Meaning and definition of evaluation

1. Evaluation:- Evaluation is a broader term than ‘test’. It includes all types and
examinations in it. Its purpose is not only to check the knowledge of the learner.
But all the aspects of the learner.
Evaluation is an important component of the teaching-learning process. It helps
teachers and learners to improve teaching and learning. Evaluation is a continuous
process not a periodic exercise. It helps in forming the values of judgement,
educational status, or achievement of students. Evaluation in one form or the other is
inevitable in teaching-learning, as in all fields of activity of education judgements need
to be made. Hence, it is desirable that teachers must acquire knowledge and
understanding about the various aspects of evaluation and its application in
classrooms. Since we are confined to educational evaluation, at the very beginning let
us provide you, with the major elements of the Teaching-Learning Process and the role
of evaluation in the teaching-learning process. This unit will provide you with the need,
importance, concept and characteristics of evaluation. Evaluation, measurement and
assessment are also explained, in order to clarify distinction among these terms.
According to Hanna- “The process of gathering and interpreted evidence changes in
the behavior of all students as they progress through school is called evaluation”.
Muffat says – “Evaluation is a continuous process and is concerned with than the
formal academic achievement of pupils. It is interpreted in the development of the
individual in terms of desirable behavioral change relation of his feeling, thinking, and
actions”.

Characteristics of evaluation in education

1. Continuous process:-Evaluation is a continuous process. It leads together with

Teaching-learning process.
2. Comprehensive:-Evaluation is comprehensive as it includes everything can be
evaluated.
3. Child-Centered:-Evaluation is a child-centered process which gives importance to
the learning process, not to the teaching process.
4. Remedial:-Evaluation comments on the result which helps in remedial work it is
not a remedy Evaluation is remedial in nature.
5. Cooperative process:-Evaluation is a cooperative process involving students,
teachers parents, and peer-groups.
6. Teaching Methods:-Effectiveness of teaching methods is evaluation.
7. Common practice:-evaluation is a common practice among the proper growth of
the child mentally and physically.
8. Multiple Aspects:-it is concerned with the total personality of students.
Principles of Evaluation

1. Principle of continuity:- Evaluation is a continuous process, which goes on

continuously as long as the student is related to education. Evaluation is an
important part of the teaching-learning process. Whatever the learner learn, it
should be evaluated daily. Only then the learner could have better command on
language.
 2. Principle of comprehensiveness:- By comprehensiveness we means to assess all
aspects of the learner’s personality.it concerned with all-round development of
the child.
3. Principle of Objectives:- Evaluation should be based on the objectives of
education. It should be helpful in finding out where there is a need for redesigning
and refraining the learner’s behavior.
4. Principle of Learning Experience:– Evaluation is also related to the learning
experiences of the learner. In this process, we don’t evaluate only the curricular
activities of the learner but his co-curricular activities are also evaluated. Both
types of activates are helpful in increasing learners experiences.
5. Principle of Broadness:– Evaluation should be broad enough to cover all the
aspects of life.
6. Principle of Child – Centeredness:- Child is in the center, in the process of
evaluation. The behavior of the child is the central point for assessment. It helps
a teacher to know the grasping power of a child and usefulness of teaching
material.
7. Principle of Application:- During the teaching and learning process the child may
learn many things, but it may not be useful in his daily life. He can’t apply it, then
it is useless to find. It can be known through evaluation. Evaluation judges that
student is better to apply his knowledge and understanding in different situations
in order to succeed in life.

NEED AND IMPORTANCE OF EVALUATION

Evaluation is inevitable in teaching-learning process. It is as inevitable in classroom teaching as it
is in all fields of activity when judgements need to be made, however simple or complex the
consideration involved. All of us are well aware, that during the course of a school day, teachers,
principals and other school personnel make many decisions about students and help them to
make many decisions for themselves. Effective decision-making process involves evaluation. For
example, the division of students into various categories, or ranks within the total group, involves
measurement of their achievement and interpretation of these. The need of evaluation is so
intrinsic to the teaching-learning situation that even hasty consideration seems to indicate the
advantages of a systematic use of planned evaluation. Evaluation helps teachers to make better
evaluative judgements. All of us are aware that we carry out activities in various aspects of
teaching-learning process like: a) f31fil classroom objectives b) diagnose learning difficulties of
students C) determine readiness for new learning experiences d) form students' classroom groups
for special activities e) assist students in their problems of adjustment f) prepare reports of pupils'
progress. In all these activities, we cannot escape making' evaluative judgements. Decisions must
be made and action must be taken. The more accurately we judge our pupils, the more effective
we. will be in directing their learning. The understanding of the principles and procedures of
evaluation is very much needed in making more intelligent decisions in directing pupils progress
towards, worth wise educational goals.

1.6 CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD EVALUATION Haviqg defined evaluation, 'let us

turn ow attention to the basic features that should characterise a 'good' evaluation.
Evaluation should, ideally, be valid, reliable, practicable, fair and useful. Let us now
discuss these one by one.
Validity
 A valid evaluation is one which actually tests what is sets out to test i.e., one which
actually measures the behaviour described by the objective(s), under scrutiny.
Obviously, no one would deliberately construct an evaluation item to test irrelevant
material but very often non- I valid test items are in fact used e.g. questions that are
intended to test rgall of factual material but which actually test tbe candidate's powers
of reasoning, or questions which assume a level of pre-knowledge that the candidates
do not necessarily possess. i We see that validity related problems are common
weakness of many of the widely used test items. For example, a simple science
question given to school children ('Name the products of the combusted of carbon in an
adequate supply of oxygen') produces a much higher number of correct answers when
the world combustion is replaced 9 'burning'. This shows that the original question has
problems of validity because it is to some extent, testing language and vocabulary skills
other than the basic science involved.
Reliability
The reliability is a measure of the consistency with which the question, test or
examination produces the same result under different but comparable conditions. A
reliable evaluation item gives reproduceable scores with similar populations of
students. It is, therefore, indecent- ! dent of the characteristics of individual evaluators.
This is often difficult to achieve in practice. It is obviously important to have reasonable
reliable evaluation procedures when a large number of individual evaluator assess the
same question (e.g. in Central Board Examination). A student answer which receives a
score of 75 per cent from one marker and 35 per cent from 1 another reveals a patently
unreliable evaluation. Besides this Marker Examiner reliability also plays its role in this
phenomenon. Need, Concept and Characteristics of EvaIuation In order to maintain
reliability, one evaluative question should test only one &ing at a time I and give the
candidates no other option. The evaluation should also adequately reflect the I
qbjectives of the teaching unit. We may note that reliability and validity factors in an
evaluation are not directly linked. For example, a test or examination may be totally
reliable I and yet have very low validity. Reliability and validity are closely related. A
validity must be reliable i.e., validity includes reliability, but it may happen that a reliable
test may not be ! valid, e.g., time given by various watches may be reliable but not
valid.
Practicability
Evaluation procedure should be realistic, practical and efficient in tern of their cost, time
taken and ease of application. It may be an ideal procedure of evaluation but may not
be put into practice. This is not to be encouraged. For example, in practical examination
of students, it may be convenient to assign different experiments instead of assigning
one experiment to all students. By doing this, the problem of having various semf
apparatus for conducting one experiment can be avoided, but this may not be
practicable.
Fairness
Evaluating must be fair to all students. This can be possible by accurate reflecting of
range of expeuted behaviours as desired by the course objectives. To keep fairness in
evaluation, it is also desired that students should know exactly how they are to be
evaluated. This means that students should be provided information about evaluation
such as nature of the materials on which they are to be examined (i.e., Context and
Objectives), the form and structure of the examination, length ofthe examination and
the value (in terms of marks) of each component of the course.
Usefulness
A Evaluation should also be useM for students. Feedback from evaluation must be
made available to the students and help them to prove their current strengths and
weaknesses. By knowing their strength and weakness, students can think of further
improvement. Evaluation should duggest all the needful requirements for their
improvement. The requirements may be in tern of improvement in the content to be
taught, teaching methods and style of learning. Hence, evaluation is very usefhl in
diagnoising weakness and remedying them.
Formative and Summative Assessment
Assessment is the process of gathering data. More specifically, assessment is
the ways instructors gather data about their teaching and their students’ learning
(Hanna & Dettmer, 2004). The data provide a picture of a range of activities using
different forms of assessment such as: pre-tests, observations, and examinations.
Once these data are gathered, you can then evaluate the student’s
performance. Evaluation, therefore, draws on one’s judgment to determine the
overall value of an outcome based on the assessment data. It is in the decision-
making process then, where we design ways to improve the recognized
weaknesses, gaps, or deficiencies.

Types of Assessment

There are three types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative.

Although are three are generally referred to simply as assessment, there are distinct
differences between the three.

Formative Assessment
Formative assessment provides feedback and information during the instructional
process, while learning is taking place, and while learning is occurring. Formative
assessment measures student progress but it can also assess your own progress
as an instructor. For example, when implementing a new activity in class, you can,
through observation and/or surveying the students, determine whether or not the
activity should be used again (or modified). A primary focus of formative assessment
is to identify areas that may need improvement. These assessments typically are
not graded and act as a gauge to students’ learning progress and to determine
teaching effectiveness (implementing appropriate methods and activities).

Types of Formative Assessment

 Observations during in-class activities; of students non-verbal feedback during lecture

 Homework exercises as review for exams and class discussions)
 Reflections journals that are reviewed periodically during the semester
  Question and answer sessions, both formal—planned and informal—spontaneous
 Conferences between the instructor and student at various points in the semester
 In-class activities where students informally present their results
 Student feedback collected by periodically answering specific question about the instruction
and their self-evaluation of performance and progress

Summative Assessment
Summative assessment takes place after the learning has been completed and
provides information and feedback that sums up the teaching and learning process.
Typically, no more formal learning is taking place at this stage, other than incidental
learning which might take place through the completion of projects and
assignments.

Rubrics, often developed around a set of standards or expectations, can be used for
summative assessment. Rubrics can be given to students before they begin working
on a particular project so they know what is expected of them (precisely what they
have to do) for each of the criteria. Rubrics also can help you to be more objective
when deriving a final, summative grade by following the same criteria students used
to complete the project.

High-stakes summative assessments typically are given to students at the end of a

set point during or at the end of the semester to assess what has been learned and
how well it was learned. Grades are usually an outcome of summative assessment:
they indicate whether the student has an acceptable level of knowledge-gain—is the
student able to effectively progress to the next part of the class? To the next course
in the curriculum? To the next level of academic standing? See the section
“Grading” for further information on grading and its affect on student achievement.

Summative assessment is more product-oriented and assesses the final product,

whereas formative assessment focuses on the process toward completing the
product. Once the project is completed, no further revisions can be made. If,
however, students are allowed to make revisions, the assessment becomes
formative, where students can take advantage of the opportunity to improve.

Types of Summative Assessment

 Examinations (major, high-stakes exams)

 Final examination (a truly summative assessment)
 Term papers (drafts submitted throughout the semester would be a formative assessment)
 Projects (project phases submitted at various completion points could be formatively
assessed)
 Portfolios (could also be assessed during it’s development as a formative assessment)
 Performances
 Student evaluation of the course (teaching effectiveness)
 Instructor self-evaluation

What Is the Difference Between Formative and Summative Assessment?

If formative assessment measures how a student is learning during a course of

study, summative assessment is designed to measure “how much” a student has
learned after a unit or course has reached its completion. One way in which the two
are commonly distinguished is that formative is considered assessment for learning
while summative is considered assessment of learning. Formative assessment can
happen as frequently as a teacher needs, and the information gleaned can impact
one’s teaching in real time.

Summative assessment provides teachers with an overview of what students have

learned throughout a particular unit of study—a semester, a full year, or, in the case
of the SAT, all the cumulative knowledge and skills that they have gained over a
long span of time. Summative assessment can also help teachers determine if their
students are ready to proceed to the next level. Have they gained the necessary
knowledge and skills to graduate to the next course or grade?

Because summative assessment can carry high stakes, such as program admission
or final grades, it is important to have the assessment be valid and reliable. Multiple-
choice items should be written carefully, and written and oral responses should have
clear rubrics and consistent evaluation in order to give accurate, reliable measures
of student achievement.

Lower stakes does not mean less importance, however. “Although formative
assessments have lower stakes, they are really changing the learning trajectory for
students,” says David Bain, SVP, Innovation and Analytics at HMH. “They
are more important because they change the student’s learning path. Teachers
make instructional and programmatic decisions based on these assessments.”

Both forms of assessment have effective uses but can leave gaps in our overall
understanding if not used wisely and in conjunction with one another.

“With formative assessment you stand a much better chance of getting a clear
picture of what the students learned that day or week, but you won’t be able to
determine what they will retain over the course of time from that particular
assessment,” says Robert A. Southworth, Jr., EdD, president of The SchoolWorks
Lab. “With summative assessment, you can see what they retained, but at that point
it is too late to change your teaching and correct the past. Ideally, both forms of
assessment should be combined into an integrated system that can deliver learning
data all along the way.”

Similarities Between Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative and summative assessment in the classroom can often take the same
shape. An essay demonstrating knowledge of the American Revolution, for
example, could be assigned in the middle of a unit to give a teacher a clear read on
what a student has learned thus far. Or it could be assigned at the end of the
semester as a summative wrap-up of everything the student has learned during the
unit.

So while similarities exist in the methods used to measure student understanding

and progress, we should consider formative and summative assessments in the light
of how we intend to use the results. Will the assessment deliver insights that can be
used immediately to change a student’s learning experience? Or might the insights
be used more broadly; e.g., to look back over an entire course of study or evaluate a
student population as a whole?

“The distinction between formative and summative assessment is primarily related

to the ways in which assessment results are used, as many assessments developed
for formative purposes can be used for summative purposes and vice
versa,” according to UC Berkeley education professors Dante D. Dixson and Frank
C. Worrell.