Classroom Assessment: Assessment of, for, and as Learning
Format: 60-minute workshop
Summary: Assessing student’s work is a core part of a teacher’s job. This workshop will review the concepts of assessment-of-learning (AoL), assessment-for-learning (AfL), and assessment-aslearning (AaL). I will then demonstrate how to develop classroom assessments based on course objectives and content, focusing on formative assessment (AfL) and peer assessment (AaL). I will also demonstrate how to analyze classroom assessment data using the free software packages jMetrik, Ministeps, and Minifacs.
Background: Assessment of students’ work is a core part of a teacher’s job but published literature emphasizes summative assessment, or assessment of learning (AoL), such as for assigning course grades. More recently, formative assessment, or assessment for learning (AfL), has been emphasized for classroom assessment (Hansen, 2024), while the use of assessment tasks as a tool for learning, known as assessment as learning (AaL), has also attracted attention.
Content: I will demonstrate the development of classroom assessments, focusing on assessment of, for, and as learning, and will demonstrate three software packages for test analysis. We will use jMetrik (Meyer, 2018) to analyze a sample dataset from a placement and achievement test (AoL), MiniSteps (Linacre, 2020) to analyze classroom formative assessments (AfL), and MiniFacs (Linacre, 2010) to analyze classroom peer-assessment data (AaL).
Aims: To illustrate the conceptual differences between AoL, AfL, and AaL and to demonstrate the processes of designing classroom assessments based on course objectives and content.
Outcomes: Participants will learn the concepts of AoL, AfL, and AaL and the process of developing test specifications based on course objectives and content for these different assessment purposes. They will learn how to format and import data into the jMetrik, MiniSteps, and MinFacs software packages and how to interpret the results of statistical analysis of classroom assessments.
References
Hansen, C. (2024). Assessment for Learning: a summary of concepts, tactics and strategies. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28213.28640
Linacre, J. M. (2010). Minifac. Retrieved 7 February from http://www.winsteps.com/minifac.htm
Linacre, J. M. (2020). Winsteps (Version 4.5.0). In http://www.winsteps.com
Meyer, J. P. (2018). jMetrik 4.11. In https://itemanalysis.com/jmetrik-download/
Explanation of this Sample Abstract: This abstract was written just to illustrate the required sections of a practice-oriented workshop submission. The major weakness is that 60 minutes would not be sufficient time to complete all the promised tasks. Any one of the three parts of this workshop would require 60 minutes to complete.
The cited work by Hansen is available online, but it is not clear if this is actually a peerreviewed work or not. It would be better to cite three separate sources explaining the background of AoL, AfL, and AaL.
