it takes you three hours to do something, it will likely take your students six hours or more. Choose assignments that assess multiple learning outcomes from your course to keep your grading manageable and your feedback useful (Rayner et al., 2016).

Scaffold assignments so students can develop knowledge and skills over time.

For large assignments, use scaffolding to integrate multiple opportunities for feedback, reflection, and improvement. Scaffolding means breaking a complex assignment down into component parts or smaller progressive tasks over time. Practicing these smaller tasks individually before attempting to integrate them into a completed assignment supports student learning by reducing the amount of information they need to process at a given time (Salden et al., 2006).

Scaffolding ensures students will start earlier and spend more time on big assignments. And it provides you more opportunities to give feedback and guidance to support their ultimate success. Additionally, scaffolding can draw students’ attention to important steps in a process that are often overlooked, such as planning and revision, leading them to be more independent and thoughtful about future work.

A familiar example of scaffolding is a research paper. You might ask students to submit a topic or thesis in Week 3 of the semester, an annotated bibliography of sources in Week 6, a detailed outline in Week 9, a first draft on which they can get peer feedback in Week 11, and the final draft in the last week of the semester.

Your course journey is decided in part by how you sequence assignments. Consider where students are in their learning and place assignments at strategic points throughout the term. Scaffold across the course journey by explaining how each assignment builds upon the learning achieved in previous ones (Walvoord & Anderson, 2011). 

Be transparent about assignment instructions and expectations. 

Communicate clearly to students about the purpose of each assignment, the process for completing the task, and the criteria you will use to evaluate it before they begin the work. Studies have shown that transparent assignments support students to meet learning goals and result in especially large increases in success and confidence for underserved students (Winkelmes et al., 2016).

To increase assignment transparency:

• Explain how the assignment links to one or more course learning outcomes . Understanding why the assignment matters and how it supports their learning can increase student motivation and investment in the work.
• Outline steps of the task in the assignment prompt . Clear directions help students structure their time and effort. This is also a chance to call out disciplinary standards with which students are not yet familiar or guide them to focus on steps of the process they often neglect, such as initial research.
• Provide a rubric with straightforward evaluation criteria . Rubrics make transparent which parts of an assignment you care most about. Sharing clear criteria sets students up for success by giving them the tools to self-evaluate and revise their work before submitting it. Be sure to explain your rubric, and particularly to unpack new or vague terms; for example, language like "argue," “close reading,” "list significant findings," and "document" can mean different things in different disciplines. It is helpful to show exemplars and non-exemplars along with your rubric to highlight differences in unacceptable, acceptable, and exceptional work.

Engage students in reflection or discussion to increase assignment transparency. Have them consider how the assessed outcomes connect to their personal lives or future careers. In-class activities that ask them to grade sample assignments and discuss the criteria they used, compare exemplars and non-exemplars, engage in self- or peer-evaluation, or complete steps of the assignment when you are present to give feedback can all support student success.

Technology Tip   

Enter all  assignments and due dates  in your Carmen course to increase transparency. When assignments are entered in Carmen, they also populate to Calendar, Syllabus, and Grades areas so students can easily track their upcoming work. Carmen also allows you to  develop rubrics  for every assignment in your course. 

Sample Bloom’s Verbs

Building a question bank, using the transparent assignment template, sample assignment: ai-generated lesson plan.

Include frequent low-stakes assignments and assessments throughout your course to provide the opportunities for practice and feedback that are essential to learning. Consider a variety of formative and summative assessment types so students can demonstrate learning in multiple ways. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to determine—and communicate—the specific skills you want to assess.

Remember that effective assessments of student learning are:

• Aligned to course learning outcomes
• Authentic, or resembling real-world tasks
• Achievable and realistic
• Scaffolded so students can develop knowledge and skills over time
• Transparent in purpose, tasks, and criteria for evaluation
• Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty (book)
• Cheating Lessons (book)
• Minds online: Teaching effectively with technology (book)
• Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning (video)
• TILT Higher Ed Examples and Resource (website)
• Writing to Learn: Critical Thinking Activities for Any Classroom (guide)

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., Lovett, M.C., DiPietro, M., & Norman, M.K. (2010).  How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching . John Wiley & Sons. 

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Bransford, J.D, & Schwartz, D.L. (1999). Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implications.  Review of Research in Education , 24 . 61–100.  doi.org/10.3102/0091732X024001061  

Fink, L. D. (2013).  Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses . John Wiley & Sons. 

Karpicke, J.D., & Roediger, H.L., III. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning.  Science ,  319 . 966–968.  doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408  

Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help?.  Psychological Science in the Public Interest ,  17 (1), 4-34.  doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267     

Salden, R.J.C.M., Paas, F., van Merriënboer, J.J.G. (2006). A comparison of approaches to learning task selection in the training of complex cognitive skills.  Computers in Human Behavior , 22 (3). 321–333.  doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.06.003  

Walvoord, B. E., & Anderson, V. J. (2010).  Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment in college . John Wiley & Sons. 

Wang, X., Su, Y., Cheung, S., Wong, E., & Kwong, T. (2013). An exploration of Biggs’ constructive alignment in course design and its impact on students’ learning approaches.  Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education , 38 (4). 477–491.  doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.06.003  

Winkelmes, M., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K.H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students’ success.  Peer Review , 18 (1/2). 31–36. Retrieved from  https://www.aacu.org/peerreview/2016/winter-spring/Winkelmes

Related Teaching Topics

A positive approach to academic integrity, creating and adapting assignments for online courses, ai teaching strategies: transparent assignment design, designing research or inquiry-based assignments, using backward design to plan your course, universal design for learning: planning with all students in mind, search for resources.

Assessments in Education: 5 Types You Should Know

June 7th, 2023

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Lara Miller, MA

Territory Account Executive

Assessments in education refer to collecting and analyzing information to understand and improve student learning. Tests, essays, speeches, and projects are common ways teachers assess students to understand what they know and can do.

Stakeholders in education can use well-designed assessments to adjust instructions or teaching strategies and provide the right support for students. In addition, assessments affect several areas of education, including:

Instructional needs

Student grade level

Student placement and advancement

School funding

Why Assessments Are Important 

Assessments play a crucial role in education, providing valuable insights into students’ knowledge, skills, and learning progress. Using assessments, teachers can determine whether the learning objectives of the course ― what students should know or be able to do by the end of a class ― have been met.

Here are a few key reasons assessments are important:

Helps student learning : Assessments help students determine whether they understand their course materials and what teachers teach.

Motivates students : Assessment results help students identify areas of strength and weakness so they can do better.

Improves teaching methods : Using assessments, teachers can readily gauge the effectiveness of their teaching methods and instructions and make adjustments where necessary.

The Purpose of Assessments 

Here’s how The Edvocate , an educational advocacy and reform publication, summarizes the purpose of assessments in education: to gather students’ performance information to make judgments about their learning process.

While they may take different forms, assessments generally serve one of three purposes:

Assessment of learning : Determines whether students meet grade level standards through assessment processes like standardized tests, exams, and final projects.

Assessment for learning : Provides ongoing insights into students’ learning and enables teachers to adjust teaching strategies as they teach.

Assessment as learning : Actively encourages students’ involvement in learning by promoting problem-solving skills, goal-setting, and critical thinking.

Five Types of Assessments

Student shading answers with a pencil

Many recent studies, including this one , list formative, diagnostic, and summative assessments as the three basic kinds of assessments in education. In addition, several other assessment types serve various specific purposes and can inform instructional decisions. Here are five common assessment types and how they help students learn.

1. Formative Assessment

A formative assessment is an ongoing, interactive evaluation that gauges student learning throughout the instructional process. These assessments provide immediate feedback to teachers, allowing them to adjust teaching methodologies on the go to improve student learning.

Some examples of formative assessments include:

Class discussions

Group activities

Spontaneous question and answer sessions

Periodic student feedback

While these assessments can provide instant feedback and help students stay engaged, they can be time-consuming and subjective. To make this type of classroom assessment work, teachers should set clear expectations, create a supportive classroom, and use helpful technology tools.

2. Diagnostic Assessment

A diagnostic assessment is like a sneak peek before the learning process begins. Teachers can use these assessments at the beginning of a course or unit to assess students’ prior knowledge and skills. This way, they understand what students already know and where they might struggle, and then tailor instructions accordingly.

Examples of diagnostic assessments include:

Concept maps

Questionnaire, survey, or checklists

Self-evaluation

A diagnostic assessment task is great for providing students with targeted help but may be time-consuming and require careful analysis. Teachers can use effective strategies to make the most of the results, such as grouping students based on their needs and designing individualized learning plans.

3. Summative Assessment

Summative assessments occur at the end of a unit, course, or academic period. These assessments measure students’ overall knowledge and understanding of a subject.

Common examples of summative assessments include:

Final examinations

Presentations

Term papers

Research projects

Teachers can use these assessments for accountability purposes and to comprehensively evaluate student performance. However, research shows that summative assessments may place undue stress on students and sometimes do not capture the complete picture of learning, especially if the assessments don’t follow best practices. To prepare students for summative assessments, teachers can provide study guides, review sessions, and practice tests.

4. Norm-Referenced Assessment

Norm-referenced assessments compare individual student performance to a larger group. These assessments determine how well a student performs relative to their peers. Since the student assessment typically reports scores in percentiles, norm-referenced assessments are useful for evaluating student performance in relation to a specific population or standard.

Some examples of norm-referenced assessments include:

Benchmark assessments

Standardized tests

College entrance examinations

Reading level assessments (for example, the Developmental Reading Assessment or the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System)

While these assessments can help teachers see how individual students are doing compared to others, they may not provide detailed insights into individual strengths and weaknesses. To make the most of this type of assessment, teachers can use the results to compare the average grade of their students against those in other classes or schools. This way, they can identify relative strengths and areas for improvement and make informed instructional decisions.

5. Ipsative Assessment

Ipsative assessments measure current student performance against previous results to track student achievement over time. These assessments often use a two-stage framework that allows students to retake exercises, student work, or tests, encouraging them to learn from their mistakes and do better with a second try.

With Ipsative assessments, students can track their individual development, and by prioritizing individual student progress over comparisons with others, the process fosters intrinsic motivation and goal-setting.

Some psychologists consider ipsative assessment as one of the most important types of assessment in education because it focuses on learning rather than meeting standards ― an important factor in helping students measure their own achievements, reflect on their development, and continuously strive for self-improvement.

Here are some ways teachers can incorporate Ipsative assessments into their classrooms:

Project-based learning activities

Comparing pre-test results with final exams

Two-stage testing process

Measuring Assessment Effectiveness in Education

Teacher invigilating students in an exam hall

It’s important to measure the effectiveness of assessments to ensure their validity and reliability. Think of this process as checking whether assessments are doing their job or fulfilling their purpose.

Some methods to measure assessment effectiveness include:

Analyzing item difficulty and discrimination

Conducting item analysis

Comparing assessments to external benchmarks

A good practice is to look at the bigger picture when interpreting assessment results. Teachers should use multiple assessment data sources and consider contextual factors instead of relying on a single assessment or isolated scores to interpret results.

Well-designed assessments should:

Provide feedback on students’ knowledge base

Evaluate student progress

Motivate performance for both students and teachers

Help stakeholders in education set standards

One assessment type isn’t necessarily better than others ― they all have unique characteristics and serve different purposes in education. Formative assessments focus on monitoring and supporting learning in real-time, while summative assessments in education evaluate overall achievement.

Diagnostic assessments provide insights into prior knowledge, and norm-referenced assessments show students’ performance relative to their peers. Ipsative assessments help students identify improvement areas, motivating them to improve in subsequent tests or assignments and to set new goals.

When choosing the appropriate assessment type, a classroom teacher should consider the learning goals, instructional context, and students’ needs. Assessment tools like TestHound can helps those that administer tests be organized and prepared to give them, especially ensuring those with special needs have the resources they require.

If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so that your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help. For example, four of our most popular and effective tools are:

Cardonex, our master schedule software , helps schools save time on building master schedules. Many schools used to spend weeks using whiteboards to organize the right students, teachers, and classrooms into the right order so that students could graduate on time and get their preferred classes. However, Cardonex can now be used to automate this task and deliver 90% of students' first-choice classes within a couple of days.

TestHound, our test accommodation software , helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while taking into account dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.

Pathways, our college and career readiness software , helps administrators and counselors create, track, and analyze graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate.

Evaluation, our teacher evaluation software , documents every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting, and performance analytics.

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Formative, Summative, and More Types of Assessments in Education

All the best ways to evaluate learning before, during, and after it happens.

When you hear the word assessment, do you automatically think “tests”? While it’s true that tests are one kind of assessment, they’re not the only way teachers evaluate student progress. Learn more about the types of assessments used in education, and find out how and when to use them.

Diagnostic Assessments

Formative assessments, summative assessments.

• Criterion-Referenced, Ipsative, and Normative Assessments

What is assessment?

In simplest terms, assessment means gathering data to help understand progress and effectiveness. In education, we gather data about student learning in variety of ways, then use it to assess both their progress and the effectiveness of our teaching programs. This helps educators know what’s working well and where they need to make changes.

There are three broad types of assessments: diagnostic, formative, and summative. These take place throughout the learning process, helping students and teachers gauge learning. Within those three broad categories, you’ll find other types of assessment, such as ipsative, norm-referenced, and criterion-referenced.

What’s the purpose of assessment in education?

In education, we can group assessments under three main purposes:

• Of learning
• For learning
• As learning

Assessment of learning is student-based and one of the most familiar, encompassing tests, reports, essays, and other ways of determining what students have learned. These are usually summative assessments, and they are used to gauge progress for individuals and groups so educators can determine who has mastered the material and who needs more assistance.

When we talk about assessment for learning, we’re referring to the constant evaluations teachers perform as they teach. These quick assessments—such as in-class discussions or quick pop quizzes—give educators the chance to see if their teaching strategies are working. This allows them to make adjustments in action, tailoring their lessons and activities to student needs. Assessment for learning usually includes the formative and diagnostic types.

Assessment can also be a part of the learning process itself. When students use self-evaluations, flash cards, or rubrics, they’re using assessments to help them learn.

Let’s take a closer look at the various types of assessments used in education.

Diagnostic assessments are used before learning to determine what students already do and do not know. This often refers to pre-tests and other activities students attempt at the beginning of a unit.

How To Use Diagnostic Assessments

When giving diagnostic assessments, it’s important to remind students these won’t affect their overall grade. Instead, it’s a way for them to find out what they’ll be learning in an upcoming lesson or unit. It can also help them understand their own strengths and weaknesses, so they can ask for help when they need it.

Teachers can use results to understand what students already know and adapt their lesson plans accordingly. There’s no point in over-teaching a concept students have already mastered. On the other hand, a diagnostic assessment can also help highlight expected pre-knowledge that may be missing.

For instance, a teacher might assume students already know certain vocabulary words that are important for an upcoming lesson. If the diagnostic assessment indicates differently, the teacher knows they’ll need to take a step back and do a little pre-teaching before getting to their actual lesson plans.

Examples of Diagnostic Assessments

• Pre-test: This includes the same questions (or types of questions) that will appear on a final test, and it’s an excellent way to compare results.
• Blind Kahoot: Teachers and kids already love using Kahoot for test review, but it’s also the perfect way to introduce a new topic. Learn how Blind Kahoots work here.
• Survey or questionnaire: Ask students to rate their knowledge on a topic with a series of low-stakes questions.
• Checklist: Create a list of skills and knowledge students will build throughout a unit, and have them start by checking off any they already feel they’ve mastered. Revisit the list frequently as part of formative assessment.

Formative assessments take place during instruction. They’re used throughout the learning process and help teachers make on-the-go adjustments to instruction and activities as needed. These assessments aren’t used in calculating student grades, but they are planned as part of a lesson or activity. Learn much more about formative assessments here.

How To Use Formative Assessments

As you’re building a lesson plan, be sure to include formative assessments at logical points. These types of assessments might be used at the end of a class period, after finishing a hands-on activity, or once you’re through with a unit section or learning objective.

Once you have the results, use that feedback to determine student progress, both overall and as individuals. If the majority of a class is struggling with a specific concept, you might need to find different ways to teach it. Or you might discover that one student is especially falling behind and arrange to offer extra assistance to help them out.

While kids may grumble, standard homework review assignments can actually be a pretty valuable type of formative assessment . They give kids a chance to practice, while teachers can evaluate their progress by checking the answers. Just remember that homework review assignments are only one type of formative assessment, and not all kids have access to a safe and dedicated learning space outside of school.

Examples of Formative Assessments

• Exit tickets : At the end of a lesson or class, pose a question for students to answer before they leave. They can answer using a sticky note, online form, or digital tool.
• Kahoot quizzes : Kids enjoy the gamified fun, while teachers appreciate the ability to analyze the data later to see which topics students understand well and which need more time.
• Flip (formerly Flipgrid): We love Flip for helping teachers connect with students who hate speaking up in class. This innovative (and free!) tech tool lets students post selfie videos in response to teacher prompts. Kids can view each other’s videos, commenting and continuing the conversation in a low-key way.
• Self-evaluation: Encourage students to use formative assessments to gauge their own progress too. If they struggle with review questions or example problems, they know they’ll need to spend more time studying. This way, they’re not surprised when they don’t do well on a more formal test.

Find a big list of 25 creative and effective formative assessment options here.

Summative assessments are used at the end of a unit or lesson to determine what students have learned. By comparing diagnostic and summative assessments, teachers and learners can get a clearer picture of how much progress they’ve made. Summative assessments are often tests or exams but also include options like essays, projects, and presentations.

How To Use Summative Assessments

The goal of a summative assessment is to find out what students have learned and if their learning matches the goals for a unit or activity. Ensure you match your test questions or assessment activities with specific learning objectives to make the best use of summative assessments.

When possible, use an array of summative assessment options to give all types of learners a chance to demonstrate their knowledge. For instance, some students suffer from severe test anxiety but may still have mastered the skills and concepts and just need another way to show their achievement. Consider ditching the test paper and having a conversation with the student about the topic instead, covering the same basic objectives but without the high-pressure test environment.

Summative assessments are often used for grades, but they’re really about so much more. Encourage students to revisit their tests and exams, finding the right answers to any they originally missed. Think about allowing retakes for those who show dedication to improving on their learning. Drive home the idea that learning is about more than just a grade on a report card.

Examples of Summative Assessments

• Traditional tests: These might include multiple-choice, matching, and short-answer questions.
• Essays and research papers: This is another traditional form of summative assessment, typically involving drafts (which are really formative assessments in disguise) and edits before a final copy.
• Presentations: From oral book reports to persuasive speeches and beyond, presentations are another time-honored form of summative assessment.

Find 25 of our favorite alternative assessments here.

More Types of Assessments

Now that you know the three basic types of assessments, let’s take a look at some of the more specific and advanced terms you’re likely to hear in professional development books and sessions. These assessments may fit into some or all of the broader categories, depending on how they’re used. Here’s what teachers need to know.

Criterion-Referenced Assessments

In this common type of assessment, a student’s knowledge is compared to a standard learning objective. Most summative assessments are designed to measure student mastery of specific learning objectives. The important thing to remember about this type of assessment is that it only compares a student to the expected learning objectives themselves, not to other students.

Many standardized tests are criterion-referenced assessments. A governing board determines the learning objectives for a specific group of students. Then, all students take a standardized test to see if they’ve achieved those objectives.

Find out more about criterion-referenced assessments here.

Norm-Referenced Assessments

These types of assessments do compare student achievement with that of their peers. Students receive a ranking based on their score and potentially on other factors as well. Norm-referenced assessments usually rank on a bell curve, establishing an “average” as well as high performers and low performers.

These assessments can be used as screening for those at risk for poor performance (such as those with learning disabilities) or to identify high-level learners who would thrive on additional challenges. They may also help rank students for college entrance or scholarships, or determine whether a student is ready for a new experience like preschool.

Learn more about norm-referenced assessments here.

Ipsative Assessments

In education, ipsative assessments compare a learner’s present performance to their own past performance, to chart achievement over time. Many educators consider ipsative assessment to be the most important of all , since it helps students and parents truly understand what they’ve accomplished—and sometimes, what they haven’t. It’s all about measuring personal growth.

Comparing the results of pre-tests with final exams is one type of ipsative assessment. Some schools use curriculum-based measurement to track ipsative performance. Kids take regular quick assessments (often weekly) to show their current skill/knowledge level in reading, writing, math, and other basics. Their results are charted, showing their progress over time.

Learn more about ipsative assessment in education here.

Have more questions about the best types of assessments to use with your students? Come ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, check out creative ways to check for understanding ..

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What Is Formative Assessment and How Should Teachers Use It?

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Center for Teaching

Student assessment in teaching and learning.

Much scholarship has focused on the importance of student assessment in teaching and learning in higher education. Student assessment is a critical aspect of the teaching and learning process. Whether teaching at the undergraduate or graduate level, it is important for instructors to strategically evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching by measuring the extent to which students in the classroom are learning the course material.

This teaching guide addresses the following: 1) defines student assessment and why it is important, 2) identifies the forms and purposes of student assessment in the teaching and learning process, 3) discusses methods in student assessment, and 4) makes an important distinction between assessment and grading., what is student assessment and why is it important.

In their handbook for course-based review and assessment, Martha L. A. Stassen et al. define assessment as “the systematic collection and analysis of information to improve student learning.” (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. 5) This definition captures the essential task of student assessment in the teaching and learning process. Student assessment enables instructors to measure the effectiveness of their teaching by linking student performance to specific learning objectives. As a result, teachers are able to institutionalize effective teaching choices and revise ineffective ones in their pedagogy.

The measurement of student learning through assessment is important because it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students about the extent to which students are successfully meeting course learning objectives. In their book Understanding by Design , Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe offer a framework for classroom instruction—what they call “Backward Design”—that emphasizes the critical role of assessment. For Wiggens and McTighe, assessment enables instructors to determine the metrics of measurement for student understanding of and proficiency in course learning objectives. They argue that assessment provides the evidence needed to document and validate that meaningful learning has occurred in the classroom. Assessment is so vital in their pedagogical design that their approach “encourages teachers and curriculum planners to first ‘think like an assessor’ before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider up front how they will determine if students have attained the desired understandings.” (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, pg. 18)

For more on Wiggins and McTighe’s “Backward Design” model, see our Understanding by Design teaching guide.

Student assessment also buttresses critical reflective teaching. Stephen Brookfield, in Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, contends that critical reflection on one’s teaching is an essential part of developing as an educator and enhancing the learning experience of students. Critical reflection on one’s teaching has a multitude of benefits for instructors, including the development of rationale for teaching practices. According to Brookfield, “A critically reflective teacher is much better placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well as to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment.” (Brookfield, 1995, pg. 17) Student assessment, then, not only enables teachers to measure the effectiveness of their teaching, but is also useful in developing the rationale for pedagogical choices in the classroom.

Forms and Purposes of Student Assessment

There are generally two forms of student assessment that are most frequently discussed in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The first, summative assessment , is assessment that is implemented at the end of the course of study. Its primary purpose is to produce a measure that “sums up” student learning. Summative assessment is comprehensive in nature and is fundamentally concerned with learning outcomes. While summative assessment is often useful to provide information about patterns of student achievement, it does so without providing the opportunity for students to reflect on and demonstrate growth in identified areas for improvement and does not provide an avenue for the instructor to modify teaching strategy during the teaching and learning process. (Maki, 2002) Examples of summative assessment include comprehensive final exams or papers.

The second form, formative assessment , involves the evaluation of student learning over the course of time. Its fundamental purpose is to estimate students’ level of achievement in order to enhance student learning during the learning process. By interpreting students’ performance through formative assessment and sharing the results with them, instructors help students to “understand their strengths and weaknesses and to reflect on how they need to improve over the course of their remaining studies.” (Maki, 2002, pg. 11) Pat Hutchings refers to this form of assessment as assessment behind outcomes. She states, “the promise of assessment—mandated or otherwise—is improved student learning, and improvement requires attention not only to final results but also to how results occur. Assessment behind outcomes means looking more carefully at the process and conditions that lead to the learning we care about…” (Hutchings, 1992, pg. 6, original emphasis). Formative assessment includes course work—where students receive feedback that identifies strengths, weaknesses, and other things to keep in mind for future assignments—discussions between instructors and students, and end-of-unit examinations that provide an opportunity for students to identify important areas for necessary growth and development for themselves. (Brown and Knight, 1994)

It is important to recognize that both summative and formative assessment indicate the purpose of assessment, not the method . Different methods of assessment (discussed in the next section) can either be summative or formative in orientation depending on how the instructor implements them. Sally Brown and Peter Knight in their book, Assessing Learners in Higher Education, caution against a conflation of the purposes of assessment its method. “Often the mistake is made of assuming that it is the method which is summative or formative, and not the purpose. This, we suggest, is a serious mistake because it turns the assessor’s attention away from the crucial issue of feedback.” (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 17) If an instructor believes that a particular method is formative, he or she may fall into the trap of using the method without taking the requisite time to review the implications of the feedback with students. In such cases, the method in question effectively functions as a form of summative assessment despite the instructor’s intentions. (Brown and Knight, 1994) Indeed, feedback and discussion is the critical factor that distinguishes between formative and summative assessment.

Methods in Student Assessment

Below are a few common methods of assessment identified by Brown and Knight that can be implemented in the classroom. [1] It should be noted that these methods work best when learning objectives have been identified, shared, and clearly articulated to students.

Self-Assessment

The goal of implementing self-assessment in a course is to enable students to develop their own judgement. In self-assessment students are expected to assess both process and product of their learning. While the assessment of the product is often the task of the instructor, implementing student assessment in the classroom encourages students to evaluate their own work as well as the process that led them to the final outcome. Moreover, self-assessment facilitates a sense of ownership of one’s learning and can lead to greater investment by the student. It enables students to develop transferable skills in other areas of learning that involve group projects and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as leadership roles in the teaching and learning process.

Things to Keep in Mind about Self-Assessment

• Self-assessment is different from self-grading. According to Brown and Knight, “Self-assessment involves the use of evaluative processes in which judgement is involved, where self-grading is the marking of one’s own work against a set of criteria and potential outcomes provided by a third person, usually the [instructor].” (Pg. 52)
• Students may initially resist attempts to involve them in the assessment process. This is usually due to insecurities or lack of confidence in their ability to objectively evaluate their own work. Brown and Knight note, however, that when students are asked to evaluate their work, frequently student-determined outcomes are very similar to those of instructors, particularly when the criteria and expectations have been made explicit in advance.
• Methods of self-assessment vary widely and can be as eclectic as the instructor. Common forms of self-assessment include the portfolio, reflection logs, instructor-student interviews, learner diaries and dialog journals, and the like.

Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is a type of collaborative learning technique where students evaluate the work of their peers and have their own evaluated by peers. This dimension of assessment is significantly grounded in theoretical approaches to active learning and adult learning . Like self-assessment, peer assessment gives learners ownership of learning and focuses on the process of learning as students are able to “share with one another the experiences that they have undertaken.” (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 52)

Things to Keep in Mind about Peer Assessment

• Students can use peer assessment as a tactic of antagonism or conflict with other students by giving unmerited low evaluations. Conversely, students can also provide overly favorable evaluations of their friends.
• Students can occasionally apply unsophisticated judgements to their peers. For example, students who are boisterous and loquacious may receive higher grades than those who are quieter, reserved, and shy.
• Instructors should implement systems of evaluation in order to ensure valid peer assessment is based on evidence and identifiable criteria .  

According to Euan S. Henderson, essays make two important contributions to learning and assessment: the development of skills and the cultivation of a learning style. (Henderson, 1980) Essays are a common form of writing assignment in courses and can be either a summative or formative form of assessment depending on how the instructor utilizes them in the classroom.

Things to Keep in Mind about Essays

• A common challenge of the essay is that students can use them simply to regurgitate rather than analyze and synthesize information to make arguments.
• Instructors commonly assume that students know how to write essays and can encounter disappointment or frustration when they discover that this is not the case for some students. For this reason, it is important for instructors to make their expectations clear and be prepared to assist or expose students to resources that will enhance their writing skills.

Exams and time-constrained, individual assessment

Examinations have traditionally been viewed as a gold standard of assessment in education, particularly in university settings. Like essays they can be summative or formative forms of assessment.

Things to Keep in Mind about Exams

• Exams can make significant demands on students’ factual knowledge and can have the side-effect of encouraging cramming and surface learning. On the other hand, they can also facilitate student demonstration of deep learning if essay questions or topics are appropriately selected. Different formats include in-class tests, open-book, take-home exams and the like.
• In the process of designing an exam, instructors should consider the following questions. What are the learning objectives that the exam seeks to evaluate? Have students been adequately prepared to meet exam expectations? What are the skills and abilities that students need to do well? How will this exam be utilized to enhance the student learning process?

As Brown and Knight assert, utilizing multiple methods of assessment, including more than one assessor, improves the reliability of data. However, a primary challenge to the multiple methods approach is how to weigh the scores produced by multiple methods of assessment. When particular methods produce higher range of marks than others, instructors can potentially misinterpret their assessment of overall student performance. When multiple methods produce different messages about the same student, instructors should be mindful that the methods are likely assessing different forms of achievement. (Brown and Knight, 1994).

For additional methods of assessment not listed here, see “Assessment on the Page” and “Assessment Off the Page” in Assessing Learners in Higher Education .

In addition to the various methods of assessment listed above, classroom assessment techniques also provide a useful way to evaluate student understanding of course material in the teaching and learning process. For more on these, see our Classroom Assessment Techniques teaching guide.

Assessment is More than Grading

Instructors often conflate assessment with grading. This is a mistake. It must be understood that student assessment is more than just grading. Remember that assessment links student performance to specific learning objectives in order to provide useful information to instructors and students about student achievement. Traditional grading on the other hand, according to Stassen et al. does not provide the level of detailed and specific information essential to link student performance with improvement. “Because grades don’t tell you about student performance on individual (or specific) learning goals or outcomes, they provide little information on the overall success of your course in helping students to attain the specific and distinct learning objectives of interest.” (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. 6) Instructors, therefore, must always remember that grading is an aspect of student assessment but does not constitute its totality.

Teaching Guides Related to Student Assessment

Below is a list of other CFT teaching guides that supplement this one. They include:

• Active Learning
• An Introduction to Lecturing
• Beyond the Essay: Making Student Thinking Visible in the Humanities
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• How People Learn
• Syllabus Construction

References and Additional Resources

This teaching guide draws upon a number of resources listed below. These sources should prove useful for instructors seeking to enhance their pedagogy and effectiveness as teachers.

Angelo, Thomas A., and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers . 2 nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Print.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print.

Brown, Sally, and Peter Knight. Assessing Learners in Higher Education . 1 edition. London ; Philadelphia: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Cameron, Jeanne et al. “Assessment as Critical Praxis: A Community College Experience.” Teaching Sociology 30.4 (2002): 414–429. JSTOR . Web.

Gibbs, Graham and Claire Simpson. “Conditions under which Assessment Supports Student Learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education 1 (2004): 3-31.

Henderson, Euan S. “The Essay in Continuous Assessment.” Studies in Higher Education 5.2 (1980): 197–203. Taylor and Francis+NEJM . Web.

Maki, Peggy L. “Developing an Assessment Plan to Learn about Student Learning.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 28.1 (2002): 8–13. ScienceDirect . Web. The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Sharkey, Stephen, and William S. Johnson. Assessing Undergraduate Learning in Sociology . ASA Teaching Resource Center, 1992. Print.

Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding By Design . 2nd Expanded edition. Alexandria, VA: Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2005. Print.

[1] Brown and Night discuss the first two in their chapter entitled “Dimensions of Assessment.” However, because this chapter begins the second part of the book that outlines assessment methods, I have collapsed the two under the category of methods for the purposes of continuity.

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6 Types of Assessment (and How to Use Them)

Written by Maria Kampen

Reviewed by Stephanie McEwan, B.Ed.

Do your students hate assessments?

Make assessments fun and engaging with Prodigy's game-based platform. And guess what? It's completely free for teachers!

• Teacher Resources
• Teaching Strategies

What's the purpose of different types of assessment?

6 types of assessment to use in your classroom, how to create effective assessments, final thoughts about different types of assessment.

How do you use the different  types of assessment  in your classroom to promote student learning?

School closures and remote or hybrid learning environments have posed some challenges for educators, but motivating students to learn and grow remains a constant goal.

Some students have lost a portion of their academic progress. Assessing students in meaningful ways can help motivate and empower them to grow as they become agents of their own learning. 

But testing can contribute to  math anxiety  for many students. Assessments can be difficult to structure properly and time-consuming to grade. And as a teacher, you know that student progress isn't just a number on a report card. 

There’s so much more to assessments than delivering an end-of-unit exam or prepping for a standardized test. Assessments help shape the learning process at all points, and give you insights into student learning. As John Hattie, a professor of education and the director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia puts it :

The major purpose of assessment in schools should be to provide interpretative information to teachers and school leaders about their impact on students, so that these educators have the best information possible about what steps to take with instruction and how they need to change and adapt. So often we use assessment in schools to inform students of their progress and attainment. Of course this is important, but it is more critical to use this information to inform teachers about their impact on students. Using assessments as feedback for teachers is powerful. And this power is truly maximized when the assessments are timely, informative, and related to what teachers are actually teaching.

Six types of assessments are:

• Diagnostic assessments
• Formative assessments
• Summative assessments
• Ipsative assessments
• Norm-referenced assessments
• Criterion-referenced assessments

Let’s find out how assessments can analyze, support and further learning.

Different types of assessments can help you understand student progress in various ways. This understanding can inform the teaching strategies you use, and may lead to different adaptations.

In your classroom, assessments generally have one of three purposes:

• Assessment  of  learning
• Assessment  for  learning
• Assessment  as  learning

Assessment of learning

You can use assessments to help identify if students are meeting grade-level standards. 

Assessments of learning are usually  grade-based , and can include:

• Final projects
• Standardized tests

They often have a concrete grade attached to them that communicates student achievement to teachers, parents, students, school-level administrators and district leaders. 

Common types of assessment of learning include: 

Assessment for learning

Assessments for learning provide you with a clear snapshot of student learning and understanding  as you teach  -- allowing you to adjust everything from your  classroom management strategies  to your lesson plans as you go. 

Assessments for learning should always be  ongoing and actionable . When you’re creating assessments, keep these key questions in mind:

• What do students still need to know?
• What did students take away from the lesson?
• Did students find this lesson too easy? Too difficult?
• Did my teaching strategies reach students effectively?
• What are students most commonly misunderstanding?
• What did I most want students to learn from this lesson? Did I succeed?

There are lots of ways you can deliver assessments for learning, even in a busy classroom.  We’ll cover some of them soon!

For now, just remember these assessments aren’t only for students -- they’re to provide you with actionable feedback to improve your instruction.

Common types of assessment for learning include formative assessments and diagnostic assessments. 

Assessment as learning

Assessment as learning  actively involves students  in the learning process. It teaches critical thinking skills, problem-solving and encourages students to set achievable goals for themselves and objectively measure their progress. 

They can help engage students in the learning process, too! One study "showed that in most cases the students pointed out the target knowledge as the reason for a task to be interesting and engaging, followed by the way the content was dealt with in the classroom."

Another found:

“Students develop an interest in mathematical tasks that they understand, see as relevant to their own concerns, and can manage.  Recent studies of students’ emotional responses to mathematics suggest that both their positive and their negative responses diminish as tasks become familiar and increase when tasks are novel”

Douglas B. McLeod

Some examples of assessment as learning include ipsative assessments, self-assessments and peer assessments.

There’s a time and place for every type of assessment. Keep reading to find creative ways of delivering assessments and understanding your students’ learning process!

1. Diagnostic assessment

Let’s say you’re starting a lesson on two-digit  multiplication . To make sure the unit goes smoothly, you want to know if your students have mastered fact families,  place value  and one-digit multiplication before you move on to more complicated questions.

When you structure  diagnostic assessments  around your lesson,  you’ll get the information you need to understand student knowledge and engage your whole classroom .

Some examples to try include:

• Short quizzes
• Journal entries
• Student interviews
• Student reflections
• Classroom discussions
• Graphic organizers (e.g., mind maps, flow charts, KWL charts)

Diagnostic assessments can also help benchmark student progress. Consider giving the same assessment at the end of the unit so students can see how far they’ve come!

Using Prodigy for diagnostic assessments

One unique way of delivering diagnostic assessments is to use a game-based learning platform that engages your students.

Prodigy’s assessments tool  helps you align the math questions your students see in-game with the lessons you want to cover.

To set up a diagnostic assessment, use your assessments tool to create a  Plan  that guides students through a skill. This adaptive assessment will support students with pre-requisites when they need additional guidance.

Want to give your students a sneak peek at the upcoming lesson?  Learn how Prodigy helps you pre-teach important lessons .

2. Formative assessment

Just because students made it to the end-of-unit test, doesn’t mean they’ve  mastered the topics in the unit .  Formative assessments  help teachers understand student learning while they teach, and provide them with information to adjust their teaching strategies accordingly. 

Meaningful learning involves processing new facts, adjusting assumptions and drawing nuanced conclusions. As researchers  Thomas Romberg and Thomas Carpenter  describe it:

“Current research indicates that acquired knowledge is not simply a collection of concepts and procedural skills filed in long-term memory. Rather, the knowledge is structured by individuals in meaningful ways, which grow and change over time.”

In other words, meaningful learning is like a puzzle — having the pieces is one thing, but knowing how to put it together becomes an engaging process that helps solidify learning.

Formative assessments help you track how student knowledge is growing and changing in your classroom in real-time.  While it requires a bit of a time investment — especially at first — the gains are more than worth it.

A March 2020 study found that providing formal formative assessment evidence such as written feedback and quizzes within or between instructional units helped enhance the effectiveness of formative assessments.

Some examples of formative assessments include:

• Group projects
• Progress reports
• Class discussions
• Entry and exit tickets
• Short, regular quizzes
• Virtual classroom tools like  Socrative  or  Kahoot!

When running formative assessments in your classroom, it’s best to keep them  short, easy to grade and consistent . Introducing students to formative assessments in a low-stakes way can help you benchmark their progress and reduce math anxiety.

Find more engaging formative assessment ideas here!

How Prodigy helps you deliver formative assessments

Prodigy makes it easy to create, deliver and grade formative assessments that help keep your students engaged with the learning process and provide you with actionable data to adjust your lesson plans. 

Use your Prodigy teacher dashboard to create an  Assignment  and make formative assessments easy!

Assignments  assess your students on a particular skill with a set number of questions and can be differentiated for individual students or groups of students.

For more ideas on using Prodigy for formative assessments, read:

• How to use Prodigy for spiral review
• How to use Prodigy as an entry or exit ticket
• How to use Prodigy for formative assessments

3. Summative assessment

Summative assessments  measure student progress as an assessment of learning. Standardized tests are a type of summative assessment and  provide data for you, school leaders and district leaders .

They can assist with communicating student progress, but they don’t always give clear feedback on the learning process and can foster a “teach to the test” mindset if you’re not careful. 

Plus, they’re stressful for teachers. One  Harvard survey  found 60% of teachers said “preparing students to pass mandated standardized tests” “dictates most of” or “substantially affects” their teaching.

Sound familiar?

But just because it’s a summative assessment, doesn’t mean it can’t be engaging for students and useful for your teaching. Try creating assessments that deviate from the standard multiple-choice test, like:

• Recording a podcast
• Writing a script for a short play
• Producing an independent study project

No matter what type of summative assessment you give your students, keep some best practices in mind:

• Keep it real-world relevant where you can
• Make questions clear and instructions easy to follow
• Give a rubric so students know what’s expected of them
• Create your final test after, not before, teaching the lesson
• Try blind grading: don’t look at the name on the assignment before you mark it

Use these summative assessment examples to make them effective and fun for your students!

Preparing students for summative assessments with Prodigy

Did you know you can use Prodigy to prepare your students for summative assessments — and deliver them in-game?

Use  Assignments  to differentiate math practice for each student or send an end-of-unit test to the whole class.

Or use our  Test Prep  tool to understand student progress and help them prepare for standardized tests in an easy, fun way!

See how you can benchmark student progress and prepare for standardized tests with Prodigy.

4. Ipsative assessments

How many of your students get a bad grade on a test and get so discouraged they stop trying? 

Ipsative assessments  are one of the types of assessment  as  learning that  compares previous results with a second try, motivating students to set goals and improve their skills . 

When a student hands in a piece of creative writing, it’s just the first draft. They practice athletic skills and musical talents to improve, but don’t always get the same chance when it comes to other subjects like math. 

A two-stage assessment framework helps students learn from their mistakes and motivates them to do better. Plus, it removes the instant gratification of goals and teaches students learning is a process. 

You can incorporate ipsative assessments into your classroom with:

• A two-stage testing process
• Project-based learning  activities

One study on ipsative learning techniques  found that when it was used with higher education distance learners, it helped motivate students and encouraged them to act on feedback to improve their grades.

In Gwyneth Hughes' book, Ipsative Assessment: Motivation Through Marking Progress , she writes: "Not all learners can be top performers, but all learners can potentially make progress and achieve a personal best. Putting the focus onto learning rather than meeting standards and criteria can also be resource efficient."

While educators might use this type of assessment during pre- and post-test results, they can also use it in reading instruction. Depending on your school's policy, for example, you can record a student reading a book and discussing its contents. Then, at another point in the year, repeat this process. Next, listen to the recordings together and discuss their reading improvements.

What could it look like in your classroom?

5. Norm-referenced assessments

Norm-referenced assessments  are tests designed to compare an individual to a group of their peers, usually based on national standards and occasionally adjusted for age, ethnicity or other demographics.

Unlike ipsative assessments, where the student is only competing against themselves, norm-referenced assessments  draw from a wide range of data points to make conclusions about student achievement.

Types of norm-referenced assessments include:

• Physical assessments
• Standardized college admissions tests like the SAT and GRE

Proponents of norm-referenced assessments point out that they accentuate differences among test-takers and make it easy to analyze large-scale trends. Critics argue they don’t encourage complex thinking and can inadvertently discriminate against low-income students and minorities. 

Norm-referenced assessments are most useful when measuring student achievement to determine:

• Language ability
• Grade readiness
• Physical development
• College admission decisions
• Need for additional learning support

While they’re not usually the type of assessment you deliver in your classroom, chances are you have access to data from past tests that can give you valuable insights into student performance.

6. Criterion-referenced assessments

Criterion-referenced assessments   compare the score of an individual student to a learning standard and performance level,  independent of other students around them. 

In the classroom, this means measuring student performance against grade-level standards and can include end-of-unit or final tests to assess student understanding. 

Outside of the classroom, criterion-referenced assessments appear in professional licensing exams, high school exit exams and citizenship tests, where the student must answer a certain percentage of questions correctly to pass. 

Criterion-referenced assessments are most often compared with norm-referenced assessments. While they’re both considered types of assessments of learning, criterion-referenced assessments don’t measure students against their peers. Instead, each student is graded to provide insight into their strengths and areas for improvement.

You don’t want to use a norm-referenced assessment to figure out where learning gaps in your classroom are, and ipsative assessments aren’t the best for giving your principal a high-level overview of student achievement in your classroom. 

When it comes to your teaching, here are some best practices to help you identify which type of assessment will work and how to structure it, so you and your students get the information you need.

Make a rubric

Students do their best work when they know what’s expected of them and how they’ll be marked. Whether you’re assigning a  cooperative learning  project or an independent study unit, a rubric  communicates clear success criteria to students and helps teachers maintain consistent grading.

Ideally, your rubric should have a detailed breakdown of all the project’s individual parts, what’s required of each group member and an explanation of what different levels of achievement look like.

A well-crafted rubric lets multiple teachers grade the same assignment and arrive at the same score. It’s an important part of assessments for learning and assessments of learning, and teaches students to take responsibility for the quality of their work. 

There are plenty of  online rubric tools  to help you get started -- try one today!

Ask yourself  why  you're giving the assessment

While student grades provide a useful picture of achievement and help you communicate progress to school leaders and parents, the ultimate goal of assessments is to improve student learning. 

Ask yourself questions like:

• What’s my plan for the results?
• Who’s going to use the results, besides me?
• What do I want to learn from this assessment?
• What’s the best way to present the assessment to my students, given what I know about their progress and learning styles?

This helps you effectively prepare students and create an assessment that moves learning forward.

Don't stick with the same types of assessment — mix it up!

End-of-unit assessments are a tried and tested (pun intended) staple in any classroom. But why stop there?

Let’s say you’re teaching a unit on  multiplying fractions . To help you plan your lessons, deliver a diagnostic assessment to find out what students remember from last year. Once you’re sure they understand all the prerequisites, you can start teaching your lessons more effectively. 

After each math class, deliver short exit tickets to find out what students understand and where they still have questions. If you see students struggling, you can re-teach or deliver intervention in small groups during  station rotations . 

When you feel students are prepared, an assessment of learning can be given to them. If students do not meet the success criteria, additional support and scaffolding can be provided to help them improve their understanding of the topic. You can foster a growth mindset by reminding students that mistakes are an important part of learning!

Now your students are masters at multiplying fractions! And when standardized testing season rolls around, you know which of your students need additional support — and where. 

Build your review based on the data you’ve collected through diagnostic, formative, summative and ipsative assessments so they perform well on their standardized tests.

Remember: learning extends well beyond a single score or assessment!

It’s an ongoing process, with plenty of opportunities for students to build a  growth mindset  and develop new skills. 

Prodigy is a fun, digital game-based learning platform used by over 100 million students and 2.5 million teachers. Join today to make delivering assessments and differentiating math learning easy with a free teacher account!

Planning Assessments

Assessment is a critical component of the instructional planning process and should have a prominent role in the learning process. This means that teachers should plan to integrate multiple forms of assessment and use the data to understand how well their students are learning the content and skills specified by the learning objectives. An assessment used during the learning process is referred to as a formative assessment. In this section, you will learn about the second stage in the Backward Design process of ensuring alignment between your learning objectives and your assessment plan.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Determine acceptable evidence of student learning; and
• Select and/or design formative and summative assessments aligned with learning objectives to support, verify, and document learning.

Stage 2: Determining Acceptable Evidence

Now that we understand the value of having clear learning objectives, we can start to look at the second stage of the Backward Design model (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) where we determine what types of evidence will be acceptable to demonstrate that our students have met our goals. When considering potential evidence, Popham and Baker (1970) contend that teachers must develop skills to differentiate between different types of practice to ensure that the evidence they collect aligns with their stated learning objectives. The assessment piece you choose, whether it be a quiz, assignment, essay, test, or project, will provide you with evidence of student learning. However, Popham and Baker suggest that you should evaluate what you are asking students to do based on the following practice types:

• Equivalent: practice the specific desired objective
• Analogous: practice is similar to the desired objective but not identical.
• En-route: skill needed before performing the desired objective
• Irrelevant: any practice or activity that does not align with the desired objective

Recognizing what type of practice you are requiring students to engage in will help guide your selection, adoption, and creation of assessments in stage 2 of the Backward Design process. The key to remember is that students should be given the opportunity to practice the specific skill(s) defined by your learning objectives (Popham & Baker, 1970). This second stage requires that you understand the differences between formative and summative assessment which is foundational information necessary to ensure you provide practice and feedback for your students during the learning process. In addition, we will investigate a variety of assessment types and their pros and cons in order to select the best format for your assessment.

Formative Assessment

Examples (Sidebar)

For an in-depth look at formative assessment beyond what is discussed in this textbook, check out the series of videos by Dr. Heidi Andrade of the University at Albany about designing valid formative assessment tools .

Formative assessment includes all the practices teachers use to check student understanding throughout the teaching and learning process. Often, formative assessment is said to be an assessment for learning.

Definition of Formative Assessment*

Formative assessment refers to the ongoing process teachers and students engage in when selecting a learning goal(s), determining student performance in relation to the goal, and planning steps needed to move students closer to the goal. This ongoing process is implemented through informal assessments, assessments that can easily be incorporated into day-to-day classroom activities. Informal assessments are content and performance-driven and include questioning students during a discussion, student work (exit slips; assignments), and direct observation of students working. Rather than being used for grading, formative assessment is used to inform instructional planning and to provide students with valuable feedback on their progress. Formative assessment data can be collected as a pre-assessment, during a lesson, or as a post-assessment at the closing of a lesson.

In the video below, Rick Wormeli, author of Fair Isn’t Always Equal and Differentiation, explains the difference between summative and formative assessment and how formative assessment helps you offer better feedback to your students.

Listen to Jeoy Feith and Terri Drain discuss what assessment for learning in a PE setting looks like (show notes available if you what to read instead).

Adjusting Instruction Based on Formative Assessment*

Using assessment information to adjust instruction is fundamental to the concept of assessment for learning. Teachers make these adjustments “in the moment” during classroom instruction as well as during reflection and planning periods. Teachers use the information they gain from questioning and observation to adjust their teaching during classroom instruction. If students cannot answer a question, the teacher may need to rephrase the question, probe understanding of prior knowledge, or change the way the current idea is being considered. Teachers need to learn to identify when only one or two students need individual help and when a large proportion of the class is struggling so whole group intervention is needed.

After the class is over, effective teachers spend time analyzing how well the lessons went, what students did and did not seem to understand, and what needs to be done the next day. Evaluation of student work also provides important information for teachers. If many students are confused about a similar concept, the teacher needs to re-teach it and consider new ways of helping students understand the topic. If the majority of students complete the tasks very quickly and well, the teacher might decide that the assessment was not challenging enough.

Formative Assessment Strategies

Wondering where to begin? Check out Gretchen Vierstra’s blog post where she has suggested a variety of formative assessment strategies that you can use today, tomorrow, and next week.

Selecting and administering assessment techniques that are appropriate for the goals of instruction as well as the developmental level of the students is a crucial component of effective formative assessment. Teachers need to know the characteristics of a wide variety of classroom assessment techniques and how these techniques can be adapted for various content, skills, and student characteristics (Seifert, 2011). There is a vast array of formative assessment strategies that have been proven to be effective. For example, Natalie Reiger has compiled a list of 60 formative assessment strategies along with guidance on how to use them successfully in the classroom. Finding different strategies to try has never been easier as dozens of books have been written on the topic and hundreds of videos have been posted online demonstrating effective strategies. The key is not knowing all the possible formative assessment strategies but being able to distinguish which strategy best fits your assessment needs.

Technology & Formative Assessment*

Using Tech Tools for Formative Assessment

Technology is a powerful ally for teachers, especially in measuring student learning. With digital formative assessments, teachers can expedite their ability to assess and provide student feedback in real-time. Timmis, Broadfoot, Sutherland, and Oldfield (2016) encourage teachers to reflect on the “four C’s” when using technology to enhance a lesson. Ask yourself, does technology allow for increased collaboration or critical thinking opportunities? Are students able to communicate their ideas uniquely and are students able to demonstrate creative thinking? Following this format provides lessons that foster student engagement, with technology as an enhancement tool. Digital formative assessments provide teachers the opportunity to give individual feedback quicker and in real-time compared to traditional non-digital paper and pen formative assessments.

Educators now have access to a variety of tools that allow for instant feedback. Google Forms , Socrative , Kahoot , Quizziz , Plickers , Formative , PollEverywhere , Edpuzzle , Nearpod , and Quizlet are all educational technologies that allow teachers and students to attain instant results on the learning taking place. The students may access the system using a variety of different technological tools including a learning management system (LMS) or a mobile device.

Looking for a quick and easy way to assess your students without devices in everyone’s hands? Read how Joey Feith uses Plickers in his PE classroom. This strategy could easily be adapted for all content areas.

Teachers can have students work through retrieval practice together (such as when using a polling tool like PollEverywhere or a game-like tool like Kahoot). There are also educational technology tools that are more self-paced and provide opportunities for learners to work at their own pace. Many of these services are starting to allow for either approach to be used. Quizlet flashcards and some of their games such as Scatter, Match, and Gravity can be used in a self-directed way by students. Quizlet also has a game called Quizlet Live that can be used with a group of students at one time for retrieval practice. Beyond assessment, teachers can utilize student devices, typically smartphones, to enhance learning in a variety of ways.

Exit Tickets

Exit Tickets are a great way to practice the backward design model on a small scale. Exit Tickets are brief mini-assessments aligned to your daily objective. Teachers can provide their students a short period at the end of the class session to complete and submit the Exit Ticket. By considering the content of the Exit Ticket before planning, teachers can ensure that they address the desired skills and concepts during their lesson. Teachers can then use the evidence gathered from Exit Tickets to guide future planning sessions for remediation purposes.

See It in Action: Exit Tickets

Check out this resource from the Teacher Toolkit website. They provide a video of a teacher using Exit Tickets and tips on how and when to use Exit Tickets.

Summative Assessment*

Assessment  of  learning  is a formal assessment that involves assessing students to certify their competence and fulfill accountability mandates. Assessment of learning is typically summative , that is, administered after the instruction is completed (e.g. end-of-unit or chapter tests, end-of-term tests, or standardized tests). Summative assessments provide information about how well students mastered the material, whether students are ready for the next unit, and what grades should be given (Airasian, 2005).

Assessment Methods

Learning objectives guide what sort of practice is appropriate. There are four classifications for learning objectives: knowledge, reasoning, skill, or product (Chappuis et al. 2012). The action defined by the objective will determine which assessment method is best appropriate for gathering evidence of learning. The table below outlines commonly used words and descriptions of each classification.

Classifications of Learning Objectives

Source: Classroom Assessment of Student Learning (Chappuis et al. 2012)

It is important to understand the focus of your learning objective because it will define what type of assessment tool to use. There are many methods to assess students learning but three common types are selected response, constructed response, and performance tasks (Chappuis et al. 2012). The visuals below from Chappuis et al. (2012) and Stiggins (2005) show how some assessment methods are better suited for certain learning targets than others.

Target-Assessment Method Match

Assessment method.

Links between achievement targets and assessment methods. Source: Student-involved assessment for learning (Stiggins, 2005)

In his book Grading Smarter Not Harder, Myron Dueck provides suggestions on how teachers might vary traditional multiple-choice tests to allow students to share their thinking. Consider how this option might change a test for your students. Dueck proposes an alternate response sheet that encourages students to place the choice they think is correct in the first space. If students are considering two answers, or believe there is more than one correct response, they can place the second letter in the space provided. Also, for each question that students place more than one response, they must also provide a written explanation to represent their thinking/debate.

The first and arguably most common form of assessment used in secondary classrooms is selected response. By asking various questions at varying levels of knowledge, selected-response assessments are an efficient way to measure student knowledge and understanding. However, the limitations of multiple-choice, true-false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank style assessments are that they can only provide a limited amount of evidence of student reasoning skills and are incapable of demonstrating a student’s ability to apply skills. A benefit to selected response assessments is that they are great at collecting information quickly and are easy to grade, thus decreasing the feedback loop. Therefore, selected-response can be a great tool to use for formative assessment. Not that it can’t or shouldn’t be used as a summative assessment tool, but if your learning objectives require action above recall of knowledge, you should probably look for another method.

The second form of assessment often used is constructed response. Constructed responses are often chosen to elicit evidence of students’ thinking regarding reasoning, understanding of connections, and application of content knowledge. This assessment form may be more heavily used in some disciplines than others. Lastly, the third type of assessment is the performance assessment. Performance tasks are best suited for gathering evidence of a student’s ability to perform a specific skill or create a product. With the increased pressure on schools to prepare students for college and careers, there has been a push to integrate more performance-type assessments into the teaching and learning process. The idea is that by adding more performance-based assessments, students will develop a deeper understanding of content and be able to not only retain information but also apply and transfer that knowledge to new areas.

Understanding which assessment method to use is crucial to accurately assess student learning. However, learning when and how to use assessment to further learning and measure learning is also necessary. Consider reviewing the Teacher Made Assessment Strategies resource for a deeper dive into the strengths and weaknesses of different assessment types. In the next sections, we will look at how to ensure that our assessments measure accurately.

Considerations for Formatting Assessments

If you choose to summatively assess your students with a performance assessment, then a well-designed rubric can provide students with feedback on how they did on each objective. However, traditional assessments (MC, free response, etc.) often lack detailed feedback on student learning objectives. To provide better feedback to students, consider either grouping assessment items based on learning objectives or tagging items with information that points back to specific objectives or standards for reference.

Grouping or tagging assessment items allows a teacher to track student progress and provide specific feedback to students. Tracking individual learning objectives on an assessment provides a clearer picture of student learning of the objectives than an overall score. By providing subscores for each learning objective, students can see their strengths and weaknesses and use your feedback to guide any remediation efforts. If your assessments are broken into sections based on learning objectives, you might allow students to re-test specific sections of a unit versus taking the whole assessment again. This could save time and stress for students and the teacher.

High-Quality Assessments*

To be able to select and administer appropriate assessment techniques, teachers need to know about the variety of techniques that can be used as well as what factors ensure that the assessment techniques are high quality. We begin by considering high-quality assessments. For an assessment to be high quality, it needs to have good validity and reliability as well as the absence of bias.

Validity  is the evaluation of the  “adequacy and appropriateness of the interpretations and uses of assessment results”  for a given group of individuals (Linn & Miller, 2005, p. 68).

For example, is it appropriate to conclude that the results of a mathematics test on fractions given to recent immigrants accurately represent their understanding of fractions?

Is it appropriate for the teacher to conclude, based on her observations, that a kindergarten student, Jasmine, has Attention Deficit Disorder because she does not follow the teacher’s oral instructions?

Obviously, in each situation, other interpretations are possible that the immigrant students have poor English skills rather than mathematics skills, or that Jasmine may be hearing impaired.

It is important to understand that validity refers to the  interpretation and uses made of the results of an assessment procedure, not of the assessment procedure itself. For example, making judgments about the results of the same test on fractions may be valid if all the students understand English well. A teacher, concluding from her observations that the kindergarten student has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) may be appropriate if the student has been screened for hearing and other disorders (although the classification of a disorder like ADD cannot be made by one teacher). Validity involves making an overall judgment of the degree to which the interpretations and uses of the assessment results are justified. Validity is a matter of degree (e.g. high, moderate, or low validity) rather than all-or-none (e.g. totally valid vs invalid) (Linn & Miller, 2005).

Content validity  evidence is associated with the question: How well does the assessment include the content or tasks it is supposed to?  For example, suppose your educational psychology instructor devises a mid-term test and tells you this includes chapters one to seven in the textbook.  All the items in the test should be based on the content from educational psychology, not your methods or cultural foundations classes. Also, the items in the test should cover content from all seven chapters and not just chapters three to seven—unless the instructor tells you that these chapters have priority.

Teachers have to be clear about their purposes and priorities for instruction before  they can begin to gather evidence related to content validity .  Content validation determines the degree that assessment tasks are relevant and representative of the tasks judged by the teacher (or test developer) to represent their goals and objectives (Linn & Miller, 2005). In their book, The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, Wiggins & McTighe share a method that teachers can use to determine the validity of their assessments. Consider how the Two Question Validity Test (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 91) below might help you evaluate how well your assessment measures student understanding versus recall abilities, effort, creativity, or presentation skills.

Construct validity evidence is more complex than content validity evidence. Often, we are interested in making broader judgments about students’ performances than specific skills such as doing fractions. The focus may be on constructs such as mathematical reasoning or reading comprehension.

A construct is a characteristic of a person we assume exists to help explain behavior.

For example, we use the concept of test anxiety to explain why some individuals when taking a test have difficulty concentrating, have physiological reactions such as sweating, and perform poorly on tests but not in class assignments. Similarly, mathematics reasoning and reading comprehension are constructs as we use them to help explain performance on an assessment.

Construct validation  is the process of determining the extent to which performance on an assessment can be interpreted in terms of the intended constructs and is not influenced by factors irrelevant to the construct.

For example, judgments about recent immigrants’ performance on a mathematical reasoning test administered in English will have low construct validity if the results are influenced by English language skills that are irrelevant to mathematical problem-solving. Similarly, construct validity of end-of-semester examinations is likely to be poor for those students who are highly anxious when taking major tests but not during regular class periods or when doing assignments. Teachers can help increase construct validity by trying to reduce factors that influence performance but are irrelevant to the construct being assessed. These factors include anxiety, English language skills, and reading speed  (Linn & Miller 2005).

The third form of validity evidence is called criterion-related validity.  Selective colleges in the USA use the ACT or SAT among other criteria to choose who will be admitted because these standardized tests help predict freshman grades, i.e. have high criterion-related validity. Some K-12 schools give students math or reading tests in the fall semester in order to predict which are likely to do well on the annual state tests administered in the spring semester and which students are unlikely to pass the tests and will need additional assistance. If the tests administered in the fall do not predict students’ performances accurately, the additional assistance may be given to the wrong students illustrating the importance of criterion-related validity.

Reliability

Reliability refers to the consistency of the measurement (Linn & Miller 2005). Suppose Mr. Garcia is teaching a unit on food chemistry in his tenth-grade class and gives an assessment at the end of the unit using test items from the teachers’ guide. Reliability is related to questions such as: How similar would the scores of the students be if they had taken the assessment on a Friday or Monday? Would the scores have varied if Mr. Garcia had selected different test items, or if a different teacher had graded the test? An assessment provides information about students by using a specific measure of performance at one particular time. Unless the results from the assessment are reasonably consistent over different occasions, different raters, or different tasks (in the same content domain) confidence in the results will be low and so cannot be useful in improving student learning.

We cannot expect perfect consistency. Students’ memory, attention, fatigue, effort, and anxiety fluctuate, and so influence performance. Even trained raters vary somewhat when grading assessments such as essays, science projects, or oral presentations. Also, the wording and design of specific items influence students’ performances. However, some assessments are more reliable than others, and there are several strategies teachers can use to increase reliability

• First, assessments with more tasks or items typically have higher reliability.

To understand this, consider two tests one with five items and one with 50 items. Chance factors influence the shorter test more than the longer test. If a student does not understand one of the items in the first test the total score is very highly influenced (it would be reduced by 20 percent). In contrast, if there was one item in the test with 50 items that was confusing, the total score would be influenced much less (by only 2 percent). This does not mean that assessments should be inordinately long, but, on average, enough tasks should be included to reduce the influence of chance variations.

• Second, clear directions and tasks help increase reliability.

If the directions or wording of specific tasks or items are unclear, then students have to guess what they mean undermining the accuracy of their results.

• Third, clear scoring criteria are crucial in ensuring high reliability  (Linn & Miller, 2005).

Absence of bias

Bias occurs in assessment when there are components in the assessment method or the administration of the assessment that distort the performance of the student because of their characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, or social class (Popham, 2005).

• Two types of assessment bias are important: offensiveness and unfair penalization.

An assessment is most likely offensive to a subgroup of students when negative stereotypes are included in the test.  For example, the assessment in a health class could include items, in which all the doctors were men and all the nurses were women. Or, a series of questions in a social studies class could portray Latinos and Asians as immigrants rather than native-born Americans. In these examples, some female, Latino or Asian students are likely to be offended by the stereotypes, and this can distract them from performing well on the assessment.

Unfair penalization occurs when items disadvantage one group not because they may be offensive but because of differential background experiences. For example, an item for math assessment that assumes knowledge of a particular sport may disadvantage groups not as familiar with that sport (e.g. American football for recent immigrants). Or an assessment on teamwork that asks students to model their concept of a team on a symphony orchestra is likely to be easier for those students who have attended orchestra performances—probably students from affluent families. Unfair penalization does not occur just because some students do poorly in class. For example, asking questions about a specific sport in a physical education class when information on that sport had been discussed in class is not unfair penalization as long as the questions do not require knowledge beyond that taught in class that some groups are less likely to have.

It can be difficult for new teachers teaching in multi-ethnic classrooms to devise interesting assessments that do not penalize any groups of students. Teachers need to think seriously about the impact of students’ differing backgrounds on the assessment they use in class. Listening carefully to what students say is important as is learning about the backgrounds of the students.

Assessments in the PE Setting

If you are teaching in a PE setting and you are thinking that assessment “looks different,” then you might consider reviewing some of the resources below to see how the principles above can help you gather evidence of student learning and skill development.

Formative assessment is most commonly referred to as assessment for learning, as the purpose is to inform your instructional decisions to guide student learning. In contrast, summative assessment is referred to as assessment of learning, as the purpose is to measure what students know at the conclusion of learning. To effectively use formative or summative assessment in the classroom, teachers must clearly define their learning objectives, choose assessment techniques that provide reliable individual evidence of student learning, and use data of student understanding to adjust their instruction. Technology should be considered when planning assessments as it may assist in increasing student motivation and analyzing resulting data.

Summarizing Key Understandings

Peer examples, references & attributions.

Attribution: “Definition of Formative Assessment” was adapted in part from GSC Lesson Planning 101 by  Deborah Kolling and Kate Shumway-Pitt, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Attribution: “Adjusting Instruction Based on Assessment” was adapted in part from Educational Psychology by Kelvin Seifert, licensed CC BY 3.0 . Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

Attribution: “Technology & Formative Assessment” was adapted in part from Igniting Your Teaching with Educational Technology by Malikah R. Nu-Man and Tamika M. Porter, licensed CC BY 4.0

Attribution: “Summative Assessment” was adapted in part from Ch. 15 Teacher made assessment strategies by Kevin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Attribution: “High-Quality Assessments” section is adapted in part from Ch. 15 Teacher made assessment strategies by Kevin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Airasian, P. W. (2004). Classroom Assessment: Concepts and Applications 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Chappuis, J., Stiggins, R. J., Chappuis, S., & Arter, J. A. (2012). Classroom assessment for student learning: Doing it right – using it well. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Linn, R. L., & Miller, M. D. (2005). Measurement and Assessment in Teaching 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Popham, W.J. (2005).

Popham, W. J. (2017). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know, 8th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson

Popham, W. J., & Baker, E. L. (1970). Planning an instructional sequence. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Seifert, K. (May 11, 2011). Educational Psychology. OpenStax CNX. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

Stiggins, R. J. (2005). Student-involved assessment for learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Timmis, S., Broadfoot, P., Sutherland, R., & Oldfield, A. (2016). Rethinking assessment in a digital age: Opportunities, challenges and risks. British Educational Research Journal, 42(3), 454-476.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Planning Assessments Copyright © by Jason Proctor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Types of Assessments [And How to Design & Deploy Them]

Having the right set of assessments strategically mapped out for the school year can be an excellent structural guide for optimal teaching experiences. Not only do students thrive within an entirely laid out foundation, but teachers can also gauge student performance with different types of assessments.

While decades ago, we may have only had a few tests a year, today, teachers are more focused on ensuring consistent growth and development within subjects.

Teachers are also exploring the impact of assessments of/for/as learning within their curriculum. Tests can be seen as pre-assessment tools to determine the current level of understanding within a specific subject area.

Tests can also strengthen mastery over a subject and help students develop confidence within binding domains. Teachers can strategically use assessments to leverage them in multi-faceted ways throughout the year.

Types of Learning Assessments in Teaching

From a technical standpoint, teachers should use several types of assessments. The best strategy for teachers is to find what types of assessments work best within their teaching structure and how they can be adapted to accomplish specific goals.

1. Pre-Assessment or Diagnostic Assessing

One of the most important ways to start your lesson is to figure out where your students stand. Whether that’s 2nd-grade mathematics or 5th-grade history, issuing a pre-assessment exam can help you understand the starting point for your curriculum. Diagnostic tests can also help you determine the course of your teaching plan, focusing on specific weaknesses and providing one-on-one time for students.

2. Summative or Long-Term Learning Assessments

Summative tests are the year-end or longer-term assessments traditionally used to understand a student’s overall performance. While summative tests are required for each grade, they are accompanied by other types of assessments.

Since this assessment is the final one can introduce anxiousness and a feeling of urgency for many students. Keeping this as a long-term goal is best while focusing on smaller milestones through other assessments.

3. Formative Testing for Regular Assessments

Formative testing is quickly emerging as a standard in most teaching plans, primarily because it helps evaluate the responsiveness of teaching methods. Since these tests are carried out in multiple formats, they can provide an overall sense of knowledge grasp and application. Teachers can adjust their lesson plans or focus on more specific topics if their students don’t perform well on formative tests .

4. Criterion assessments for building a foundation

Criterion testing is critical to understanding a student’s overall classroom performance and long-term learning perspective. Criterion-referenced tests measure information recollection a semester or a year after teaching specific lessons.

This can help build a foundation for teaching more complex subjects. An example of this would be numbers and counting testing for building a foundation for decimals and multiplication.

5. Norm-referenced and Ipsative assessments

Norm-referenced testing relates to the performance of a single student against the norm. Ipsative assessments measure a student’s performance on a second or third attempt.

Both are ideal for student-level improvement and can be used with one-on-one teaching strategies. Students can be rewarded for improving their performances, while teachers can try different learning strategies to see what fits their students.

How to design and deploy assessments for your class

Developing the right assessment plan for your students requires planning and technical laying out your vision. Depending on the grade you’re teaching, you can use different types of assessments to help gauge the level of understanding of each student. You can also use hybrid combinations of various testing methods that fit your sessions.

1. Focus on specific objectives to test for

The more focused an assessment plan is, the better the test results. Whether you are planning for pre-assessments, norm-based, or summative assessments, you need to establish the right goals for your testing.

For pre-assessments, your goals should be to gauge the starting point of your classroom, which will ultimately help you set a reference through which you can measure growth. For summative tests, you can verify that all students have grasped the basic concepts you wanted to teach to prepare for the following lessons.

2. Measure against set parameters and knowledge bases

Teachers who need to follow a specific curriculum or prepare children for examinations can set parameters for testing against these pre-set rules. Each subject area can have its own set of parameters, such as learning ability, subject mastery, comprehension, etc.

Each topic can also have smaller parameters, such as shapes/colors, decimal accuracy, measurement, etc. The more coarse the parameters, the higher the quality of assessment results.  

The following assessments can help set the suitable parameters –

·         Entry/exit slips for quick capturing of knowledge.

·         Polls and quizzes for interactive assessments.

·         Fun games to demonstrate understanding

·         Group discussions for challenge-based assessment.

·         Misconception tests for identifying knowledge gaps.

·         Participation cards for discussions.

·         Essay and comprehension tests.

·         Standardized exams and weekly testing.

3. Adopt the Right Tools for Assessments

While teachers may want to adopt traditional methods of assessment tracking, such as paper, spreadsheets, or mapping, it is best to work within a highly structured online platform . Depending on the types of assessments you are opting for, you need a data analytics-centered assessment tool.

This can help provide graphical representations of student performance, which teachers can share with them for encouragement and celebration. The right tool will also adapt with each grade, which can help immensely track your students’ performance.

4. Iterate Your Assessment Approach

Now that you have experience optimizing assessments, it is time to start experimenting with different strategies. Based on the types of evaluations you find work best, you can create your mix of reviews.

If you have a classroom with different learners, such as synchronous, visual, or aided learners, you can design various assessments to get the right picture. This is essential for grades 1 through 5 and is vital to get precisely earlier in the course.

What’s the Best Way to Develop the Types of Assessments?

The best way to develop an assessment depends on your style of teaching and what grade you’re focusing on. While younger students can be assessed through painting or explorative storytelling, kids in grade 5 can be quizzed and asked to write essays. Teachers should use different types of assessments to keep students accountable and provide them with a well-structured learning experience.

Transform teaching strategies through the right online platform for learning assessments. Upload your curriculum, set milestones, and develop various types of assessments with end-to-end tracking and data reporting.  

Teachers can make a free-to-explore account here .

Students can respond differently to different teaching methods, so having regular formative assessments can help measure their performance. Critical gaps can be identified and quickly resolved with comprehensive test tracking. SplashLearn even digitizes reporting, making fun graphs for visual representations of student performance.

The result? Better student performance and happier teachers!

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are examples of the type of assessments teachers can use.

Teachers can use the following assessments –

• Group discussions
• Clicker questions
• Standardized tests
• Mid-week assessments
• Multi-subject challenges

How do I choose the right type of assessment?

Teachers can begin with a standard assessment portfolio with pre-assessments and formative and summative assessment programs. Hybridizing assessments and using different methodologies can also help boost students’ performance.

Can assessments help me teach Pre-K?

Teachers can develop graphic cards, drawing-based tests, and engaging quizzes by evolving the types of assessments for Pre-K students. By involving students in group discussions, teachers can test new types of assessments.

How do I communicate assessment results to students?

By encouraging students to do better and rewarding ideal performance, students can feel like a part of a structured approach. Through positive reinforcement and one-on-one time, communicating assessment results can transform learning and knowledge application.

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How Different Assessments and Measures Can Help Inform Student Growth

The data-driven insights that educators collect through assessments and other measures can serve as a vital tool—to help them gauge not only a student’s understanding of the curriculum but also their personal growth and well-being. 

To get a holistic view of the multiple factors that can foster or impede student growth, educators can leverage several different types of assessment in education to track students’ academic achievement and well-being at school across multiple dimensions. Together, these measures can help guide classroom instruction and build a clearer picture of the whole child .

Common Types of Assessments in K-12 Education

The most common types of assessments to measure students’ academic achievement and progress are summative, interim, and formative.

1. Summative Assessments

Educators typically administer summative assessments at the end of a class or school year, although they can also be administered at the start of the year to identify where to focus instruction. They serve as a measure of a detailed set of standards and are administered after those standards have been taught as a way of understanding what students have learned. These extensive assessments are often used to evaluate curriculum, identify students who need more support, and clarify the knowledge and skill areas that require greater instructional focus.

For many educators, the most useful summative assessments are those that produce scale scores and norms. These kinds of results allow educators and administrators to assess where individual students scored compared with their peers and to understand the academic performance of groups of students over time. 

ERB’s Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) for students in grades 1-11 is a summative assessment that covers reading, listening, vocabulary, writing, mathematics, and science. It measures both content-specific and conceptual knowledge as well as reasoning ability. ERB offers data on several norm groups so educators can compare student growth and performance against national and independent school benchmarks.

2. Interim Assessments

Like summative assessments, interim assessments measure how well students are learning a broad range of material. But instead of administering these tests at the end of a term or school year, educators administer them throughout the year as checkpoints to ensure that student academic performance is growing and remaining on track. Interim assessments can help reveal knowledge or skill areas where students show gaps. They are generally shorter and more targeted than summative assessments.

ERB Milestones includes brief reading and math assessments that educators can administer in the fall, winter, and spring to get real-time data to guide their instructional approach and offer interventions if needed. Since they use the same standards, score scales, and norms as ERB’s CTP summative assessments, it’s easy to interpret students’ scores and progress in comparison to CTP trends.

3. Formative Assessments

Unlike summative assessments, formative assessments are supplements to the teaching and learning process that elicit data for use by both students and educators. Instructors teach a particular set of skills or material and then use a brief assessment to measure whether students have learned those skills. The results give both the student and teacher actionable insights. 

“Feedback to the student helps them understand whether they learned the content and, if not, what they need to do differently,” says Glenn Milewski, Chief Program Officer at ERB. “The teacher sees whether a critical mass of students has learned the content enough to move on to the next set of lessons or if specific students need interventions like tutoring. It creates a feedback loop.”

Teachers can use that information throughout the school year to meet students where they are with appropriately paced curricula and differentiated instruction.

Examples of Formative Assessments

Informal formative assessments include in-class activities, presentations, Q&As, observations, and short quizzes. An important consideration for informal measures like these is that student grades should be secondary to the value of the feedback loop they create. For example, a teacher whose class struggles with a pop quiz on fractions learns she has to invest more in reinforcing core concepts or getting to the root of what is blocking her students’ learning.

Other more formal options include tools like ERB Writing Practice , an online program that allows students in grades 3-12 to practice their writing skills year-round with instant feedback and scoring generated by the AI-driven PEG algorithm . Educators sometimes also use results from summative or interim assessments formatively , which means leveraging a content domain, standard, or even a test question showing low performance to uncover what students haven’t learned.

“The teacher sees whether a critical mass of students has learned the content enough to move on to the next set of lessons, or if specific students need interventions like tutoring. It creates a feedback loop.” — Glenn Milewski, Chief Program Officer at ERB

Other Important Measures to Help Inform Student Growth

Beyond more traditional types of assessments, educators can use several other measures to drive their decision-making in the classroom and wider school community . These can extend beyond just academic performance to also focus on student well-being and social and emotional skills, all of which can impact student progress.

Writing Assessments

Since writing skills are more subjective than mathematics or reading comprehension, it can be challenging to design effective writing assessments that capture both a student’s technical mastery and their ability to present ideas effectively. That’s why thorough feedback is crucial to students’ development as writers and thinkers. 

Writing assessments offer valuable information to teachers as they develop lessons and curricula. For example, a teacher might find that their students need help structuring paragraphs or strengthening their writing with the use of references. 

ERB’s Writing Assessment Program (WrAP) uses standardized rubrics to measure writing achievement and help educators tailor their teaching to students’ strengths and weaknesses. Like the CTP, WrAP puts results in the context of different norm groups to help teachers benchmark students’ progress. It also offers individual student reports with annotations explaining each student’s score.

Well-Being Surveys

Extensive research has shown that supportive school and peer relationships are essential to student well-being — and that emotionally healthy, engaged students perform better in the classroom. Today, schools can use well-being surveys to measure positive and negative trends among their student bodies and identify at-risk students. Educators can take action with this data to drive school culture and climate initiatives. 

ERB’s Check-In Survey , built in partnership with Character Lab , takes just 10-15 minutes to administer. It measures students’ academic engagement, emotional well-being, and sense of fairness and belonging in the school community, all of which help them thrive in and out of the classroom. Schools can use the tool throughout the year to track changes and measure the success of different interventions.

Social and Emotional Skills Inventories

Students need strong social and emotional skills to succeed both inside and outside of school. However, traditional assessment tools don’t capture these abilities.

ERB’s new SelfWise inventory measures five core competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to help students manage their emotions, make healthy choices, and build positive relationships. They include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. 

The tool—which offers three versions for grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12—asks students to choose a rating from a scale as they respond to statements that align with the CASEL competencies. Educators can administer the 15-minute inventory twice yearly and assess individual students and groups to track development in ERB 360 Access .

Screenshot of SelfWise reporting available in ERB 360 Access for an individual student

Diagnostic Assessments

Diagnostic assessments measure students’ mastery of a prescribed set of skills, such as reading or math. These tests are highly targeted—for example, demonstrating proficiency in sixth-grade geometry might require applying a specific number of principles to solve a set of problems.

Educators often use diagnostic assessments when students enter a new grade or school to determine whether their knowledge and skills align with grade standards, place them in appropriate classes, and pinpoint support needs.

Admission Tests

Many independent and private K-12 schools use admission testing as part of their application processes. These tests typically measure reading, math, and quantitative and verbal reasoning, with different versions based on grade level. They can be used as an objective data point in the admission process, alongside more subjective student interviews and letters of recommendation, to gauge student readiness for the rigor of a school’s curriculum.

More than 1,200 independent schools around the world use ERB’s Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE) , which measures not just what students know but also how they think. The ISEE offers online and paper test options for students entering Grades 2–12 and helps admission specialists gauge which students are academically ready or need additional preparation—which, in some cases, a school can provide—to support transitioning to their school.

2023-2024 ISEE Quick Facts Guide

Download the ISEE Quick Facts Guide for students and their families, with details on registration, the types of questions on the exam, and preparing for test day.

Developing a Whole-Child Approach to Assessment

An integrated strategy that uses different types of assessment in the classroom can help support student growth and build connected, supportive academic communities. Of course, the types of assessments educators administer will vary based on their mission, goals, and needs. Teachers and administrators can apply the insights gained from their assessments to inform their data-driven decision-making.

ERB bridges the gap between academic performance, student well-being and belonging, and social and emotional skills with its newly launched Whole Child Solution . Educators can design an ERB program bundle at discounted rates compared with purchasing each standalone product, to understand the factors that may impact student growth.

Using the ERB 360 Access data reporting platform, educators can also view interactive visualizations that provide a holistic snapshot of student strengths and areas for growth across ERB assessments.

Screenshot of Rose Compass data visualization tool in ERB 360 Access

We will also soon launch our new Head of School Report , a resource designed specifically for school leadership seeking an interpretive summary of their ERB assessment results to guide strategic planning and evaluation from a whole child perspective. The highly visual, customized report explores school, grade, and other group outcomes with results tracked over multiple years.

“The best way to help an individual student or teacher is to have more data points,” Milewski says. “And with modern technology, it’s far easier to connect those data streams and interpret what they mean.”

Bridge the gap between student academic achievement, well-being and belonging, and social and emotional skills with ERB’s new Whole Child Solution.

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Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

In education, the term  assessment  refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

While assessments are often equated with traditional tests—especially the standardized tests  developed by testing companies and administered to large populations of students—educators use a diverse array of assessment tools and methods to measure everything from a four-year-old’s readiness for kindergarten to a twelfth-grade student’s comprehension of advanced physics. Just as academic lessons have different functions, assessments are typically designed to measure specific elements of learning—e.g., the level of knowledge a student already has about the concept or skill the teacher is planning to teach or the ability to comprehend and analyze different types of texts and readings. Assessments also are used to identify individual student weaknesses and strengths so that educators can provide specialized  academic support , educational programming, or social services. In addition, assessments are developed by a wide array of groups and individuals, including teachers, district administrators, universities, private companies, state departments of education, and groups that include a combination of these individuals and institutions.

While assessment can take a wide variety of forms in education, the following descriptions provide a representative overview of a few major forms of educational assessment.

Assessments are used for a wide variety of purposes in schools and education systems :

• High-stakes  assessments  are typically standardized tests used for the purposes of accountability—i.e., any attempt by federal, state, or local government agencies to ensure that students are enrolled in effective schools and being taught by effective teachers. In general, “high stakes” means that important decisions about students, teachers, schools, or districts are based on the scores students achieve on a high-stakes test, and either punishments (sanctions, penalties, reduced funding, negative publicity, not being promoted to the next grade, not being allowed to graduate) or accolades (awards, public celebration, positive publicity, bonuses, grade promotion, diplomas) result from those scores. For a more detailed discussion, see  high-stakes test .
• Pre-assessments  are administered before students begin a lesson, unit, course, or academic program. Students are not necessarily expected to know most, or even any, of the material evaluated by pre-assessments—they are generally used to (1) establish a baseline against which educators measure learning progress over the duration of a program, course, or instructional period, or (2) determine general academic readiness for a course, program, grade level, or new academic program that student may be transferring into.
• Formative  assessments  are in-process evaluations of student learning that are typically administered multiple times during a unit, course, or academic program. The general purpose of formative assessment is to give educators in-process feedback about what students are learning or not learning so that instructional approaches, teaching materials, and academic support can be modified accordingly. Formative assessments are usually not scored or graded, and they may take a variety of forms, from more formal quizzes and assignments to informal questioning techniques and in-class discussions with students.

Formative assessments are commonly said to be  for  learning because educators use the results to modify and improve teaching techniques during an instructional period, while summative assessments are said to be  of  learning because they evaluate academic achievement at the conclusion of an instructional period. Or as assessment expert Paul Black put it, “When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.”

• Interim assessments   are used to evaluate where students are in their learning progress and determine whether they are on track to performing well on future assessments, such as standardized tests, end-of-course exams, and other forms of “summative” assessment. Interim assessments are usually administered periodically during a course or school year (for example, every six or eight weeks) and separately from the process of instructing students (i.e., unlike formative assessments, which are integrated into the instructional process).
• Placement assessments  are used to “place” students into a course, course level, or academic program. For example, an assessment may be used to determine whether a student is ready for Algebra I or a higher-level algebra course, such as an honors-level course. For this reason, placement assessments are administered before a course or program begins, and the basic intent is to match students with appropriate learning experiences that address their distinct learning needs.
• Screening assessments  are used to determine whether students may need specialized assistance or services, or whether they are ready to begin a course, grade level, or academic program. Screening assessments may take a wide variety of forms in educational settings, and they may be developmental, physical, cognitive, or academic. A preschool screening test, for example, may be used to determine whether a young child is physically, emotionally, socially, and intellectually ready to begin preschool, while other screening tests may be used to evaluate health, potential learning disabilities, and other student attributes.

Assessments are also designed in a variety of ways for different purposes:

• Standardized assessments  are designed, administered, and scored in a standard, or consistent, manner. They often use a multiple-choice format, though some include open-ended, short-answer questions. Historically, standardized tests featured rows of ovals that students filled in with a number-two pencil, but increasingly the tests are computer-based. Standardized tests can be administered to large student populations of the same age or grade level in a state, region, or country, and results can be compared across individuals and groups of students. For a more detailed discussion, see  standardized test .
• Standards-referenced or standards-based  assessments  are designed to measure how well students have mastered the specific knowledge and skills described in local, state, or national  learning standards . Standardized tests and high-stakes tests may or may not be based on specific learning standards, and individual schools and teachers may develop their own standards-referenced or standards-based assessments. For a more detailed discussion, see  proficiency-based learning .
• Common  assessments  are used in a school or district to ensure that all teachers are evaluating student performance in a more consistent, reliable, and effective manner. Common assessments are used to encourage greater consistency in teaching and assessment among teachers who are responsible for teaching the same content, e.g. within a grade level, department, or  content area . They allow educators to compare performance results across multiple classrooms, courses, schools, and/or learning experiences (which is not possible when educators teach different material and individually develop their own distinct assessments). Common assessments share the same format and are administered in consistent ways—e.g., teachers give students the same instructions and the same amount of time to complete the assessment, or they use the same scoring guides to interpret results. Common assessments may be “formative” or “summative .” For more detailed discussions, see coherent curriculum  and  rubric .
• Performance assessments  typically require students to complete a complex task, such as a writing assignment, science experiment, speech, presentation, performance, or long-term project, for example. Educators will often use collaboratively developed common assessments, scoring guides, rubrics, and other methods to evaluate whether the work produced by students shows that they have learned what they were expected to learn. Performance assessments may also be called “authentic assessments,” since they are considered by some educators to be more accurate and meaningful evaluations of learning achievement than traditional tests. For more detailed discussions, see authentic learning ,  demonstration of learning , and  exhibition .
• Portfolio-based  assessments  are collections of academic work—for example, assignments, lab results, writing samples, speeches, student-created films, or art projects—that are compiled by students and assessed by teachers in consistent ways. Portfolio-based assessments are often used to evaluate a “body of knowledge”—i.e., the acquisition of diverse knowledge and skills over a period of time. Portfolio materials can be collected in physical or digital formats, and they are often evaluated to determine whether students have met required learning standards . For a more detailed discussion, see  portfolio .

The purpose of an assessment generally drives the way it is designed, and there are many ways in which assessments can be used. A standardized assessment can be a high-stakes assessment, for example, but so can other forms of assessment that are not standardized tests. A portfolio of student work can be a used as both a “formative” and “summative” form of assessment. Teacher-created assessments, which may also be created by teams of teachers, are commonly used in a single course or grade level in a school, and these assessments are almost never “high-stakes.” Screening assessments may be produced by universities that have conducted research on a specific area of child development, such as the skills and attributes that a student should have when entering kindergarten to increase the likelihood that he or she will be successful, or the pattern of behaviors, strengths, and challenges that suggest a child has a particular learning disability. In short, assessments are usually created for highly specialized purposes.

While educational assessments and tests have been around since the days of the one-room schoolhouse, they have increasingly assumed a central role in efforts to improve the effectiveness of public schools and teaching. Standardized-test scores, for example, are arguably the dominant measure of educational achievement in the United States, and they are also the most commonly reported indicator of school, teacher, and school-system performance.

As schools become increasingly equipped with computers, tablets, and wireless internet access, a growing proportion of the assessments now administered in schools are either computer-based or online assessments—though paper-based tests and assessments are still common and widely used in schools. New technologies and software applications are also changing the nature and use of assessments in innumerable ways, given that digital-assessment systems typically offer an array of features that traditional paper-based tests and assignments cannot. For example, online-assessment systems may allow students to log in and take assessments during out-of-class time or they may make performance results available to students and teachers immediately after an assessment has been completed (historically, it might have taken hours, days, or weeks for teachers to review, score, and grade all assessments for a class). In addition, digital and online assessments typically include features, or “analytics,” that give educators more detailed information about student performance. For example, teachers may be able to see how long it took students to answer particular questions or how many times a student failed to answer a question correctly before getting the right answer. Many advocates of digital and online assessments tend to argue that such systems, if used properly, could help teachers “ personalize ” instruction—because many digital and online systems can provide far more detailed information about the academic performance of students, educators can use this information to modify educational programs, learning experiences , instructional approaches, and  academic-support strategies  in ways that address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students. In addition, many large-scale standardized tests are now administered online, though states typically allow students to take paper-based tests if computers are unavailable, if students prefer the paper-based option, or if students don’t have the technological skills and literacy required to perform well on an online assessment.

Given that assessments come in so many forms and serve so many diverse functions, a thorough discussion of the purpose and use of assessments could fill a lengthy book. The following descriptions, however, provide a brief, illustrative overview of a few of the major ways in which assessments—especially assessment results—are used in an attempt to improve schools and teaching:

• System and school accountability : Assessments, particularly standardized tests, have played an increasingly central role in efforts to hold schools, districts, and state public-school systems “accountable” for improving the academic achievement of students. The most widely discussed and far-reaching example, the 2001 federal law commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act, strengthened federal expectations from the 1990s and required each state develop  learning standards   to govern what teachers should teach and students should learn. Under No Child Left Behind, standards are required in every grade level and  content area  from kindergarten through high school. The law also requires that students be tested annually in grades 3-8 and at least once in grades 10-12 in reading and mathematics. Since the law’s passage, standardized tests have been developed and implemented to measure how well students were meeting the standards, and scores have been reported publicly by state departments of education. The law also required that test results be tracked and reported separately for different “subgroups” of students, such as minority students, students from low-income households, students with special needs, and students with  limited proficiency in English . By publicly reporting the test scores achieved by different schools and student groups, and by tying those scores to penalties and funding, the law has aimed to close  achievement gaps  and improve schools that were deemed to be underperforming. While the No Child Left Behind Act is one of the most controversial and contentious educational policies in recent history, and the technicalities of the legislation are highly complex, it is one example of how assessment results are being used as an accountability measure.
• Teacher evaluation and compensation : In recent years, a growing number of elected officials, policy makers, and education reformers have argued that the best way to improve educational results is to ensure that students have effective teachers, and that one way to ensure effective teaching is to evaluate and compensate educators, at least in part, based on the test scores their students achieve. By basing a teacher’s income and job security on assessment results, the reasoning goes, administrators can identify and reward high-performing teachers or take steps to either help low-performing teachers improve or remove them from schools. Growing political pressure, coupled with the promise of federal grants, prompted many states to begin using student test results in teacher evaluations. This controversial and highly contentious reform strategy generally requires fairly complicated statistical techniques—known as  value-added measures   or  growth measures —to determine how much of a positive or negative effect individual teachers have on the academic achievement of their students, based primarily on student assessment results.
• Instructional improvement : Assessment results are often used as a mechanism for improving instructional quality and student achievement. Because assessments are designed to measure the acquisition of specific knowledge or skills, the design of an assessment can determine or influence what gets taught in the classroom (“teaching to the test” is a common, and often derogatory, phrase used to describe this general phenomenon). Formative assessments, for example, give teachers in-process feedback on student learning, which can help them make instructional adjustments during the teaching process, instead of having to wait until the end of a unit or course to find out how well students are learning the material. Other forms of assessment, such as standards-based assessments or common assessments, encourage educators to teach similar material and evaluate student performance in more consistent, reliable, or comparable ways.
• Learning-needs identification : Educators use a wide range of assessments and assessment methods to identify specific student learning needs, diagnose learning disabilities (such as autism, dyslexia, or nonverbal learning disabilities), evaluate language ability, or determine eligibility for specialized educational services. In recent years, the early identification of specialized learning needs and disabilities, and the proactive provision of educational support services to students, has been a major focus of numerous educational reform strategies. For a related discussion, see  academic support .

In education, there is widespread agreement that assessment is an integral part of any effective educational system or program. Educators, parents, elected officials, policy makers, employers, and the public all want to know whether students are learning successfully and progressing academically in school. The debates—many of which are a complex, wide ranging, and frequently contentious—typically center on how assessments are used, including how frequently they are being administered and whether assessments are beneficial or harmful to students and the teaching process. While a comprehensive discussion of these debates is beyond the scope of this resource, the following is a representative selection of a few major issues being debated:

• Is high-stakes testing, as an accountability measure, the best way to improve schools, teaching quality, and student achievement? Or do the potential consequences—such as teachers focusing mainly on test preparation and a narrow range of knowledge at the expense of other important skills, or increased incentives to cheat and manipulate test results—undermine the benefits of using test scores as a way to hold schools and educators more accountable and improve educational results?
• Are standardized assessments truly  objective  measures of academic achievement? Or do they reflect intrinsic biases—in their design or content—that favor some students over others, such wealthier white students from more-educated households over minority and low-income students from less-educated households? For more detailed discussions, see  measurement error and  test bias .
• Are “one-size-fits-all” standardized tests a fair way to evaluate the learning achievement of all students, given that some students may be better test-takers than others? Or should students be given a variety of assessment options and multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they have learned?
• Will more challenging and  rigorous   assessments lead to higher educational achievement for all students? Or will they end up penalizing certain students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? And, conversely, will less-advantaged students be at an even greater disadvantage if they are not held to the same high educational standards as other students (because lowering educational standards for certain students, such as students of color, will only further disadvantage them and perpetuate the same cycle of low expectations that historically contributed to racial and socioeconomic  achievement gaps )?
• Do the costs—in money, time, and human resources—outweigh the benefits of widespread, large-scale testing? Would the funding and resources invested in testing and accountability be better spent on higher-quality educational materials, more training and support for teachers, and other resources that might improve schools and teaching more effectively? And is the pervasive use of tests providing valuable information that educators can use to improve instructional quality and student learning? Or are the tests actually taking up time that might be better spent on teaching students more knowledge and skills?
• Are technological learning applications, including digital and online assessments, improving learning experiences for students, teaching them technological skills and literacy, or generally making learning experiences more interesting and engaging? Or are digital learning applications adding to the cost of education, introducing unwanted distractions in schools, or undermining the value of teachers and the teaching process?

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4.3: Types of Assignments

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• Ana Stevenson
• James Cook University via James Cook University

Introduction

As discussed in the previous chapter, assignments are a common method of assessment at university. You may encounter many assignments over your years of study, yet some will look quite different from others. By recognising different types of assignments and understanding the purpose of the task, you can direct your writing skills effectively to meet task requirements. This chapter draws on the skills from the previous chapter, and extends the discussion, showing you where to aim with different types of assignments.

The chapter begins by exploring the popular essay assignment, with its two common categories, analytical and argumentative essays. It then examines assignments requiring case study responses , as often encountered in fields such as health or business. This is followed by a discussion of assignments seeking a report (such as a scientific report) and reflective writing assignments, which are common in nursing, education, and human services. The chapter concludes with an examination of annotated bibliographies and literature reviews. The chapter also has a selection of templates and examples throughout to enhance your understanding and improve the efficacy of your assignment writing skills.

Different Types of Written Assignments

At university, an essay is a common form of assessment. In the previous chapter Writing Assignments, we discussed what was meant by showing academic writing in your assignments. It is important that you consider these aspects of structure, tone, and language when writing an essay.

Components of an essay

Essays should use formal but reader-friendly language and have a clear and logical structure. They must include research from credible academic sources such as peer reviewed journal articles and textbooks. This research should be referenced throughout your essay to support your ideas (see the chapter Working with Information).

If you have never written an essay before, you may feel unsure about how to start. Breaking your essay into sections and allocating words accordingly will make this process more manageable and will make planning the overall essay structure much easier.

• An essay requires an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Generally, an introduction and conclusion are each approximately 10% of the total word count.
• The remaining words can then be divided into sections and a paragraph allowed for each area of content you need to cover.
• Use your task and criteria sheet to decide what content needs to be in your plan

An effective essay introduction needs to inform your reader by doing four basic things:

An effective essay body paragraph needs to:

An effective essay conclusion needs to:

Common types of essays

You may be required to write different types of essays, depending on your study area and topic. Two of the most commonly used essays are analytical and argumentative . The task analysis process discussed in the previous chapter Writing Assignments will help you determine the type of essay required. For example, if your assignment question uses task words such as analyse, examine, discuss, determine, or explore, then you would be writing an analytical essay . If your assignment question has task words such as argue, evaluate, justify, or assess, then you would be writing an argumentative essay . Regardless of the type of essay, your ability to analyse and think critically is important and common across genres.

Analytical essays

These essays usually provide some background description of the relevant theory, situation, problem, case, image, etcetera that is your topic. Being analytical requires you to look carefully at various components or sections of your topic in a methodical and logical way to create understanding.

The purpose of the analytical essay is to demonstrate your ability to examine the topic thoroughly. This requires you to go deeper than description by considering different sides of the situation, comparing and contrasting a variety of theories and the positives and negatives of the topic. Although your position on the topic may be clear in an analytical essay, it is not necessarily a requirement that you explicitly identify this with a thesis statement. In an argumentative essay, however, it is necessary that you explicitly identify your position on the topic with a thesis statement. If you are unsure whether you are required to take a position, and provide a thesis statement, it is best to check with your tutor.

Argumentative essays

These essays require you to take a position on the assignment topic. This is expressed through your thesis statement in your introduction. You must then present and develop your arguments throughout the body of your assignment using logically structured paragraphs. Each of these paragraphs needs a topic sentence that relates to the thesis statement. In an argumentative essay, you must reach a conclusion based on the evidence you have presented.

Case study responses

Case studies are a common form of assignment in many study areas and students can underperform in this genre for a number of key reasons.

Students typically lose marks for not:

• Relating their answer sufficiently to the case details.
• Applying critical thinking.
• Writing with clear structure.
• Using appropriate or sufficient sources.
• Using accurate referencing.

When structuring your response to a case study, remember to refer to the case. Structure your paragraphs similarly to an essay paragraph structure, but include examples and data from the case as additional evidence to support your points (see Figure 68). The colours in the sample paragraph below show the function of each component.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) Code of Conduct and Nursing Standards (2018) play a crucial role in determining the scope of practice for nurses and midwives. A key component discussed in the code is the provision of person-centred care and the formation of therapeutic relationships between nurses and patients (NMBA, 2018). This ensures patient safety and promotes health and wellbeing (NMBA, 2018). The standards also discuss the importance of partnership and shared decision-making in the delivery of care (NMBA, 2018, 4). Boyd and Dare (2014) argue that good communication skills are vital for building therapeutic relationships and trust between patients and care givers. This will help ensure the patient is treated with dignity and respect and improve their overall hospital experience. In the case, the therapeutic relationship with the client has been compromised in several ways. Firstly, the nurse did not conform adequately to the guidelines for seeking informed consent before performing the examination as outlined in principle 2.3 (NMBA, 2018). Although she explained the procedure, she failed to give the patient appropriate choices regarding her health care.

Topic sentence | Explanations using paraphrased evidence including in-text references | Critical thinking (asks the so what? question to demonstrate your student voice). | Relating the theory back to the specifics of the case. The case becomes a source of examples as extra evidence to support the points you are making.

Reports are a common form of assessment at university and are also used widely in many professions. It is a common form of writing in business, government, scientific, and technical occupations.

Reports can take many different structures. A report is normally written to present information in a structured manner, which may include explaining laboratory experiments, technical information, or a business case. Reports may be written for different audiences, including clients, your manager, technical staff, or senior leadership within an organisation. The structure of reports can vary, and it is important to consider what format is required. The choice of structure will depend upon professional requirements and the ultimate aims of the report. Consider some of the options in the table below (see Table 18.2).

Reflective writing

Reflective writing is a popular method of assessment at university. It is used to help you explore feelings, experiences, opinions, events, or new information to gain a clearer and deeper understanding of your learning.

A reflective writing task requires more than a description or summary. It requires you to analyse a situation, problem or experience, consider what you may have learnt, and evaluate how this may impact your thinking and actions in the future. This requires critical thinking, analysis, and usually the application of good quality research, to demonstrate your understanding or learning from a situation.

Essentially, reflective practice is the process of looking back on past experiences and engaging with them in a thoughtful way and drawing conclusions to inform future experiences. The reflection skills you develop at university will be vital in the workplace to assist you to use feedback for growth and continuous improvement. There are numerous models of reflective writing and you should refer to your subject guidelines for your expected format. If there is no specific framework, a simple model to help frame your thinking is What? So what? Now what? (Rolfe et al., 2001).

The Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

The Gibbs’ Cycle of reflection encourages you to consider your feelings as part of the reflective process. There are six specific steps to work through. Following this model carefully and being clear of the requirements of each stage, will help you focus your thinking and reflect more deeply. This model is popular in Health.

The 4 R’s of reflective thinking

This model (Ryan and Ryan, 2013) was designed specifically for university students engaged in experiential learning. Experiential learning includes any ‘real-world’ activities, including practice led activities, placements, and internships. Experiential learning, and the use of reflective practice to heighten this learning, is common in Creative Arts, Health, and Education.

Annotated bibliography

What is it.

An annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of appropriate sources (e.g. books, journal articles, or websites) on a topic, accompanied by a brief summary, evaluation, and sometimes an explanation or reflection on their usefulness or relevance to your topic. Its purpose is to teach you to research carefully, evaluate sources and systematically organise your notes. An annotated bibliography may be one part of a larger assessment item or a stand-alone assessment item. Check your task guidelines for the number of sources you are required to annotate and the word limit for each entry.

How do I know what to include?

When choosing sources for your annotated bibliography, it is important to determine:

• The topic you are investigating and if there is a specific question to answer.
• The type of sources on which you need to focus.
• Whether these sources are reputable and of high quality.

What do I say?

Important considerations include:

• Is the work current?
• Is the work relevant to your topic?
• Is the author credible/reliable?
• Is there any author bias?
• The strength and limitations (this may include an evaluation of research methodology).

Literature reviews

Generally, a literature review requires that you review the scholarly literature and establish the main ideas that have been written about your chosen topic. A literature review does not summarise and evaluate each resource you find (this is what you would do in an annotated bibliography). You are expected to analyse and synthesise or organise common ideas from multiple texts into key themes which are relevant to your topic (see Figure 18.10). You may also be expected to identify gaps in the research.

It is easy to get confused by the terminology used for literature reviews. Some tasks may be described as a systematic literature review when actually the requirement is simpler; to review the literature on the topic but do it in a systematic way. There is a distinct difference (see Table 15.4). As a commencing undergraduate student, it is unlikely you would be expected to complete a systematic literature review as this is a complex and more advanced research task. It is important to check with your lecturer or tutor if you are unsure of the requirements.

When conducting a literature review, use a table or a spreadsheet, if you know how, to organise the information you find. Record the full reference details of the sources as this will save you time later when compiling your reference list (see Table 18.5).

Overall, this chapter has provided an introduction to the types of assignments you can expect to complete at university, as well as outlined some tips and strategies with examples and templates for completing them. First, the chapter investigated essay assignments, including analytical and argumentative essays. It then examined case study assignments, followed by a discussion of the report format. Reflective writing , popular in nursing, education, and human services, was also considered. Finally, the chapter briefly addressed annotated bibliographies and literature reviews. The chapter also has a selection of templates and examples throughout to enhance your understanding and improve the efficacy of your assignment writing skills.

• Not all assignments at university are the same. Understanding the requirements of different types of assignments will assist in meeting the criteria more effectively.
• There are many different types of assignments. Most will require an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• An essay should have a clear and logical structure and use formal but reader-friendly language.
• Breaking your assignment into manageable chunks makes it easier to approach.
• Effective body paragraphs contain a topic sentence.
• A case study structure is similar to an essay, but you must remember to provide examples from the case or scenario to demonstrate your points.
• The type of report you may be required to write will depend on its purpose and audience. A report requires structured writing and uses headings.
• Reflective writing is popular in many disciplines and is used to explore feelings, experiences, opinions, or events to discover what learning or understanding has occurred. Reflective writing requires more than description. You need to be analytical, consider what has been learnt, and evaluate the impact of this on future actions.
• Annotated bibliographies teach you to research and evaluate sources and systematically organise your notes. They may be part of a larger assignment.
• Literature reviews require you to look across the literature and analyse and synthesise the information you find into themes.

Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Brookes University.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: A user’s guide . Palgrave Macmillan.

Ryan, M. & Ryan, M. (2013). Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development , 32(2), 244-257. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.661704

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, why should assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies be aligned.

To ensure that these three components of your course are aligned, ask yourself the following questions:

• Learning objectives: What do I want students to know how to do when they leave this course?
• Assessments: What kinds of tasks will reveal whether students have achieved the learning objectives I have identified?
• Instructional strategies: What kinds of activities in and out of class will reinforce my learning objectives and prepare students for assessments?

What if the components of a course are misaligned?

If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both student motivation and learning. Consider these two scenarios:

Your objective is for students to learn to apply analytical skills , but your assessment measures only factual recall . Consequently, students hone their analytical skills and are frustrated that the exam does not measure what they learned.

Your assessment measures students’ ability to compare and critique the arguments of different authors, but your instructional strategies focus entirely on summarizing the arguments of different authors. Consequently, students do not learn or practice the skills of comparison and evaluation that will be assessed.

What do well-aligned assessments look like?

This table presents examples of the kinds of activities that can be used to assess different types of learning objectives (adapted from the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy ).

This table does not list all possible examples of appropriate assessments. You can develop and use other assessments – just make sure that they align with your learning objectives and instructional strategies!

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• Beyond “the Grade”: Alternative Approaches to Assessment

While so-called "alternative" approaches to grading are not new, attention to them has increased in recent years. This has been especially true since 2020, when COVID's disruption of our conventional modes of in-person education forced many instructors to rethink their approaches to assessment. Hand in hand with this more pragmatic rethinking came ethical considerations, as living through a pandemic unfolded alongside ongoing protests throughout the US against systemic racism and police violence, further leading instructors to question the biases inherent in, and efficacy of, the models they had long been using.

Among the alternative grading approaches that have received the most attention are specifications grading , contract grading , mastery grading , and " ungrading ." Each of these approaches is "alternative" in so far as it diverges in some way from a so-called traditional model of grading, which in its simplest and oversimplified form generally includes many of the following features:

Grades are given by the instructor to each individual student

The grade is often, but not necessarily, accompanied by more substantive feedback

Graded assignments are "high stakes," often because they are few in number, come later in the term, and/or may not be revised or resubmitted

Students have little say in creating assignments or in which assignments they complete

Students have little say in setting their own learning goals and few opportunities to reflect on their work in a course.

In practice, these general features of so-called "traditional" grading show up in different combinations in any given course. Overall, courses employing "traditional" grading tend to be more oriented towards product over process, and instructors in these courses hold more power over the assessment process than students do. Nonetheless, courses that employ traditional grading are not uniform in the ways in which student learning is assessed and graded.       

We encourage Harvard instructors to learn about and consider adopting some or all of the features of one or more of these alternative approaches to grading not because we consider traditional approaches to be inherently flawed, ineffective, or obsolete, but rather because we believe that contemplating alternative approaches in tandem with more conventional practices inevitably raises valuable questions not only about the particulars of how we are assessing our students' learning, but also about why we are asking students to perform in the ways that we are. To recognize that there are a wide array of plausible approaches to grading is to recognize that perhaps the single most important attribute of successful assessment schemes is their intentionality. 

Why Consider Alternative Grading?

Criticisms of traditional grading systems include: 

Grading systems exacerbate stress and mental health challenges among students (Horowitz and Graf, 2019; Jones, 1993).

Grades decrease students' intrinsic motivation (Pulfrey et al, 2011; Chamberlain et al, 2018).

Grading decreases students' ability to learn from feedback, as students tend to focus on a letter/numerical grade and not the accompanying feedback (Schinske & Tanner, 2017; Kuepper-Tetzel & Gardner, 2021).

Grading perpetuates inequities between students (Link & Guskey 2019; Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2016; Feldman, 2018).

They may encourage students to be risk averse, nudging them towards courses and assignments in which they feel they can do well at the expense of new areas of potential interest and inquiry.

To combat these challenges, in recent years a significant number of individual faculty, educational researchers, and institutions from across higher education have invested in developing alternative approaches to grading—often referred to, broadly, as ungrading. While the exact details vary, these approaches typically:

Offer clear learning objectives that are aligned with how assignments are graded.

Provide transparent expectations for success.

Offer students regular and actionable feedback on their work.

Emphasize process over product, by providing students with multiple opportunities to meet expectations. If a student's first effort is not satisfactory, they may be able to revise and resubmit the work or complete another similar assignment.

Help students feel responsible for their learning and their grades by providing students with some agency over the breadth and depth of work that they undertake and giving students agency in defining their own goals and reflecting on their own growth as learner.

Offer a range of lower-stakes assignments, as opposed to a small number of higher-stakes assessments such as exams.

Overall, alternative grading aspires to recalibrate the way we evaluate and give feedback on students' work to incentivize learning and effort (rather than performance alone). These approaches provide clarity about expectations and provide students with the freedom to make mistakes as part of the natural process of learning.

A Brief Typology of Alternative Grading Approaches

Below we briefly describe four alternative grading strategies, which can be employed in a wide range of disciplines. We note that there is a lot of flexibility as to how instructors might implement any of these approaches, and that the approaches overlap with each other.

Specifications grading

In specifications grading, grades are based on the combination and number of assignments that students satisfactorily complete. The instructor designates bundles of assignments that map to different letter grades. Bundles that require more work and are more challenging correspond to higher grades. Students can choose which bundle(s) they would like to complete. 

Similar to mastery grading, the instructor defines clear learning objectives for all aspects of the course. Grading is based on meeting these objectives (satisfactory/unsatisfactory). Students typically have a small number of opportunities to resubmit work that didn't meet the standards.

Contract grading

With contract grading, the criteria for grades are determined by an agreement between the instructor and students at the beginning of the term. Each student signs a contract indicating what grade they plan to work towards, and contracts can be revisited during the term. Grades may correspond to completion of a certain percentage of work or completion of designated bundles of assignments (similar to specifications grading). Contract grading often emphasizes the learning process over the product, and as such, grading schemes may reward completion of activities (such as completing drafts and meeting individually with the instructor) as well as behaviors (such as being thoughtful in peer reviews and participating in discussions). Student work is graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.

Mastery grading

In mastery grading, grades are directly based on the degree to which students have met the course learning objectives. An instructor first develops an extensive list of learning objectives, and then creates assessments that are aligned with these objectives. Student work is assessed on the basis of whether or not it meets a specified subset of the course objectives; partial credit is not awarded. Students are allowed multiple attempts to show mastery; depending on the nature of the assignment, students might revise their original submission or submit new work in response to related questions. The final course grade is based on the total number of objectives that the students has mastered. An instructor might designate essential objectives that everyone must meet to receive a certain grade, as well as bonus objectives that students could meet for a higher grade.

In classes that utilize ungrading, students are responsible for reflecting on and assessing their own learning. Instructors provide regular feedback on student work, but feedback on individual assignments does not include a grade. Instructors provide extensive guidance to help students reflect on their progress towards meeting their own learning goals. At the end of the term (and often at the midterm), students assemble a portfolio of work and assign themselves an overall grade for their course work. Final grades are at the discretion of the instructor; many instructors report that it is more common that they decide to increase—rather than decrease—the grade that students assigned themselves.

Support for Alternative Grading

Harvard faculty members who employ alternative grading strategies see themselves as a mentor and coach; they note that providing extensive feedback and mentoring can be more time-intensive than traditional grading. Faculty also note that alternative grading requires a high degree of trust between students and instructors. Nonetheless, the benefits are great: faculty feel that they can focus on fostering students' growth and learning, without judging or ranking their students. Moreover, students develop a sense of agency about their learning. 

The Bok Center would be happy to meet with faculty who are interested in modifying their approaches to grading. We encourage faculty to identify elements that resonate with your goals and to incorporate small changes into your teaching.

For more information ...

Blum, & Kohn, A. (2020). Ungrading (First edition). West Virginia University Press.

Chamberlin, K., Yasué, M., & Chiang, I.-C. A. (2018). The impact of grades on student motivation. Active Learning in Higher Education .

Feldman, J. (2018). Grading for equity: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform schools and classrooms . Corwin Press.  

Horowitz, J. M., & Graf, N. (2019). Most US teens see anxiety and depression as a major problem among their peers. Pew Research Center, 20.

Jones, R. W. (1993). Gender-specific differences in the perceived antecedents of academic stress. Psychological Reports, 72(3), 739-743.

Malouff, J. & Thorsteinsson, E. (2016). "Bias in grading: A meta-analysis of experimental research findings. Australian Journal of Education .

Pulfrey, C., Buchs, C., & Butera, F. (2011). "Why grades engender performance-avoidance goals: The mediating role of autonomous motivation." Journal of Educational Psychology , 103(3), 683.

Schinske, & Tanner, K. (2017). "Teaching more by grading less (or differently)." CBE Life Sciences Education , 13(2), 159–166.

Stanny, & Nilson, L. B. (2014). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time . Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Streifer, & Palmer, M. (2020)."Alternative grading: Practices to support both equity and learning." University of Virginia: Center for Teaching Excellence.

Supiano, B. (2019). "Grades Can Hinder Learning: What Should Professors Use Instead?" Chronicle of Higher Education .

• Designing Your Course
• In the Classroom
• When/Why/How: Some General Principles of Responding to Student Work
• Consistency and Equity in Grading
• Assessing Class Participation
• Assessing Non-Traditional Assignments
• Getting Feedback
• Equitable & Inclusive Teaching
• Advising and Mentoring
• Teaching and Your Career
• Teaching Remotely
• Tools and Platforms
• The Science of Learning
• Bok Publications
• Other Resources Around Campus

Creating Inclusive Assignments and Assessments

This resource guide, adapted from from a LSA Technology Services webinar (full recording at the bottom of the page), details practices for creating inclusive assignments and assessments. Inclusive assignments and assessments focus on accessibility and leverage a variety of skillsets that students can use to demonstrate their learning. Whether you are assigning an individual or group assignment/assessment, it is vital to ensure that students understand what an inclusive assignment looks like by providing a clear rubric and roadmap for success. If instructors stress the importance of accessibility in individual and/or group assignments, accessibility becomes a learning objective for students as they strive to meet accessibility standards in their work.

Resource Goals:

• To define what accessibility and inclusive mean for assignments/assessments.
• To provide instructors with strategies to make individual and group assignments/assessments more inclusive.
• To encourage instructors to think about the different modalities of assessment for students.

Creating Inclusive Assignments and Assessments Resource Guide:

Related posts:, lsa technology services webinar on this topic:.

Opinion Stage » Blog » 7 Types of Assessment for Improving the Learning Process

7 Types of Assessment for Improving the Learning Process

Anyone who has been through school has most likely experienced the seven types of assessments for improving the learning process. The pre-tests educators used to give out at the start of every semester, term papers, portfolios, and exams, are a few examples of assessments you’ve gone through in your school years.

School isn’t exactly the same as it was back then. For example, students have new digital learning tools to explore. However, using these technologies in the classroom doesn’t always guarantee effective learning. Even today, one of the most effective processes in learning is assessment. It might not be new, but it’s still quite effective.

Unfortunately, for many students assessments have a negative connotation. For it to have an impact on learning, you must make sure to address that problem first. If not handled properly, the stress will inhibit their ability to learn.

In this guide, we go into detail about the assessment process. We define what it is and what it isn’t. We also cover seven types of assessment that improve the learning and teaching process.  

Create an Assessment in Minutes

What Is an Assessment?

Assessments refer to a wide array of methods and processes that enhance student learning. They can focus on an individual learner or an entire class of students. Either way, they should contribute to ongoing learning. 

To make that possible, assessments should provide insights into students’ learning needs. They should help you recognize what your students need to learn next. In addition, they must identify areas for growth. Assessment results allow you to design teaching programs that challenge your students’ capabilities. In turn, you can help your students gain new knowledge and skills. 

People often confuse testing with assessments. Although both enable educators to measure their students’ performance, they serve different functions. Test results only give insights into students’ performance. Since they can’t provide insights into students’ learning needs, tests alone can’t improve teaching programs. Assessments, on the other hand, can do all that and more. 

In recent years it has also become so much easier to independently develop online assessments that students can enjoy and learn from. For example, a teacher could very easily make a poll  or create a quiz that is both fun for the student and informative for the teacher. Here are some quiz templates that reflect the variety of possibilities one could choose from.

The Purpose of Assessments

Assessments are critical to the success of our educational systems. They can be used as evaluation systems for the individual. Often, they are also used to compare students’ performance against other populations. With several kinds of assessments available, it’s hard to keep track of their functions.

So, what are all these types of assessments for?

• Driving instruction

Pre-tests, as well as needs assessments, show educators what students know and what they  have yet to learn. When done well, educators can use their assessment data to refine their  methods and address students’ needs.

• Encouraging learning

Some types of assessments drive students’ motivation for learning. These assessments show  students what and how they should learn. They can also determine the ideal time students should spend learning new concepts or skills in a program. To encourage learning, you can choose the right form of assessment where students can redirect their energies.  

• Improving teaching methods

Another important function of an assessment is to enhance your teaching strategies. Gathering  feedback from students about your methods of instruction allows you to identify opportunities  for growth. Apart from this, it shows you how to improve your methods.

• Informing students of their learning progress

Effective assessments promote better self-awareness. They encourage students to identify their  strengths and recognize their weaknesses. Through constructive feedback, students can be more  prepared for the challenges to come. Moreover, it motivates them to achieve learning outcomes. Without assessments, there’s no way of knowing if students actually learn from their  lessons or if their understanding of them has progressed.

Principles of Assessment

There are different types of assessments in education. Regardless of their purpose and form, all assessments must meet a set of principles. They must meet educational standards, as well as students’ objectives. When you adhere to all of these phases, you can complete the final step in the process. Then, you can do it all over again.

For an assessment to be valid, it must meet all the criteria and learning outcomes. It should measure what it’s supposed to measure. For instance, if you intend to determine students’ problem-solving skills, you should avoid the types of assessment involving fact recall because they aren’t relevant to your goal.

Reliability ensures the consistency of the assessment data. If the process is replicated, it should meet the same outcomes. To do this, you must establish clear and consistent methods for setting, marking, or grading learning activities.

• Transparent

Transparency is also important in assessments. Clear and consistent assessment data should be available to students, educators, and other assessors who wish to review them.

Assessments should be fair to every student. Hence, they shouldn’t restrict a group or an individual from accomplishing the necessary learning activities. 

The methods you use shouldn’t interfere with the learning process. In short, they should be manageable. Thus, make sure all of the assessment tasks set reasonable demands on your students.

Building Confidence

One of your primary tasks as an educator is to make sure all the learners feel comfortable about being assessed. Since assessments are often equated with tests, they may cause some fear and anxiety. But if you let them understand the benefits of this whole process, they might slowly get past that. 

• Talk about the types of assessment

Talk to your students about what an assessment is and why it matters. Aside from that, you should let your students understand how you’re going to assess them and what criteria you’re going to use. By getting them comfortable and familiar with the process, they should get over that fear and anxiety.

• Motivate them

You have a very important role in building motivation as well. By showing them that you genuinely want to contribute to their growth, they will consequently feel motivated to do better.

• Give constructive feedback

After interpreting the assessment results, you can give constructive feedback to help your students grow. You can also go over the problem again to make sure they understand everything. Once they see their progress, they’ll understand how beneficial assessments are to their growth.

Create Your Own Online Assessment

The Assessment Cycle

A good assessment process should be a constant cycle of improvement. It consists of four simple yet necessary phases, which you must adhere to. In doing so, you can establish an assessment cycle that delivers continuous improvement to student learning.

• Goal identification

What do your students need to learn? That’s what you need to ask yourself at this point. Before anything else, you need to articulate your goals for student learning. In other words, you should establish what your students should be able to know or do after completing the class. Aside from setting clear outcomes, you must make sure they are measurable.

• Design and implementation

How can you improve your teaching? Assessment data reflects what students learn, not what they are taught. However, in the development stage, your primary concern is effective teaching. Thus, you must design activities that help students achieve the objectives you set in the planning phase. Not only that, you must ensure that these learning activities produce the assessment data required for the following phase.

• Review of assessment information

Have you met your learning outcomes? Check all of the activities students had to complete to fulfill your course requirements. By doing so, you can find out if students accomplished the learning objectives you established. You can also determine the extent of their achievement.

• Development of an action plan

What should you do with your insights? The assessment process is worthless if you don’t interpret the results. Aside from that, if your outcomes don’t show improvements or adjustments, that means your assessment process failed. But don’t worry. As long as you gathered and reviewed sufficient data, you can come up with an action plan. Thus, you can enhance student learning.

Types of Assessment in Education

There are several types of assessments in education. Each one comes with a unique set of methods and serves different purposes.

1. Diagnostic assessment

Diagnostic assessments let you understand your students’ academic readiness and learning needs. That is, their strengths and weaknesses. You identify their current knowledge of a certain subject so you can figure out what to teach and how to teach it.  

Diagnostic assessment examples

• Self-assessments

2. Formative assessment

According to Carnegie Mellon University’s formative assessment definition, its goal is to monitor student progress. You can use the results to deliver effective feedback that improves students’ learning, as well as your teaching. You can also use formative assessments to identify problem areas and address them immediately.

Formative assessment examples

• Homework assignments for exam reviews 
• Student feedback

3. Summative assessment

Unlike formative assessments, summative assessments focus on the final product itself instead of the journey. Therefore, you must conduct summative assessments at the end of a semester. They let you grasp what students have learned and how well they’ve learned it. 

Summative assessment examples

• High-stakes exams
• Term papers

4. Confirmative assessment

Even after you implement your instructions, you still need to conduct assessments to achieve continuous performance improvement. A confirmative assessment ensures the success of your instructions year after year. 

Confirmative assessment examples

5. Norm-referenced assessment

Through norm-referenced assessments, you can determine students’ proficiency by comparing it with local, state, or national standards.

Norm-referenced assessment examples

• Comparing students’ average grade with the national average
• Comparing students’ average grade with the state average

6. Criterion-referenced assessment

In a criterion-referenced assessment, a student’s performance is measured against a specific goal or fixed set of learning standards. They are meant to evaluate a student’s level of knowledge or skills about a particular topic.

Criterion-referenced assessment examples

• Advanced placement exams
• National assessment of educational progress

7. Ipsative assessment

Using this process, you assess a student’s performance by comparing it to their previous results. Ipsative assessments support effort-based attributions. Their primary goal is to motivate students to learn. 

Ipsative assessment examples

• Comparing students’ current performance with their best work
• Comparing students’ current performance with their previous performance

The Impact of the Different Types of Assessments

Indeed, the impact of assessment on educational improvement is a matter of debate. But it goes without saying that these assessments can establish the levels of acceptable performance for students.  Not to mention, they motivate educators to refine their practices and decision-makers to modify policies.

• School and system accountability

School districts use their own assessment methods to measure the success of their own programs against national standards or to monitor individual student learning. 

If you align all these different types of assessment with learning goals, you can welcome change at all levels of the education system. The combination gives educators a clear direction. Furthermore, it could serve as a catalyst for positive instructional or curricular change.

• Teacher evaluation

As mentioned, student assessment is crucial to the learning and teaching process. By linking student performance with learning objectives, you can measure the effectiveness of your teaching methods and refine them to enhance your students’ growth.

• Students’ active involvement in their own learning

Students can finally take an active part in their own learning because of assessments. They drive self-awareness and appropriate learning. That’s what happens when an assessment is well-planned and aligned with the objectives. By looking into the assessment results, students can work on achieving the intended outcomes.

• College admission

Some forms of assessment help students and teachers pave the way for a better future. That is, they help you get into a good school. For instance, achieving higher marks on your SATs or ACTs will get you into top universities. Other important types of assessment that influence college admission are placement tests, which are administered by a university or a college.

Online Assessment

Thanks to technology, evaluators can move away from the traditional pen and paper method to a more efficient and accurate method ⁠ — online assessments.

Educational systems, as well as companies, can save a whole lot of resources by making the transition.  You don’t have to hire a psychologist or other skilled personnel to supervise the assessment. Multiple students or trainees can also take the assessment at the same time. As a result, you can gather all the required data faster without any hassle.

Of course, all the benefits of an online assessment depends on a number of factors: the participants, the organization conducting the exam, and the assessment platform used.

Opinion Stage , for example, is an interactive content creation platform where you can design your assessments from scratch or choose from their many engaging templates. More importantly, the platform lets you collect assessment data with ease, allowing you to evaluate the results and monitor performance improvement. 

Much like how learning is a lifelong process, assessment is a continuous process. It can help you determine the effectiveness of your teaching methods. Using different forms of assessment, you can even monitor students’ progress.

Before all of that, you must choose between the seven types of assessment. Instead of weighing their benefits, you should select assessments that match your goals and objectives. Then, you must implement them throughout the learning process. If, for example, students have a grammar problem, you can go over that lesson again and make sure everything is clear.

Seeing that you value their growth more than their scores, your students might slowly get rid of their anxiety. Thus, your assessments can leave a more meaningful impact and positive change.

In conclusion, an assessment is a complex yet fundamental part of education. To promote growth and learning, you should invest your time and effort into understanding this process.

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Milwaukee's property assessments have gone up all over. The city assessor explains why

Milwaukee's 2024 property assessments are landing in mailboxes, and some are seeing significant increases in the valuation of their homes and businesses.

Citywide, values increased 17.4%, while all aldermanic districts saw an increase of at least 14% for residential properties and at least 10% for commercial properties,  according to data from the Assessor's Office .

"The recent property assessments that have been sent to residents have raised a lot of questions and caused much frustration," Ald. Milele Coggs said in a statement.

She said she has asked the Assessor's Office to come before a Common Council committee to answer questions and provide information about its process for determining real estate values.

In the wake of the assessments' release , the Journal Sentinel sat down with City Assessor Nicole Larsen to ask why assessments increased so much and what residents can do if they believe their assessment is incorrect.

Here's what she said, with answers edited for length and clarity:

Why did Milwaukee property assessments increase so much in 2024?

Nicole Larsen: A couple of reasons.

In 2023 we had a "maintenance" year, which meant we carried the values from 2022 forward to 2023. So, when the 2024 assessments came out, you're really seeing two years of increases because we didn't account for those increases in 2023.

It comes down to what the real estate market is doing. Assessed values are really a reflection of what is happening in the real estate market, and it's actually kind of a delayed response. So, in 2024, we're looking at what the real estate market did in the latter part of 2022 and the first about three quarters of 2023. Then we place those values on properties as of Jan. 1, 2024.

Even with the high interest rates, prices are still high in Milwaukee, and they're staying that way.

Why do a 'maintenance' year in 2023?

Nicole Larsen: In 2020 during the pandemic, there were a record number of objections to assessments filed.

Between the Assessor's Office's resources, the time the Board of Review has and the number of objections, a backlog developed.

I came aboard in January 2022 and those were still backed up. So, what we wanted to do is catch up on those objections, and we've done a really good job at it. I think we have under 20 that remain outstanding when there were hundreds when I came aboard.

We've just about cleaned up that backlog, but we were still working on it for 2023.

Another issue was staffing. There was a lot of turnover in 2021 and we saw some in 2022 as well, so when you don't have the staff to process those objections, that process obviously slows down.

The Assessor's Office doesn't come to each property during a 'revaluation' year, correct?

Nicole Larsen: In a perfect world, yes, we would get into every property, but we have about 23 appraisers overseeing 151,000 taxable properties. So, no, we don't get into every property every year.

For our residential valuations, we use computer-assisted mass appraisal, and we build models based off of the sales that have happened in the real estate market.

The assessed values have increased by different amounts across Milwaukee's aldermanic districts. Why is that?

Nicole Larsen: It's a reflection of the sales.

When you have districts that have properties that have a lower value overall ― and that's not a value judgment, it's just a strict dollar value ― when you have an increasing market, you're going to see a greater percent increase.

In District 1 on the city's north side, for instance, the median assessment was $85,500 in 2023 compared to $109,100 in 2024.

In contrast, the median assessment in District 14 that covers Bay View was $202,000 in 2023 compared to $239,600 in 2024.

There's more room to go up in districts with the lower-value properties than in districts with higher-value properties.

Also, when people get priced out of neighborhoods like the east side or Bay View, they move into other neighborhoods, increasing those values.

What would you say to people who worry they are being priced out of their homes?

Nicole Larsen: That's a valid concern.

I have a couple of responses.

An increase in the assessment doesn't guarantee an increase in taxes. Looking at the dollar amount doesn't tell the full story.

You really have to look at your percentage increase as compared to the citywide average percentage increase. If your increase is above the citywide average, you may see an increase in your taxes. If it's below that citywide average, you would see a decrease in your taxes.

I'm qualifying this because of the Milwaukee Public Schools referendum .

(Voters in April approved allowing the Milwaukee School Board to raise property taxes above state set limits. The extra spending is  projected  to increase Milwaukee property taxes by about $2.16 per $1,000 of property value.)

There are positive aspects to an increase in value, too. For many people if not most, your home is your largest investment and your highest-valued asset. Like any other asset, we want those to appreciate.

What else should people know about Milwaukee assessments this year?

Nicole Larsen: One question I always ask people is, do you think you could sell your property for the value where we have it assessed? Oftentimes, the answer is yes. That's a pretty good indicator that we are on target with the assessment.

If people question that, I say my first step is reach out to a broker and ask them to give you an opinion or a comparative price analysis and see what other similar properties are going for. They often do that for free.

If you think that we're way off base, a better way to get a more precise valuation is to contact an appraiser and have an appraisal conducted.

We always ask people to call us (414-286-6565) and ask us what the property record card shows. We might have incorrect information.

If we have the square footage wrong, if the bathroom count is wrong, if they think that we have something recorded incorrectly, let us know because our goal really is accuracy.

A lot of people think we just want to raise the assessment because we want to raise taxes. That is absolutely not at all.

The property assessment is to ensure fair taxation, and it determines the portion of the tax levy that every taxable property owner is responsible for.

The Assessor's Office does not set the tax levy. That is set by the budgets adopted by taxing jurisdictions that include the city, Milwaukee County and Milwaukee Public Schools.

Alison Dirr can be reached at [email protected].