essay type assessment

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

17.6: What are the benefits of essay tests?

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 87692

• Jennfer Kidd, Jamie Kaufman, Peter Baker, Patrick O'Shea, Dwight Allen, & Old Dominion U students
• Old Dominion University

Learning Objectives

• Understand the benefits of essay questions for both Students and Teachers
• Identify when essays are useful

Introduction

Essays, along with multiple choice, are a very common method of assessment. Essays offer a means completely different than that of multiple choice. When thinking of a means of assessment, the essay along with multiple choice are the two that most come to mind (Schouller).The essay lends itself to specific subjects; for example, a math test would not have an essay question. The essay is more common in the arts, humanities and the social sciences(Scouller). On occasion an essay can be used used in both physical and natural sciences as well(Scouller). As a future history teacher, I will find that essays will be an essential part of my teaching structure.

The Benefits for Students

By utilizing essays as a mean of assessments, teachers are able to better survey what the student has learned. Multiple choice questions, by their very design, can be worked around. The student can guess, and has decent chance of getting the question right, even if they did not know the answer. This blind guessing does not benefit the student at all. In addition, some multiple choices can deceive the student(Moore). Short answers, and their big brother the essay, work in an entirely different way. Essays remove this factor. in a addition, rather than simply recognize the subject matter, the student must recall the material covered. This challenges the student more, and by forcing the student to remember the information needed, causes the student to retain it better. This in turn reinforces understanding(Moore). Scouller adds to this observation, determining that essay assessment "encourages students' development of higher order intellectual skills and the employment of deeper learning approaches; and secondly, allows students to demonstrate their development."

"Essay questions provide more opportunity to communicate ideas. Whereas multiple choice limits the options, an essay allows the student express ideas that would otherwise not be communicated." (Moore)

The Benefits for Teachers

The matter of preparation must also be considered when comparing multiple choice and essays. For multiple choice questions, the instructor must choose several questions that cover the material covered. After doing so, then the teacher has to come up with multiple possible answers. This is much more difficult than one might assume. With the essay question, the teacher will still need to be creative. However, the teacher only has to come up with a topic, and what the student is expected to cover. This saves the teacher time. When grading, the teacher knows what he or she is looking for in the paper, so the time spent reading is not necessarily more. The teacher also benefits from a better understanding of what they are teaching. The process of selecting a good essay question requires some critical thought of its own, which reflects onto the teacher(Moore).

Multiple Choice. True or False. Short Answer. Essay. All are forms of assessment. All have their pros and cons. For some, they are better suited for particular subjects. Others, not so much. Some students may even find essays to be easier. It is vital to understand when it is best to utilize the essay. Obviously for teachers of younger students, essays are not as useful. However, as the age of the student increase, the importance of the essay follows suit. That essays are utilized in essential exams such as the SAT, SOLs and in our case the PRAXIS demonstrates how important essays are. However, what it ultimately comes down to is what the teacher feels what will best assess what has been covered.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

1)What Subject would most benefit from essays?

B: Mathematics for the Liberal Arts

C: Survey of American Literature

2)What is an advantage of essay assessment for the student?

A) They allow for better expression

B) There is little probability for randomness

C) The time taken is less overall

D) A & B

3)What is NOT a benefit of essay assessment for the teacher

A)They help the instructor better understand the subject

B)They remove some the work required for multiple choice

C)The time spent on preparation is less

D) There is no noticeable benefit.

4)Issac is a teacher making up a test. The test will have multiple sections: Short answer, multiple choice, and an essay. What subject does Issac MOST LIKELY teach?

References Cited

1)Moore, S.(2008) Interview with Scott Moore, Professor at Old Dominion University

2)Scouller, K. (1998). The influence of assessment method on students' learning approaches: multiple Choice question examination versus assignment essay. Higher Education 35(4), pp. 453–472

Assessment & Feedback: Types of Assessment

• Types of Assessments
• Presentations
• Poster Presentations
• Understanding your assessment task
• Assessment Criteria
• Interpreting & implementing feedback

What types of assessment will I do?

Essays and exams are traditional types of assessment that you might have encountered, but at university there is a wide range of assessment types that will often be different depending on the discipline you are studying.  Coursework is quite broad and course specific, ranging from traditional essays to vlogs, poster presentations, leaflets, policy briefs, business reports and much more. Depending on your course, you might also attend field trips, conduct work labs or studios, complete internships or attend clinical placements.

Your assessments will be either summative or formative.

What is a summative assessment? Summative means that assessment is designed for you to show how you meet the learning outcomes of the course and is weighted towards your final grade.

What is a formative assessment? Formative is to help you practice and the best opportunity for you to get feedback.

Below are some examples of assessments you may do. This is not an exhaustive list and you may encounter some other types depending on your discipline.

You can find detailed assessment guides for the following;

• Academic Writing
• Dissertations

Types of assessments

• Case Studies
• Research Proposals
• Lab Reports

An essay is a traditional approach to academic assessment, a structured piece of written of work based on meeting learning outcomes/ assessment criteria using academic standards of writing. You may be asked to write different types of essays throughout your course.

Argument essays

• Argument or argumentative essays are similar to discussion essays in that you have to explore different sides of an argument. 
• However, the argumentative essay will focus more on one aspect of the argument, so you will have to find strong evidence to support your line of argument.
• This does not mean that you can ignore counter arguments, but it does mean that you have to try and persuade the reader that you are making a good case.

Compare and Contrast essays

• Compare and contrast essays explore the similarities and differences of two or more things (e.g., two theories, methods or historical periods)
• There are two main ways to structure this kind of essay using a block approach or a point-by-point approach.
• The block approach involves giving all the arguments for and against for one subject first before moving on to consider all the arguments for and against for another subject. 
• The point-by-point structure considers all similarities and differences for one subject. 
• The point-by-point structure is generally clearer because it ensures that similarities and differences are stated immediately.

Reflective Essays

• Reflective writing is common in practical courses such as education and health.
• In this kind of writing, you may have to explore the relationship between theory and your own professional practice.  
• It may also involve personal reflection on your experiences of an aspect of practice using a particular model of reflection (e.g., Gibbs or Kolb’s Reflective Cycle).
• As with all assignments, essay requirements can vary, so study the essay instructions very carefully.
• A case study requires you to analyse a specific situation and to explore how its different characteristics relate to theory, legislation and professional standards.  
• The case may refer to a real-life or hypothetical event, organisation, individual or group of people and/or issue.  
• Sometimes, you may have to think of solutions or recommendations for future action.
• Make sure you check the assessment task very carefully so that you are clear on the exact nature of the task and of the case study itself.
• The structure of case study can vary from discipline to discipline but may include a Table of contents—Introduction—Discussion/Analysis—Conclusion—Reference List—Appendices.
• A report is a structured document that provides information, such as factual data, insights and recommendations, about a particular topic, issue, event, or subject matter.
• It is typically written to convey the findings, analysis, and conclusions of a research study, investigation, or inquiry.
• Reports are often used in disciplines such as accounting, finance or management and marketing.
• They often focus on case studies from the real world of business and require you to apply theory to real-world situations in order to explore problems and to suggest solutions or make recommendations.
• If a simulated situation is being used as the basis for your report, you may have to think carefully about your audience (e.g., the CEO of a company) and how this may affect your report.
• As with all assessment types, read the task carefully and structure your report accordingly.

You can find more guidance on reports here .

A portfolio is a collection of work that you have created and compiled over a period of time.  It helps to demonstrate your skills and abilities, as it makes your learning or artistic/academic development more concrete and visible. 

These are often produced as part of a project or placement, consisting of a collection of writing produced on a regular basis and then collated together into one larger piece of work.

Depending on whether your portfolio is part of your course assessment or developed for prospective employers, your portfolio should:

• Demonstrate your engagement in higher levels of thinking through enquiry and reflection
• Display your level of artistic/intellectual skill
• Present your capacity to translate your life experiences, including work, education, community service, extra-curricular or travel into evidence or artifact for learning and creativity
• Serve as an interesting conversation starter that will help you stand out as an artist or practitioner.

You can find more guidance on portfolios here .

Presentations require you to usually produce a visual element such as a poster/ creative artefact/ PowerPoint as well as verbally present your work. This may be on your own or as part of a group.

You can find more guidance and support on Presentations here .

For guidance on Poster Presentations please check here .

• A research proposal is usually a concise summary or overview of your proposed research.
• It outlines the central questions you intend to explore and provides a brief review of the literature in your chosen area.
• In other words, it provides the reader with a good idea of what is already known about the research area.
• A typical structure might include an introduction – literature review – methodology and reference list.

You can find more information on research proposals here .

• The requirements for dissertations may vary from subject to subject, so always check with your department before you begin.
• It involves an extensive review of existing literature and research, the formulation of a hypothesis or research objective, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of findings.
• Find out as much as you can, for example the word count and any requirements regarding structure.
• Longer pieces of writing like this may contain a number of different sections including an abstract—introduction—Literature review—Results—Discussion –Conclusion—References—Appendices.
• For extended pieces of writing and research, it is important to manage your time and your workload as effectively as possible.

You can find more information about dissertations here .

• Laboratory reports are also called scientific or experimental reports and they represent an important assessment type in the sciences.
• Typically, laboratory reports document the reasons for conducting experiments – the procedure or methodology used – the results or findings from the experiment—a discussion about the implications of the findings and finally a conclusion and recommendations.
• Laboratory reports should be clearly written so that, in theory, the reader could replicate the same experiment.
• A blog can be seen as a collection of short writings, often posted online format, on a regular basis.
• When creating blogs for academic purpose the assignment brief often requires you to focus on reflective writing about a particular topic or practice or project.

Vlogs is short for video blogs which are visual recording of you academically discussing a given topic/s. You are often still expected to use academic and/ or professional language as well as keep to academic standards by ensuring what you are talking about is backed by evidence and references.

The requirements and guidance for video assignments will be given to you by your course tutor. You may be producing a video on your own or with a small group of peers. The content of the video will depend on the individual assignment.

Further Reading

• Next: Types of Assessments >>
• Last Updated: Sep 4, 2023 2:54 PM
• URL: https://libguides.uos.ac.uk/assessment-feedback

➔ About the Library

➔ Meet the Team

➔ Customer Service Charter

➔ Library Policies & Regulations

➔ Privacy & Data Protection

Essential Links

➔ A-Z of eResources

➔ Frequently Asked Questions

➔Discover the Library

➔Referencing Help

➔ Print & Copy Services

➔ Service Updates

Library & Learning Services, University of Suffolk, Library Building, Long Street, Ipswich, IP4 1QJ

✉ Email Us: [email protected]

✆ Call Us: +44 (0)1473 3 38700

• Campus Maps
• Faculties & Schools

Now searching for:

• Home  
• Courses  
• Subjects  
• Design standards  
• Methods  
• Exams  
• Online exams  
• Interactive oral assessment  
• Report  
• Case study analysis or scenario-based questions  
• Essay  
• Newspaper article/editorial  
• Literature review  
• Student presentations  
• Posters/infographics  
• Portfolio  
• Reflection  
• Annotated bibliography  
• OSCE/Online Practical Exam  
• Viva voce  
• Marking criteria and rubrics  
• Review checklist  
• Alterations  
• Moderation  
• Feedback  
• Teaching  
• Learning technology  
• Professional learning  
• Framework and policy  
• Strategic projects  
• About and contacts  
• Help and resources  

Essay assessments ask students to demonstrate a point of view supported by evidence. They allow students to demonstrate what they've learned and build their writing skills.

An essay question prompts a written response, which may vary from a few paragraphs to a number of pages.

Essay questions are generally open-ended. They differ from short answer questions in that they:

• require more time
• are less structured
• require students to integrate information and interpretation.

When to use an essay

Essays can be used to test students' higher order thinking.

Advantages and limitations

• Limitations
• Test analysis, reasoning, synthesis and evaluation skills.
• Are open ended. This allows students to answer the question in a variety of ways and demonstrate depth and creativity.
• Allow for deep learning and connections.
• Allow students to draw on research and reasoning to provide justification and show integration.
• Opportunity to assess a student’s writing ability.
• Can be quicker to prepare than other item/assessment types.
• Can be structured in different ways.
• Can limit the range of assessable content and the number of assessment items that can be used.
• Favour students with good writing skills.
• not too open ended
• align with content and learning outcomes.
• Can allow for plagiarism.
• Can be difficult to moderate.
• Time consuming to assess.
• Markers need to identify knowledge and understanding, despite levels of expression, i.e. elegant language can mask superficial thinking, while clumsy language can disguise understanding of ideas.

Guidelines for developing essay assessments

Essay question.

Effective essay questions provide students with a focus (types of thinking and content) to use in their response.

Make sure your essay question:

• is aligned with the intended learning outcome
• is an appropriate length
• contains a clear task or a specific problem situation
• is worded and structured in such a way that it will be clear to the students what they are expected to do
• is not indeterminate, vague or open to numerous and/or subjective interpretations
• contains verbs that match the intended learning outcomes (if you use verbs like discuss or explain , indicate which points should be discussed/explained)
• defines the scope of the task to avoid students going off on an unrelated tangent
• allows for answers at different levels, i.e. a basic, satisfactory response and an extended, high level response
• includes differentiating aspects in the way the question is written.

Review the question and improve using the following questions:

• Does the question align with the learning outcome?
• Is the focus clear?
• Is the scope specific and clear enough?
• Is there enough direction to guide the student to the expected response?

Alignment to learning outcomes

To ensure the assessment item aligns with learning outcomes:

• prepare a model answer or an outline of major points that should be included in the answer
• critically review the essay item for clarity
• check the question is aligned with the intended learning outcome and model answer.

Student preparation

Make sure your students are prepared by:

• teaching them how to approach essays
• scaffold learning so there are opportunities to guide and practise essay writing
• ensuring students know the recommended time for completing their answer
• ensuring students know the weighting of the essay.

Examples of essay question verbs

In the table below you will find lists of verbs that are commonly used in essay questions. These words:

• relate to learning outcomes
• can be thought of as aligning with critical essay questions or descriptive essay questions
• can be used as starting points for the development of essay questions.

Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Stay informed

Receive updates on teaching and learning initiatives and events.

• Resources for teaching
• Assessment design
• Tests and exams

Short answer and essay questions

Short answer and essay questions are types of assessment that are commonly used to evaluate a student’s understanding and knowledge.

Tips for creating short answer and essay questions

e.g., What is __? or how could __ be put into practice?

• Consider the course  learning outcomes . Design questions that appropriately assess the relevant learning objectives.
• Make sure the  content measures knowledge  appropriate to the desired learner level and learning goal.
• When students think critically they are required to  step beyond recalling factual information , incorporating evidence and examples to corroborate and/or dispute the validity of assertions/suppositions and compare and contrast multiple perspectives on the same argument.

e.g., paragraphs? sentences? Is bullet point format acceptable or does it have to be an essay format?

• Specify how many  marks each question is worth .
• Word limits  should be applied within Canvas for discursive or essay-type responses.
• Check that your  language and instructions  are appropriate to the student population and discipline of study. Not all students have English as their first language.
• Ensure the  instructions to students are clear , including optional and compulsory questions and the various components of the assessment.

Questions that promote deeper thinking

Use “open-ended” questions to provoke divergent thinking.

These questions will allow for a variety of possible answers and encourage students to think at a deeper level. Some generic question stems that trigger or stimulate different forms of critical thinking include:

• “What are the implications of …?”
• “Why is it important …?”
• “What is another way to look at …?”

Use questions that are deliberate in the types of higher order thinking to promote/assess

Rather than promoting recall of facts, use questions that allow students to demonstrate their comprehension, application and analysis of the concepts.

Generic question stems that can be used to trigger and assess higher order thinking

Comprehension.

Convert information into a form that  makes sense to the individual .

• How would you put __ into your own words?
• What would be an example of __?

Application

Apply abstract or theoretical principles to  concrete ,  practical  situations.

• How can you make use of __?
• How could __ be put into practice?

Break down  or  dissect  information.

• What are the most important/significant ideas or elements of __?
• What assumptions/biases underlie or are hidden within __?

Build up  or  connect  separate pieces of information to form a larger, more coherent pattern

• How can these different ideas be grouped together into a more general category?  

Critically judge  the validity or aesthetic value of ideas, data, or products.

• How would you judge the accuracy or validity of __? 
• How would you evaluate the ethical (moral) implications or consequences of __?

Draw conclusions about  particular instances  that are logically consistent.

• What specific conclusions can be drawn from this general __? 
• What particular actions would be consistent with this general __? 

Balanced thinking

Carefully consider arguments/evidence  for  and  against  a particular position.

• What evidence supports and contradicts __? 
• What are arguments for and counterarguments against __? 

Causal reasoning

Identify  cause-effect relationships  between different ideas or actions.

• How would you explain why __ occurred? 
• How would __ affect or influence __? 

Creative thinking

Generate  imaginative  ideas or  novel  approaches to traditional practices.  

• What might be a metaphor or analogy for __? 
• What might happen if __? (hypothetical reasoning)

Redesign test questions for open-book format

It is important to redesign the assessment tasks to authentically assess the intended learning outcomes in a way that is appropriate for this mode of assessment. Replacing questions that simply recall facts with questions that require higher level cognitive skills—for example analysis and explanation of why and how students reached an answer—provides opportunities for reflective questions based on students’ own experiences.

More quick, focused problem-solving and analysis—conducted with restricted access to limited allocated resources—will need to incorporate a student’s ability to demonstrate a more thoughtful research-based approach and/or the ability to negotiate an understanding of more complex problems, sometimes in an open-book format.

Layers can be added to the problem/process, and the inclusion of a reflective aspect can help achieve these goals, whether administered in an oral test or written examination format.

Example 2: Analytic style multiple choice question or short answer

Acknowledgement: Deakin University and original multiple choice questions: Jennifer Lindley, Monash University.

Setting word limits for discursive or essay-type responses

Try to set a  fair and reasonable word count  for long answer and essay questions. Some points to consider are:

• Weighting  – what is the relative weighting of the question in the assessment?
• Level of study  – what is the suggested word count for written assessments in your discipline, for that level of study?
• Skills development  – what skills are you requiring students to demonstrate? Higher level cognitive skills, such as evaluation and analysis, tend to require a lengthier word count in order to adequately respond to the assessment prompt.
• Referencing  – will you require students to  reference their sources ? This takes time, which should be accounted for in the total time to complete the assessment. References generally would not count towards the word count. Include clear marking guidelines for referencing in rubrics, including assessing skills such as critical thinking and evaluation of information.

Communicate your expectations around word count to students in your assessment instructions, including how you will deal with submissions that are outside the word count.

E.g.,  Write 600-800 words evaluating the key concepts of XYZ. Excess text over the word limit will not be marked.

Let students know how to check the word count in their submission:

• Show  word count in Inspera  – question type: Essay.

Multi-choice questions

Write MCQs that assess reasoning, rather than recall.

Page updated 16/03/2023 (added open-book section)

What do you think about this page? Is there something missing? For enquiries unrelated to this content, please visit the Staff Service Centre

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Find Study Materials for

• Business Studies
• Combined Science
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• English Literature
• Environmental Science
• Human Geography
• Macroeconomics
• Microeconomics
• Social Studies
• Browse all subjects
• Read our Magazine

Create Study Materials

The ultimate essay test guide: achieve top grades with ease.

An essay test, a fundamental tool in academic assessment, measures a student's ability to express, argue, and structure their thoughts on a given subject through written words. This test format delves deeper into a student's critical thinking and writing skills unlike other conventional exam types.

What is an Essay Test?

An essay test is a type of assessment in which a student is prompted to respond to a question or a series of questions by writing an essay.

This form of test isn’t merely about checking a student’s recall or memorisation skills , but more about gauging their ability to comprehend a subject, synthesise information, and articulate their understanding effectively.

Types of Essay Tests

Essay tests can be broadly classified into two categories: Restricted Response and Extended Response .

• Restricted Response tests focus on limited aspects, requiring students to provide short, concise answers.
• Extended Response tests demand more comprehensive answers, allowing students to showcase their creativity and analytical skills.

Advantages and Limitations of an Essay Test

Essay tests offer numerous benefits but also have certain limitations. The advantages of an essay test are :

• They allow teachers to evaluate students’ abilities to organise, synthesise, and interpret information.
• They help in developing critical thinking and writing skills among students.
• They provide an opportunity for students to exhibit their knowledge and understanding of a subject in a broader context.

And the limitations of an essay test are :

• They are time-consuming to both take and grade.
• They are subject to scoring inconsistencies due to potential subjective bias.
• They may cause the students who struggle with written expression may face difficulties, and these tests may not accurately reflect the full spectrum of a student’s knowledge or understanding.

Join over 90% of students getting better grades!

That’s a pretty good statistic. Download our free all-in-one learning app and start your most successful learning journey yet. Let’s do it!

Understanding the Structure of an Essay Test

Essay tests involve a defined structure to ensure organised, coherent, and comprehensive expression of thoughts. Adhering to a specific structure can enhance your ability to answer essay questions effectively .

The 7 Steps of an Essay

Writing an essay test typically involves seven steps :

• Understanding the question
• Brainstorming ideas
• Creating an outline
• Crafting a thesis statement
• Writing the essay body
• Formulating the conclusion
• Revising and editing for clarity and conciseness

The First Sentence in an Essay

The initial sentence of an essay, often termed a hook , plays a crucial role.

It aims to grab the reader’s attention and provoke interest in the essay topic. It should be engaging, and relevant, and set the tone for the rest of the essay .

The 5-Paragraph Essay Format

The 5-paragraph essay format is commonly used in essay tests, providing a clear and organised approach for students to articulate their ideas. In this format, the introduction and the conclusion include 1 paragraph, while the body of the essay includes 3 .

• Introduction : The introduction sets the stage, providing a brief overview of the topic and presenting the thesis statement – the central argument or point.
• Body : The body of the essay contains three paragraphs, each presenting a separate point that supports the thesis statement. Detailed explanations, evidence, and examples are included here to substantiate the points.
• Conclusion : The conclusion reiterates the thesis statement and summarises the main points. It provides a final perspective on the topic, drawing the essay to a close.

How to Prepare for an Essay Test?

Preparing for an essay test demands a structured approach to ensure thorough understanding and effective response. Here are some strategies to make this task more manageable:

#1 Familiarise Yourself with the Terminology Used

Knowledge of key terminologies is essential. Understand the meaning of directives such as “describe”, “compare”, “contrast”, or “analyse”. Each term guides you on what is expected in your essay and helps you to answer the question accurately.

To make it easier, you can take advantage of AI technologies. While preparing for your exam, use similar essay questions as prompts and see how AI understands and evaluates the questions. If you are unfamiliar with AI, you can check out The Best Chat GPT Prompts For Essay Writing .

#2 Review and Revise Past Essays

Take advantage of past essays or essay prompts to review and revise your writing . Analyse your strengths and areas for improvement, paying attention to grammar , structure , and clarity . This process helps you refine your writing skills and identify potential pitfalls to avoid in future tests.

#3 Practice Timed Writing

Simulate test conditions by practising timed writing . Set a specific time limit for each essay question and strive to complete it within that timeframe. This exercise builds your ability to think and write quickly , improving your efficiency during the actual test.

#4 Utilise Mnemonic Techniques

To aid in memorisation and recall of key concepts or arguments, employ mnemonic techniques . These memory aids, such as acronyms, visualisation, or association techniques, can help you retain important information and retrieve it during the test. Practice using mnemonics to reinforce your understanding of critical points.

Exam stress causing you sleepless nights?

Get a good night’s rest with our free teacher-verified study sets and a smart study planner to help you manage your studies effectively.

Strategies to Pass an Essay Test

Passing an essay test goes beyond understanding the topic; it also requires strategic planning and execution . Below are key strategies that can enhance your performance in an essay test.

• Read the exam paper thoroughly before diving into writing : read the entire exam paper thoroughly. Understand each question’s requirement and make a mental note of the points to be included in each response. This step will help in ensuring that no aspect of the question is overlooked.
• Answer in the First Sentence and Use the Language of the Question : Begin your essay by clearly stating your answer in the first sentence. Use the language of the question to show you are directly addressing the task. This approach ensures that your main argument is understood right from the start.
• Structure Your Essay : Adopt a logical essay structure , typically comprising an introduction, body, and conclusion. This helps in organising your thoughts, making your argument clearer, and enhancing the readability of your essay.
• Answer in Point Form When Running Out of Time : If time is running short, present your answer in point form. This approach allows you to cover more points quickly, ensuring you don’t leave any questions unanswered.
• Write as Legibly as Possible : Your writing should be clear and easy to read. Illegible handwriting could lead to misunderstandings and may negatively impact your grades.
• Number Your Answers : Ensure your answers are correctly numbered. This helps in aligning your responses with the respective questions, making it easier for the examiner to assess your work, and reducing chances of confusion or error
• Time Yourself on Each Question : Time management is crucial in an essay test. Allocate a specific amount of time to each question, taking into account the marks they carry. Ensure you leave ample time for revising and editing your responses. Practising this strategy can prevent last-minute rushes and result in a more polished essay.

About the Author Oğulcan Tezcan is a writer, translator, editor, and an accomplished engineer. Oğulcan is also a keen researcher and digital market analyst, with a particular interest in self-development, productivity, and human behaviour.

Did you know that StudySmarter was rated best study app worldwide!

Frequently Asked Questions About Essay Tests

How do you answer an essay question, when taking an essay test what is the first step, what type of test is an essay test, what is the first sentence in an essay, what are the six elements of an essay.

• MyU : For Students, Faculty, and Staff
• Academic Leaders
• Faculty and Instructors
• Graduate Students and Postdocs

Center for Educational Innovation

• Campus and Collegiate Liaisons
• Pedagogical Innovations Journal Club
• Teaching Enrichment Series
• Recorded Webinars
• Video Series
• All Services
• Teaching Consultations
• Student Feedback Facilitation
• Instructional Media Production
• Curricular and Educational Initiative Consultations
• Educational Research and Evaluation
• Thank a Teacher
• All Teaching Resources
• Aligned Course Design
• Active Learning
• Team Projects
• Active Learning Classrooms
• Leveraging the Learning Sciences
• Inclusive Teaching at a Predominantly White Institution
• Assessments
• Online Teaching and Design
• AI and ChatGPT in Teaching
• Documenting Growth in Teaching
• Early Term Feedback
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Writing Your Teaching Philosophy
• All Programs
• Assessment Deep Dive
• Designing and Delivering Online Learning
• Early Career Teaching and Learning Program
• International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Program
• Preparing Future Faculty Program
• Teaching with Access and Inclusion Program
• Teaching for Student Well-Being Program
• Teaching Assistant and Postdoc Professional Development Program
• Essay Exams

Essay exams provide opportunities to evaluate students’ reasoning skills such as the ability to compare and contrast concepts, justify a position on a topic, interpret cases from the perspective of different theories or models, evaluate a claim or assertion with evidence, design an experiment, and other higher level cognitive skills. They can reveal if students understand the theory behind course material or how different concepts and theories relate to each other. 

+ Advantages and Challenges of essay exams

Advantages:

• Can be used to measure higher order cognitive skills
• Takes relatively less time to write questions
• Difficult for respondents to get correct answers by guessing

Challenges:

• Can be time consuming to administer and to score
• Can be challenging to identify measurable, reliable criteria for assessing student responses
• Limited range of content can be sampled during any one testing period
• Timed exams in general add stress unrelated to a student's mastery of the material

+ Creating an essay exam

• Limit the use of essay questions to learning aims that require learners to share their thinking processes, connect and analyze information, and communicate their understanding for a specific purpose. 
• Write each item so that students clearly understand the specific task and what deliverables are required for a complete answer (e.g. diagram, amount of evidence, number of examples).
• Indicate the relative amount of time and effort students should spend on each essay item, for example “2 – 3 sentences should suffice for this question”.
• Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad item.
• Consider offering students choice among essay questions, while ensuring that all learning aims are assessed.

When designing essay exams, consider the reasoning skills you want to assess in your students. The following table lists different skills to measure with example prompts to guide assessment questions. 

+ Preparing students for an essay exam

Adapted from Piontek, 2008

Prior to the essay exam

• Administer a formative assessment that asks students to do a brief write on a question similar to one you will use on an exam and provide them with feedback on their responses.
• Provide students with examples of essay responses that do and do not meet your criteria and standards. 
• Provide students with the learning aims they will be responsible for mastering to help them focus their preparation appropriately.
• Have students apply the scoring rubric to sample essay responses and provide them with feedback on their work.

Resource video : 2-minute video description of a formative assessment that helps prepare students for an essay exam. 

+ Administering an essay exam

• Provide adequate time for students to take the assessment. A strategy some instructors use is to time themselves answering the exam questions completely and then multiply that time by 3-4.
• Endeavor to create a distraction-free environment.
• Review the suggestions for informal accommodations for multilingual learners , which may be helpful in setting up an essay exam for all learners.

+ Grading an essay exam

To ensure essays are graded fairly and without bias:

• Outline what constitutes an acceptable answer (criteria for knowledge and skills).
• Select an appropriate scoring method based on the criteria.
• Clarify the role of writing mechanics and other factors independent of the learning aims being measured.
• Share with students ahead of time.
• Use a systematic process for scoring each essay item.  For instance, score all responses to a single question in one setting.
• Anonymize student work (if possible) to ensure fairer and more objective feedback. For example students could use their student ID number in place of their name.

+ References & Resources

• For more information on setting criteria, preparing students, and grading essay exams read:  Boye, A. (2019) Writing Better Essay Exams , IDEA paper #76.
• For more detailed descriptions of how to develop and score essay exams read: Piontek, M.E. (2008). Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams, CRLT Occasional Paper # 24.

Web resources

• Designing Effective Writing Assignments  (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC ) 
• Writing Assignment Checklist (Teaching with Writing Program - UMNTC)
• Designing and Using Rubrics (Center for Writing - UMTC)
• Research and Resources
• Why Use Active Learning?
• Successful Active Learning Implementation
• Addressing Active Learning Challenges
• Why Use Team Projects?
• Project Description Examples
• Project Description for Students
• Team Projects and Student Development Outcomes
• Forming Teams
• Team Output
• Individual Contributions to the Team
• Individual Student Understanding
• Supporting Students
• Wrapping up the Project
• Addressing Challenges
• Course Planning
• Working memory
• Retrieval of information
• Spaced practice
• Active learning
• Metacognition
• Definitions and PWI Focus
• A Flexible Framework
• Class Climate
• Course Content
• An Ongoing Endeavor
• Align Assessments
• Multiple Low Stakes Assessments
• Authentic Assessments
• Formative and Summative Assessments
• Varied Forms of Assessments
• Cumulative Assessments
• Equitable Assessments
• Multiple Choice Exams and Quizzes
• Academic Paper
• Skill Observation
• Alternative Assessments
• Assessment Plan
• Grade Assessments
• Prepare Students
• Reduce Student Anxiety
• SRT Scores: Interpreting & Responding
• Student Feedback Question Prompts
• Research Questions and Design
• Gathering data
• Publication
• GRAD 8101: Teaching in Higher Education
• Finding a Practicum Mentor
• GRAD 8200: Teaching for Learning
• Proficiency Rating & TA Eligibility
• Schedule a SETTA
• TAPD Webinars

Beyond the Essay? Assessment and English Literature

• First Online: 06 October 2017

Cite this chapter

• Jonathan Gibson 3  

Part of the book series: Teaching the New English ((TENEEN))

975 Accesses

6 Citations

How can the academic progress of English literature students best be assessed? The study of literature is dialogic, involving rich overlapping conversations between students, the literature they read, and the teachers they meet. Assessment can enter into these conversations in many different ways and in many different guises. Part of the aim of this chapter is to celebrate the creativity with which departments of English in UK higher education are devising exciting new module-specific assessment tasks. To explain the value of such ‘innovative’ approaches to assessment, however, means discussing the deep but tortured relationship between English Studies and the essay. Set and marked well, essays can be powerful pedagogic tools. The qualities they demand of undergraduates are unlikely to go out of fashion. This chapter does not suggest their abolition: rather it advocates a flexible approach to assessment design and provides some prompts aimed at helping lecturers match up what they want students to do in their modules with a variety of different assessment methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bazin, Victoria. 2010. Tune In and Turn On: Learning to Listen in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God . In Teaching African American Women’s Writing , ed. Gina Wisker, 42–59. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Google Scholar  

Biggs, John, and Catherine Tang. 2011. Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does , 4th ed. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill.

Chambers, Ellie, and Marshall Gregory. 2006. Teaching and Learning English Literature . London: Sage.

Creme, Phyllis. 2005. Should Student Learning Journals be Assessed? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 30: 287–296.

Article   Google Scholar  

Creme, Phyllis. 2008. A Space for Academic Play: Student Learning Journals as Transitional Writing. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 7: 49–64.

Davies, Stevie, David Swinburne, and Gweno Williams (eds.). 2006. Writing Matters: The Royal Literary Fund Report on Student Writing in Higher Education . London: Royal Literary Fund.

Docherty, Thomas. 2007. The English Question or Academic Freedoms . Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.

Higher Education Academy. 2012. A Marked Improvement: Transforming Assessment in Higher Education . York: Higher Education Academy.

Hodgson, John. 2010. The Experience of Studying English in UK Higher Education . Report Series 20. Egham: English Subject Centre.

Hussey, Trevor, and Patrick Smith. 2002. The Trouble with Learning Outcomes. Active Learning in Higher Education 3: 220–233.

Hutchings, Bill, and Karen O’Rourke. 2002. Problem-based Learning in Literary Studies. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 1: 73–83.

Laurillard, Diana. 2002. Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies , 2nd ed. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Lillis, Theresa M. 2001. Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire . London: Routledge.

Lillis, Theresa. 2011. Legitimizing Dialogue as Textual and Ideological Goal in Academic Writing for Assessment and Publication. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 10: 401–432.

Maxwell, Catherine. 2010. Teaching Nineteenth-Century Aesthetic Prose. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 9: 191–204.

Miles, Rosie, and Benjamin Colbert (eds.). 2010. Online Discussion in English Studies: A Good Practice Guide to Design, Moderation and Assessment . Egham: English Subject Centre.

Mitchell, Sally. 2010. Now You Don’t See It; Now You Do: Writing Made Visible in the University. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 9: 133–148.

O’Donovan, Berry, Margaret Price, and Chris Rust. 2004. Know What I Mean? Enhancing Student Understanding of Assessment Standards and Criteria. Teaching in Higher Education 9: 325–335.

QAA (The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education). 2001. English 2001 . Gloucester: QAA.

QAA. 2007. English 2007 . Gloucester: QAA 2015 English Subject Benchmark http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/SBS-English-15.pdf .

Raleigh, Walter. 1923. Some Thoughts on Examinations. In Laughter from a Cloud , ed. Walter Raleigh. London: Constable.

Ramsden, Paul. 2003. Learning to Teach in Higher Education , 2nd ed. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Sullivan, Ceri. 2011. The Importance of Boredom in Learning about the Early Modern. In Teaching the Early Modern Period , ed. Derval Conroy and Danielle Clarke. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Weatherford, Leigh Anne. 2004. This is Wondrous Strange. Pedagogy 4: 495–500.

Womack, Peter. 1993. What are Essays For? English in Education 27: 42–48.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Jonathan Gibson

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Gibson .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Teesside University, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

Ben Knights

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Gibson, J. (2017). Beyond the Essay? Assessment and English Literature. In: Knights, B. (eds) Teaching Literature. Teaching the New English. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31110-8_7

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31110-8_7

Published : 06 October 2017

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London

Print ISBN : 978-1-137-31108-5

Online ISBN : 978-1-137-31110-8

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Visit the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
• Apply to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
• Give to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Search Form

Assessing student writing, what does it mean to assess writing.

• Suggestions for Assessing Writing

Means of Responding

Rubrics: tools for response and assessment, constructing a rubric.

Assessment is the gathering of information about student learning. It can be used for formative purposes−−to adjust instruction−−or summative purposes: to render a judgment about the quality of student work. It is a key instructional activity, and teachers engage in it every day in a variety of informal and formal ways.

Assessment of student writing is a process. Assessment of student writing and performance in the class should occur at many different stages throughout the course and could come in many different forms. At various points in the assessment process, teachers usually take on different roles such as motivator, collaborator, critic, evaluator, etc., (see Brooke Horvath for more on these roles) and give different types of response.

One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. We know that feedback is crucial to writing development. The 2004 Harvard Study of Writing concluded, "Feedback emerged as the hero and the anti-hero of our study−powerful enough to convince students that they could or couldn't do the work in a given field, to push them toward or away from selecting their majors, and contributed, more than any other single factor, to students' sense of academic belonging or alienation" (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos/index.cgi?section=study).

Source: Horvath, Brooke K. "The Components of Written Response: A Practical Synthesis of Current Views." Rhetoric Review 2 (January 1985): 136−56. Rpt. in C Corbett, Edward P. J., Nancy Myers, and Gary Tate. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook . 4th ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000.

Suggestions for Assessing Student Writing

Be sure to know what you want students to be able to do and why. Good assessment practices start with a pedagogically sound assignment description and learning goals for the writing task at hand. The type of feedback given on any task should depend on the learning goals you have for students and the purpose of the assignment. Think early on about why you want students to complete a given writing project (see guide to writing strong assignments page). What do you want them to know? What do you want students to be able to do? Why? How will you know when they have reached these goals? What methods of assessment will allow you to see that students have accomplished these goals (portfolio assessment assigning multiple drafts, rubric, etc)? What will distinguish the strongest projects from the weakest?

Begin designing writing assignments with your learning goals and methods of assessment in mind.

Plan and implement activities that support students in meeting the learning goals. How will you support students in meeting these goals? What writing activities will you allow time for? How can you help students meet these learning goals?

Begin giving feedback early in the writing process. Give multiple types of feedback early in the writing process. For example, talking with students about ideas, write written responses on drafts, have students respond to their peers' drafts in process, etc. These are all ways for students to receive feedback while they are still in the process of revising.

Structure opportunities for feedback at various points in the writing process. Students should also have opportunities to receive feedback on their writing at various stages in the writing process. This does not mean that teachers need to respond to every draft of a writing project. Structuring time for peer response and group workshops can be a very effective way for students to receive feedback from other writers in the class and for them to begin to learn to revise and edit their own writing.

Be open with students about your expectations and the purposes of the assignments. Students respond better to writing projects when they understand why the project is important and what they can learn through the process of completing it. Be explicit about your goals for them as writers and why those goals are important to their learning. Additionally, talk with students about methods of assessment. Some teachers have students help collaboratively design rubrics for the grading of writing. Whatever methods of assessment you choose, be sure to let students in on how they will be evaluated.

 Do not burden students with excessive feedback. Our instinct as teachers, especially when we are really interested in students´ writing is to offer as many comments and suggestions as we can. However, providing too much feedback can leave students feeling daunted and uncertain where to start in terms of revision. Try to choose one or two things to focus on when responding to a draft. Offer students concrete possibilities or strategies for revision.

Allow students to maintain control over their paper. Instead of acting as an editor, suggest options or open-ended alternatives the student can choose for their revision path. Help students learn to assess their own writing and the advice they get about it.

Purposes of Responding We provide different kinds of response at different moments. But we might also fall into a kind of "default" mode, working to get through the papers without making a conscious choice about how and why we want to respond to a given assignment. So it might be helpful to identify the two major kinds of response we provide:

• Formative Response: response that aims primarily to help students develop their writing. Might focus on confidence-building, on engaging the student in a conversation about her ideas or writing choices so as to help student to see herself as a successful and promising writer. Might focus on helping student develop a particular writing project, from one draft to next. Or, might suggest to student some general skills she could focus on developing over the course of a semester.
• Evaluative Response: response that focuses on evaluation of how well a student has done. Might be related to a grade. Might be used primarily on a final product or portfolio. Tends to emphasize whether or not student has met the criteria operative for specific assignment and to explain that judgment.

We respond to many kinds of writing and at different stages in the process, from reading responses, to exercises, to generation or brainstorming, to drafts, to source critiques, to final drafts. It is also helpful to think of the various forms that response can take.

• Conferencing: verbal, interactive response. This might happen in class or during scheduled sessions in offices. Conferencing can be more dynamic: we can ask students questions about their work, modeling a process of reflecting on and revising a piece of writing. Students can also ask us questions and receive immediate feedback. Conference is typically a formative response mechanism, but might also serve usefully to convey evaluative response.
• Written Comments on Drafts
• Local: when we focus on "local" moments in a piece of writing, we are calling attention to specifics in the paper. Perhaps certain patterns of grammar or moments where the essay takes a sudden, unexpected turn. We might also use local comments to emphasize a powerful turn of phrase, or a compelling and well-developed moment in a piece. Local commenting tends to happen in the margins, to call attention to specific moments in the piece by highlighting them and explaining their significance. We tend to use local commenting more often on drafts and when doing formative response.
• Global: when we focus more on the overall piece of writing and less on the specific moments in and of themselves. Global comments tend to come at the end of a piece, in narrative-form response. We might use these to step back and tell the writer what we learned overall, or to comment on a pieces' general organizational structure or focus. We tend to use these for evaluative response and often, deliberately or not, as a means of justifying the grade we assigned.
• Rubrics: charts or grids on which we identify the central requirements or goals of a specific project. Then, we evaluate whether or not, and how effectively, students met those criteria. These can be written with students as a means of helping them see and articulate the goals a given project.

Rubrics are tools teachers and students use to evaluate and classify writing, whether individual pieces or portfolios. They identify and articulate what is being evaluated in the writing, and offer "descriptors" to classify writing into certain categories (1-5, for instance, or A-F). Narrative rubrics and chart rubrics are the two most common forms. Here is an example of each, using the same classification descriptors:

Example: Narrative Rubric for Inquiring into Family & Community History

An "A" project clearly and compellingly demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows strong audience awareness, engaging readers throughout. The form and structure are appropriate for the purpose(s) and audience(s) of the piece. The final product is virtually error-free. The piece seamlessly weaves in several other voices, drawn from appropriate archival, secondary, and primary research. Drafts - at least two beyond the initial draft - show extensive, effective revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter demonstrate thoughtful reflection and growing awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "B" project clearly and compellingly demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows strong audience awareness, and usually engages readers. The form and structure are appropriate for the audience(s) and purpose(s) of the piece, though the organization may not be tight in a couple places. The final product includes a few errors, but these do no interfere with readers' comprehension. The piece effectively, if not always seamlessly, weaves several other voices, drawn from appropriate archival, secondary, and primary research. One area of research may not be as strong as the other two. Drafts - at least two beyond the initial drafts - show extensive, effective revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter demonstrate thoughtful reflection and growing awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "C" project demonstrates how the public event influenced the family/community. It shows audience awareness, sometimes engaging readers. The form and structure are appropriate for the audience(s) and purpose(s), but the organization breaks down at times. The piece includes several, apparent errors, which at times compromises the clarity of the piece. The piece incorporates other voices, drawn from at least two kinds of research, but in a generally forced or awkward way. There is unevenness in the quality and appropriateness of the research. Drafts - at least one beyond the initial draft - show some evidence of revision. Writer's notes and final learning letter show some reflection and growth in awareness of writer's strengths and challenges.

A "D" project discusses a public event and a family/community, but the connections may not be clear. It shows little audience awareness. The form and structure is poorly chosen or poorly executed. The piece includes many errors, which regularly compromise the comprehensibility of the piece. There is an attempt to incorporate other voices, but this is done awkwardly or is drawn from incomplete or inappropriate research. There is little evidence of revision. Writer's notes and learning letter are missing or show little reflection or growth.

An "F" project is not responsive to the prompt. It shows little or no audience awareness. The purpose is unclear and the form and structure are poorly chosen and poorly executed. The piece includes many errors, compromising the clarity of the piece throughout. There is little or no evidence of research. There is little or no evidence of revision. Writer's notes and learning letter are missing or show no reflection or growth.

Chart Rubric for Community/Family History Inquiry Project

All good rubrics begin (and end) with solid criteria. We always start working on rubrics by generating a list - by ourselves or with students - of what we value for a particular project or portfolio. We generally list far more items than we could use in a single rubric. Then, we narrow this list down to the most important items - between 5 and 7, ideally. We do not usually rank these items in importance, but it is certainly possible to create a hierarchy of criteria on a rubric (usually by listing the most important criteria at the top of the chart or at the beginning of the narrative description).

Once we have our final list of criteria, we begin to imagine how writing would fit into a certain classification category (1-5, A-F, etc.). How would an "A" essay differ from a "B" essay in Organization? How would a "B" story differ from a "C" story in Character Development? The key here is to identify useful descriptors - drawing the line at appropriate places. Sometimes, these gradations will be precise: the difference between handing in 80% and 90% of weekly writing, for instance. Other times, they will be vague: the difference between "effective revisions" and "mostly effective revisions", for instance. While it is important to be as precise as possible, it is also important to remember that rubric writing (especially in writing classrooms) is more art than science, and will never - and nor should it - stand in for algorithms. When we find ourselves getting caught up in minute gradations, we tend to be overlegislating students´- writing and losing sight of the purpose of the exercise: to support students' development as writers. At the moment when rubric-writing thwarts rather than supports students' writing, we should discontinue the practice. Until then, many students will find rubrics helpful -- and sometimes even motivating.

Assessment types

Common forms of written assessment tasks

are a common form of assessment in many tertiary disciplines. The ability to construct good essays involves understanding the task, process (planning, developing, writing, editing), and conventions of academic writing. Through an essay writing task, lecturers can help you to develop and learn academic writing skills, including: formulating arguments, presenting evidence, integrating material from sources, and referencing appropriately. The process of writing essays may teach you to synthesise and evaluate theoretical ideas and concepts, and develop your research skills. Additionally, you can learn academic and discipline-specific writing conventions and develop drafting, editing and revising skills.

Problem-solving assignments

help to reinforce material that has been taught in classes and helps to develop your problem-solving skills. These assignments allow you to put into practice the concepts and theory that have been taught. Difficulties that you face in completing problem-solving assignments help point to aspects on which you need to clarify your understanding.

are a specific form of writing that gives a full account of what has been observed, done or investigated in a laboratory or experimental study. It has structural elements not found in essays and is visually distinguishable from essays. It also tests your ability to describe, explain and analyse the results of an experiment or study.

encourage an ongoing reflective, personal connection with learning. Their less formal writing approach can promote creative and lateral thinking around paper content. Journals can help you to evaluate their learning, link theory and practice, and integrate different kinds of knowledge. The journal is a good way to promote dialogue between you and your lecturers and helps you develop reflective writing and analytical skills.

Case Studies

apply theoretical ideas to practical contexts. They enable you to see the relevance of academic ideas, prompt you to use ideas creatively and think laterally. All of these attributes need to be developed for the workplace.

enable you to represent your learning in a range of ways and  take responsibility for your learning progress. In a portfolio, you select the items of work  (e.g. evidence of practice, reflective commentaries, evidence of work and addressing feedback) that you wish to include to represent the learning that has occurred in a particular paper. You may be asked to demonstrate how the items you have selected connect with paper learning outcomes.

Portfolios promote reflection, self-evaluation, and ongoing personal and possibly professional engagement, as well as demonstrating practical and creative abilities. Additionally, they provide a valuable source of information regarding your abilities that you could share with prospective employers.

are a way of systematically and objectively reviewing a piece of research to highlight strengths and weaknesses.

Annotated bibliographies

are alphabetical lists of sources formatted like a reference list, where each reference is accompanied by a critical commentary.

Research proposals

require you to develop research question(s) and develop a case for a proposed study. A proposal should include a clear context, identify a gap in the literature, and include research design components.

Literature reviews

bring together arguments from multiple sources to develop an argument for a research proposal or can be a stand-alone task.

Written preparation

exercises (such as focus questions) encourage reading and teach academic reading and writing skills. They promote active, focused and critical reading of materials, enhance writing development, paper skills, and the development of relevant competencies and allow you to get regular feedback on your learning progress. By promoting active participation, written preparation exercises provide lecturers with an effective way of evaluating student participation.

provide a mechanism to check your independent knowledge and understanding.

Examinations

• Closed book, fixed time period  examinations provide evidence of your unaided work and allow integration of learning from the entire paper.
• Closed book, prepared answers  examinations encourage integration of ideas from a wider range of sources.
• Open book or restricted book, fixed time period  examinations can reduce anxiety as they do not focus on memorisation yet still provide evidence of your unaided work.

Related help pages

Student Learning  has extensive help pages on:

• How to tackle various aspects of writing assessments , including argument and voice, linking ideas, and how to paraphrase.
• Resources specifically for  English language skills and writing .
• Advice on working with  groups .
• Exams and tests .
• Case studies .

You may also be asked to work in  Mahara , which is an ePortfolio tool.  See the Mahara ePortfolio pages for instructions on how to do common tasks in Mahara.

Oral and hybrid

Common forms of oral or hybrid assessment tasks

emphasises collaborative learning, problem-solving and critical evaluation, and is a valuable preparation for the workplace. Through group work, you can make use of complementary skills, deepen your understanding through interaction and discussion, and deal with a range of perspectives thereby enhancing your critical thinking skills. You can develop team skills and learn to work with a range of people.

Computer, design and other lab practicals

allow you to become familiar with various types of software and equipment for different types of applications. Critical evaluation of the output is appropriate in some contexts and so helps to develop your thinking skills.

For some disciplines, the computer practicals allow you to implement algorithms, become more proficient in computer programming, and possibly develop software for practical applications. In other disciplines, the computer practicals may allow you to do tasks relevant to your studies which would not be possible by hand (e.g. visualisation of data or analysing large amounts of data) or practice skills specific to your discipline (e.g. computer programming, structural design). The practical skills developed in these computer tasks will be of use in the workplace.

Performance and composition tasks

require you to demonstrate your skills and knowledge, for example, in music or theatre studies. You may be required to compose and perform a musical piece, or choreograph or act in a stage performance.

Oral presentations

assist you to master learning, oral communication, and persuasive skills. Through this, you learn how to organise arguments using supporting evidence, select relevant material, and engage critically with ideas while developing understanding and confidence. Not only do oral presentations promote the sharing of ideas in the classroom, but they can also give immediate feedback on the quality of your understanding of the material.

allow you, individually or with a group, to research a topic, provide a presentation to your class and facilitate the discussion. This is also an opportunity to promote autonomy by giving you  some of the management of the teaching and learning process.

provides an opportunity for on-site work on a project in a context related to the discipline. Field work provides an authentic context to link with classroom learning.

Practicums and work-integrated learning placements

give you the opportunity to demonstrate the skills or competencies that will be needed in real life situations. They may include practice teaching, interviewing a client or conducting a laboratory experiment.

Participation marks

reflect your engagement with paper learning and develop your ability to communicate and discuss ideas. These can help enhance class participation and provide you with immediate feedback on your learning.

Simulations and role-plays

allow you a chance to explore authentic scenarios and case studies that reflect the complexity of situations that you might experience in the real world, potentially by taking the perspective of a particular role.

help to reinforce material that has been taught in classes and help to develop your problem-solving skills. These assignments allow you to put into practice the concepts and theory that have been taught. Difficulties that you face in completing problem-solving assignments help point to aspects on which you need to clarify your understanding.

encourage an ongoing personal connection with learning. The less formal writing approach can promote creative and lateral thinking around paper content. Journals can help you to evaluate your learning, link theory and practice and integrate different kinds of knowledge. The journal is a good way to promote dialogue between you and your lecturers and help you to develop reflective and analytical skills. Journals can be partly or entirely in audio or video formats.

enable you to represent your learning in a range of ways and take responsibility for your learning progress. In some cases, you may put together a video portfolio with recorded tasks.

Vivas 

are tests conducted verbally rather than in writing. You may be asked to give responses to examination questions in their entirety, or you could be asked to explain the way you worked through a select subset of questions previously responded to in writing. This helps to show your thinking more transparently.

Student Learning  provides:

• Advice on completing oral presentation assessments.
• Resources for English language skills . There are opportunities for you to practise public speaking, and to meet and speak with peers if you’d like to practise your English.
• Help with  Case studies .

You’re viewing this website as a domestic student

You’re currently viewing the website as a domestic student, you might want to change to international.

You're a domestic student if you are:

• A citizen of New Zealand or Australia
• A New Zealand permanent resident

You're an International student if you are:

• Intending to study on a student visa
• Not a citizen of New Zealand or Australia

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Literature review on the use of e-learning tools for formative essay-type assessment

Related Papers

Sean McCusker

Denise Whitelock

This desktop research commissioned by the Higher Education Academy set out to consult with the academic community about which references on assessment and feedback with technology- enhancement were most useful to practitioners. While all the recommended publications may be characterised as reputable and the majority were peer-reviewed (67.7%), only a minority provided quantitative data (28.2%), of which relatively few provided appropriate experimental designs or statistical analysis (18.5%). The majority of publications were practitioner-led case studies. The references that were recommended to us are clearly having an impact on current practice and are found valuable by practitioners. The key messages from these sources are consistent and often give detailed and practical guidance for other academics. We found that most of the recommended literature focused on the goals that technology-enhancement can enable assessment and feedback to meet and how assessment and feedback can be des...

Educational Studies

Geoffrey Lautenbach

pp. 357–370. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c ○ [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Link(s) to article on publisher’s website:

juhi dhankar

Journal of Information Technology Education

Nicole Buzzetto-Hollywood

According to Martell and Calderon (2005), assessment is an ongoing process that involves planning, discussion, consensus building, reflection,measuring, analyzing, and improving based on the data and artifacts gathered about a learning objective. Assessment encompasses a range of activities including testing, performances, project ratings, and observations (Orlich, Harder, Callahan & Gibson, 2004). Impacting education from early childhood through graduate studies, the assessment movement is based on standards and outcomes, measuring results, and holding educational institutions accountable for student learning. Oversight bodies and accrediting agencies are beginning to require the establishment of learner-centered outcomes that reflect the well-rounded knowledge, competencies, and abilities preferred in today’s students; the alignment of curriculum to reflect the desired progression and cognitive development of learners; the collection of data that demonstrates the satisfaction of learning objectives; and the use of assessment information to inform decision making (Buzzetto-More, 2006). The use of information technologies and e-learning strategies can provide an efficient and effec- tive means of assessing teaching and learning eff ectiveness by supporting traditional, authentic, and alternative assessment protocols (Bennett, 2002). According to Vendlinski and Stevens (2002) technology offers new measures for assessing learning that will yield rich sources of data and expand the ways in which educators understa nd both learning mastery, and teaching effec- tiveness. The use of information technologies a nd e-learning to augment the assessment process may include: pre and post testing, diagnostic anal ysis, student tracking, rubric use, the support and delivery of authentic assessment through project based learning, artifact collection, and data aggregation and analysis. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight in to the origins, evolution, and key concepts of assessment as well as illustrate some of the ways in which technology and e-Learning serve as the most promising mechanisms for satisfying assessment goals and objectives. This work is based on an exhaustive review of literature, the analysis of a number of critically acclaimed assessment programs, as well as the aut hors’ own work in the development and use of e-Learning in the design, and implementation of an assessment program at a mid-sized institution of higher education located in the ru- ral Eastern Shore of Maryland in the United States. The program being pro- filed includes computerized longitudi- nal testing, online diagnostic testing, competitive networked simulations, rubrics, student discussion transcripts, taped presentations, and electronic portfolios

Juliet Nickels

Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education

Andrew Boyle

The Future of Education - Conference Proceedings

Anabela Serrão

A system of electronic evaluation, based on a digital platform, a database of educational resources, and a statistical processing unit, accessed via internet is presented and described. The development of this system was aimed at the creation of a testbed for evaluating the advantages of electronic evaluation in education, by its utilization as an instrument for formative, summative, and self educational assessment. To accomplish such flexibility, an incremental implementation strategy was adopted, based on the aggregation of separate building blocks as needed by each functionality. In a first phase, a tool for diagnosing mathematics and reading competences of primary school students (aged 7 to 9) was constructed. This tool included item presentation, mostly as closed questions, being supposed that students should know how to drag and drop, establish relations with the mouse, and mark multiple choice items, among other simple tasks. A further improvement included oral presentation of the stimuli to encompass students with reading difficulties. In a following phase, a module containing hints and explanations was added to extend the system capabilities in order to help students when necessary. This improvement, together with quick feedback and adequate help, provided a formative evaluation character to the system. A third upgrade consisted of allowing the aggregation of items to build tests. This feature enabled teachers to create an instrument capable of performing summative evaluations. On the other hand, as this system of educational assessment is available through the Internet to a high number of students, and since the utilization of it depends on a registration procedure – aimed at collecting adequate information – it permits a certain form of system assessment. An interesting number of education indicators can be calculated and make available to school principals and to local authorities. Finally, as each item is exposed to and resolved by a huge number of students, the data collected allows for the estimation of item parameters, namely, difficulty and discrimination characteristics, in the framework of Item Response Theory. Also, this information from statistical processing provides the assessment of item adequacy with respect to a corresponding curriculum. The advantages of electronic evaluation systems include quick and accurate feedback about student performance (delivered to teachers, principals, students and/or parents), identification of unconsolidated subjects, therefore deserving further study (with the corresponding suggestion of new sets of items), utilization of interactive and appealing stimuli (taking advantage of the media sophistication), flexibility in terms of time and location for test administration, improvement of item quality by the incorporation of student and teacher feedback, and finally, the creation of adaptive tests in order to better assess teaching and learning.

RELATED PAPERS

JOHANN FERNANDO HOYOS-PATIÑO

Sustainable Energy & Fuels

dinesh bhalothia

Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia

Fauzan Azima

Gustavo Gauer

Communications in Physics

Revista Apertura

Alejandro Cruz

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva

Denise Iunes

Ferroelectrics

Robert L. Byer

Estuaries and Coasts

Leo Procise

Gaceta Sanitaria

ramon vargas

Fernando Molina

Tehnicki vjesnik - Technical Gazette

Nikola Mrvac

Valfride Wallace

Cássio Silva Castanheira

Clinics in Orthopedic Surgery

vikas Kulshrestha

Journal of Heritage Tourism

Marco Noivo

Anticancer Research

Janos Borbely

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

Abdulhakeem Olorukooba

Jurnal Abdi Nusa

Muhammad Abdul Aziz Satrio

hjhfggf hjgfdf

International Case Studies in Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Tourism

Alfonso Vargas-Sánchez

pooja bhattacharjee

Langenbecks Archiv für Chirurgie

Erhard Kiffner

Studia Humana

Andrew Schumann

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

FREE Poetry Worksheet Bundle! Perfect for National Poetry Month.

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 ..

You Might Also Like

What Is Formative Assessment and How Should Teachers Use It?

Check student progress as they learn, and adapt to their needs. Continue Reading

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. 5335 Gate Parkway, Jacksonville, FL 32256

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Example of a great essay | Explanations, tips & tricks

Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Bryson, S. (2023, July 23). Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/example-essay-structure/

Is this article helpful?

Shane Bryson

Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

Other students also liked

How to write an essay introduction | 4 steps & examples, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, how to write topic sentences | 4 steps, examples & purpose, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

Your Article Library

Essay test: types, advantages and limitations | statistics.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

After reading this article you will learn about:- 1. Introduction to Essay Test 2. Types of Essay Test 3. Advantages 4. Limitations 5. Suggestions.

Introduction to Essay Test:

The essay tests are still commonly used tools of evaluation, despite the increasingly wider applicability of the short answer and objective type questions.

There are certain outcomes of learning (e.g., organising, summarising, integrating ideas and expressing in one’s own way) which cannot be satisfactorily measured through objective type tests. The importance of essay tests lies in the measurement of such instructional outcomes.

An essay test may give full freedom to the students to write any number of pages. The required response may vary in length. An essay type question requires the pupil to plan his own answer and to explain it in his own words. The pupil exercises considerable freedom to select, organise and present his ideas. Essay type tests provide a better indication of pupil’s real achievement in learning. The answers provide a clue to nature and quality of the pupil’s thought process.

That is, we can assess how the pupil presents his ideas (whether his manner of presentation is coherent, logical and systematic) and how he concludes. In other words, the answer of the pupil reveals the structure, dynamics and functioning of pupil’s mental life.

The essay questions are generally thought to be the traditional type of questions which demand lengthy answers. They are not amenable to objective scoring as they give scope for halo-effect, inter-examiner variability and intra-examiner variability in scoring.

Types of Essay Test:

There can be many types of essay tests:

Some of these are given below with examples from different subjects:

1. Selective Recall.

e.g. What was the religious policy of Akbar?

2. Evaluative Recall.

e.g. Why did the First War of Independence in 1857 fail?

3. Comparison of two things—on a single designated basis.

e.g. Compare the contributions made by Dalton and Bohr to Atomic theory.

4. Comparison of two things—in general.

e.g. Compare Early Vedic Age with the Later Vedic Age.

5. Decision—for or against.

e.g. Which type of examination do you think is more reliable? Oral or Written. Why?

6. Causes or effects.

e.g. Discuss the effects of environmental pollution on our lives.

7. Explanation of the use or exact meaning of some phrase in a passage or a sentence.

e.g., Joint Stock Company is an artificial person. Explain ‘artificial person’ bringing out the concepts of Joint Stock Company.

8. Summary of some unit of the text or of some article.

9. Analysis

e.g. What was the role played by Mahatma Gandhi in India’s freedom struggle?

10. Statement of relationship.

e.g. Why is knowledge of Botany helpful in studying agriculture?

11. Illustration or examples (your own) of principles in science, language, etc.

e.g. Illustrate the correct use of subject-verb position in an interrogative sentence.

12. Classification.

e.g. Classify the following into Physical change and Chemical change with explanation. Water changes to vapour; Sulphuric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide react to produce Sodium Sulphate and Water; Rusting of Iron; Melting of Ice.

13. Application of rules or principles in given situations.

e.g. If you sat halfway between the middle and one end of a sea-saw, would a person sitting on the other end have to be heavier or lighter than you in order to make the sea-saw balance in the middle. Why?

14. Discussion.

e.g. Partnership is a relationship between persons who have agreed to share the profits of a business carried on by all or any of them acting for all. Discuss the essentials of partnership on the basis of this partnership.

15. Criticism—as to the adequacy, correctness, or relevance—of a printed statement or a classmate’s answer to a question on the lesson.

e.g. What is the wrong with the following statement?

The Prime Minister is the sovereign Head of State in India.

16. Outline.

e.g. Outline the steps required in computing the compound interest if the principal amount, rate of interest and time period are given as P, R and T respectively.

17. Reorganization of facts.

e.g. The student is asked to interview some persons and find out their opinion on the role of UN in world peace. In the light of data thus collected he/she can reorganise what is given in the text book.

18. Formulation of questions-problems and questions raised.

e.g. After reading a lesson the pupils are asked to raise related problems- questions.

19. New methods of procedure

e.g. Can you solve this mathematical problem by using another method?

Advantages of the Essay Tests:

1. It is relatively easier to prepare and administer a six-question extended- response essay test than to prepare and administer a comparable 60-item multiple-choice test items.

2. It is the only means that can assess an examinee’s ability to organise and present his ideas in a logical and coherent fashion.

3. It can be successfully employed for practically all the school subjects.

4. Some of the objectives such as ability to organise idea effectively, ability to criticise or justify a statement, ability to interpret, etc., can be best measured by this type of test.

5. Logical thinking and critical reasoning, systematic presentation, etc. can be best developed by this type of test.

6. It helps to induce good study habits such as making outlines and summaries, organising the arguments for and against, etc.

7. The students can show their initiative, the originality of their thought and the fertility of their imagination as they are permitted freedom of response.

8. The responses of the students need not be completely right or wrong. All degrees of comprehensiveness and accuracy are possible.

9. It largely eliminates guessing.

10. They are valuable in testing the functional knowledge and power of expression of the pupil.

Limitations of Essay Tests:

1. One of the serious limitations of the essay tests is that these tests do not give scope for larger sampling of the content. You cannot sample the course content so well with six lengthy essay questions as you can with 60 multiple-choice test items.

2. Such tests encourage selective reading and emphasise cramming.

3. Moreover, scoring may be affected by spelling, good handwriting, coloured ink, neatness, grammar, length of the answer, etc.

4. The long-answer type questions are less valid and less reliable, and as such they have little predictive value.

5. It requires an excessive time on the part of students to write; while assessing, reading essays is very time-consuming and laborious.

6. It can be assessed only by a teacher or competent professionals.

7. Improper and ambiguous wording handicaps both the students and valuers.

8. Mood of the examiner affects the scoring of answer scripts.

9. There is halo effect-biased judgement by previous impressions.

10. The scores may be affected by his personal bias or partiality for a particular point of view, his way of understanding the question, his weightage to different aspect of the answer, favouritism and nepotism, etc.

Thus, the potential disadvantages of essay type questions are :

(i) Poor predictive validity,

(ii) Limited content sampling,

(iii) Scores unreliability, and

(iv) Scoring constraints.

Suggestions for Improving Essay Tests:

The teacher can sometimes, through essay tests, gain improved insight into a student’s abilities, difficulties and ways of thinking and thus have a basis for guiding his/her learning.

(A) White Framing Questions:

1. Give adequate time and thought to the preparation of essay questions, so that they can be re-examined, revised and edited before they are used. This would increase the validity of the test.

2. The item should be so written that it will elicit the type of behaviour the teacher wants to measure. If one is interested in measuring understanding, he should not ask a question that will elicit an opinion; e.g.,

“What do you think of Buddhism in comparison to Jainism?”

3. Use words which themselves give directions e.g. define, illustrate, outline, select, classify, summarise, etc., instead of discuss, comment, explain, etc.

4. Give specific directions to students to elicit the desired response.

5. Indicate clearly the value of the question and the time suggested for answering it.

6. Do not provide optional questions in an essay test because—

(i) It is difficult to construct questions of equal difficulty;

(ii) Students do not have the ability to select those questions which they will answer best;

(iii) A good student may be penalised because he is challenged by the more difficult and complex questions.

7. Prepare and use a relatively large number of questions requiring short answers rather than just a few questions involving long answers.

8. Do not start essay questions with such words as list, who, what, whether. If we begin the questions with such words, they are likely to be short-answer question and not essay questions, as we have defined the term.

9. Adapt the length of the response and complexity of the question and answer to the maturity level of the students.

10. The wording of the questions should be clear and unambiguous.

11. It should be a power test rather than a speed test. Allow a liberal time limit so that the essay test does not become a test of speed in writing.

12. Supply the necessary training to the students in writing essay tests.

13. Questions should be graded from simple to complex so that all the testees can answer atleast a few questions.

14. Essay questions should provide value points and marking schemes.

(B) While Scoring Questions:

1. Prepare a marking scheme, suggesting the best possible answer and the weightage given to the various points of this model answer. Decide in advance which factors will be considered in evaluating an essay response.

2. While assessing the essay response, one must:

a. Use appropriate methods to minimise bias;

b. Pay attention only to the significant and relevant aspects of the answer;

c. Be careful not to let personal idiosyncrasies affect assessment;

d. Apply a uniform standard to all the papers.

3. The examinee’s identity should be concealed from the scorer. By this we can avoid the “halo effect” or “biasness” which may affect the scoring.

4. Check your marking scheme against actual responses.

5. Once the assessment has begun, the standard should not be changed, nor should it vary from paper to paper or reader to reader. Be consistent in your assessment.

6. Grade only one question at a time for all papers. This will help you in minimising the halo effect in becoming thoroughly familiar with just one set of scoring criteria and in concentrating completely on them.

7. The mechanics of expression (legibility, spelling, punctuation, grammar) should be judged separately from what the student writes, i.e. the subject matter content.

8. If possible, have two independent readings of the test and use the average as the final score.

Related Articles:

• Merits and Demerits of Objective Type Test
• Types of Recall Type Test: Simple and Completion | Objective Test

Educational Statistics , Evaluation Tools , Essay Test

Comments are closed.

• Our Mission

What Are Some Types of Assessment?

There are many alternatives to traditional standardized tests that offer a variety of ways to measure student understanding.

In the early theories of learning, it was believed that complex higher-order thinking skills were acquired in small pieces, breaking down learning into a series of prerequisite skills. After these pieces were memorized, the learner would be able to assemble them into complex understanding and insight -- the puzzle could be arranged to form a coherent picture.

Today, we know learning requires that the learner engage in problem-solving to actively build mental models. Knowledge is attained not just by receiving information, but also by interpreting the information and relating it to the learner's knowledge base. What is important, and therefore should be assessed, is the learner's ability to organize, structure, and use information in context to solve complex problems.

"Assessment should be deliberately designed to improve and educate student performance, not merely to audit as most school tests currently do." -Grant Wiggins, EdD., president and director of programs, Relearning by Design, Ewing, New Jersey

Standardized Assessment

Almost every school district now administers state-mandated standardized tests. Every student at a particular grade level is required to take the same test. Everything about the test is standard -- from the questions themselves, to the length of time students have to complete it (although some exceptions may be made for students with learning or physical disabilities), to the time of year in which the test is taken. Throughout the country, and with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act , commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act (which requires research-based assessment), student performance on these tests has become the basis for such critical decisions as student promotion from one grade to the next, and compensation for teachers and administrators.

Standardized tests should not be confused with the standards movement, which advocates specific grade-level content and performance standards in key subject areas. Often, in fact, standardized tests are not aligned with state and district content standards, causing considerable disconnect between what is being taught and what is being tested.

In the spring of 2009, an initiative was created to develop a set of standards for all states in the United States to adhere to. The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS) , as it has become known, is still an evolving movement. The vast majority of states have pledged to adopt the standards and implement them by 2015. Standards for English language arts and mathematics were published in 2010, while standards for science and social studies are still in development. Visit Edutopia's Common Core State Standards Resource page for more information about the standards.

The questions then become: What is evidence-based assessment? Is it standardized tests? Is it portfolios? If portfolios are a part of evidence-based assessment, what else is necessary? Reflections? Work samples? Best work?

"If assessment is to be a positive force in education, it must be implemented properly. It cannot be used to merely sort students or to criticize education. Its goals must be to improve education. Rather than 'teach to the test,' we must 'test what we teach.'" -Lockwood and McLean

Alternative Assessment

Alternative assessment, often called authentic, comprehensive, or performance assessment, is usually designed by the teacher to gauge students' understanding of material. Examples of these measurements are open-ended questions, written compositions, oral presentations, projects, experiments, and portfolios of student work. Alternative assessments are designed so that the content of the assessment matches the content of the instruction.

Effective assessments give students feedback on how well they understand the information and on what they need to improve, while helping teachers better design instruction. Assessment becomes even more relevant when students become involved in their own assessment. Students taking an active role in developing the scoring criteria, self-evaluation, and goal setting, more readily accept that the assessment is adequately measuring their learning.

Authentic assessment can include many of the following:

• Observation
• Performance tasks
• Exhibitions and demonstrations
• Teacher-created tests
• Self- and peer-evaluation

Visit our Comprehensive Assessment Core Strategy page to learn more. You can explore the latest research about assessment on our Comprehensive Assessment Research page .

You will also find lots of great information in Edutopia.org's 2008 in-depth package on authentic assessment, Reinventing the Big Test: The Challenge of Authentic Assessment .

Continue to the next section of the guide, How Do Rubrics Help?

This guide is organized into six sections:

• Introduction
• Why Is Assessment Important?
• Types of Assessment
• How Do Rubrics Help?
• Workshop Activities
• Resources for Assessment

• Prodigy Math
• Prodigy English
• Is a Premium Membership Worth It?
• Promote a Growth Mindset
• Help Your Child Who's Struggling with Math
• Parent's Guide to Prodigy
• Assessments
• Math Curriculum Coverage
• English Curriculum Coverage
• Game Portal

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!

Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay

Are tests important for students? Why? How should learning be assessed? Essays like the one on this page aim to answer these questions.

Introduction

Assessment of students is a vital exercise aimed at evaluating their knowledge, talents, thoughts, or beliefs (Harlen, 2007). It involves testing a part of the content taught in class to ascertain the students’ learning progress. Assessment should put into consideration students’ class work and outside class work. For younger kids, the teacher should focus on language development.

This will enhance the kids’ confidence when expressing their ideas whenever asked. As in organizations, checks on the performance of students’ progress should be undertaken regularly. Notably, organizations have a high probability of investing in futility because they lack opportunity for correction.

However, in schools there are more chances of correcting mistakes. Similarly, teachers and parents should have a basis of nurturing and correcting the students. This is only possible through assessment of students at certain intervals during their learning progress. Equally, parents or teachers can use tests as they teach as a means of offering quick solutions to challenges experienced by students while learning.

All trainers should work together with their students with the aim of achieving some goals. To evaluate if the goals are met, trainers use various assessment methods depending on the profession. This is exactly true when it comes to assessment in schools. Assessment should focus on the student learning progress.

It should be employed from the kindergarten to the highest levels of learning institutions such as the university. The most essential fact about assessment is that it has to be specific. This implies that each test should try to evaluate if a student is able to demonstrate the understanding of certain concepts taught in class. Contrary to what most examiners believe, assessment should never be used as a means of ranking students.

I this case the key aims of assessment will be lost. Ranking is not bad, but to some extent it might create a negative impression and demoralize the students who are not ranked at top in class. They feel that they are foolish, which is not the case. In general, assessment should be used for evaluation of results and thus creating and formulation of strategies for improving the students’ learning and performance.

Importance of assessment in school

Assessment forms an important part of learning that determines whether the objectives of education have been attained or not (Salvia, 2001). For important decision making concerning the student’s performance, assessment is inevitable. It is very crucial since it determines what course or career can the student partake depending on class performance.

This is not possible without an exam assessment. It engages instructors with a number of questions, which include whether they are teaching the students what they are supposed to be taught or not, and whether their teaching approach is suitable for students.

Students should be subjected to assessment beyond class work, because the world is changing and they are supposed to adapt to dynamics they encounter in their everyday lives. Assessment is important for parents, students, and teachers.

Teachers should be able to identify the students’ level of knowledge and their special needs. They should be able to identify skills, design lesson plans, and come up with the goals of learning. Similarly, instructors should be able to create new learning arrangements and select appropriate learning materials to meet individual student’s needs.

Teachers have to inform parents about the student’s progress in class. This is only possible with the assessment of the students through either exam or group assessment. The assessment will make teachers improve learning mechanisms to meet the needs and abilities of all students. It provides teachers with a way of informing the public about the student’s progress in school.

Whenever parents are informed about the results of their children, they have to contribute to decision making concerning the student’s education needs (Harlen, 2007). Parents are able to select and pay for the relevant curriculum for their students. They can hire personal tutors or pay tuition to promote the learning of the student.

Students should be able to evaluate their performance and learning in school with the use of assessment results. It forms the basis of self-motivation as through it students are able to put extra efforts in order improve their exam performance. Without results, a student might be tempted to assume that he or she has mastered everything taught in class.

Methods of assessment

Various mechanisms can be used to assess the students in school. These include both group assessment and various examinations issued during the learning session. The exam could be done on a weekly, monthly, or terminal basis. Through this, a student is required to submit a written paper or oral presentation. Assignments are normally given with a fixed date of submission.

The teacher determines the amount of time required depending on the complexity of the assignment. It can take a day, a week, or even a month and this ensures that the student does not only rely on class work. It promotes research work and instills the self-driven virtue to the student. In addition, short time exam gives a quick feedback to the teacher about the student performance.

Exam methods of assessment

Before looking at the various methods of exam assessment, it is important to understand the major role that the assessment plays in the learning of the student. Carrying out an assessment at regular intervals allows the teachers to know how their students are progressing over time with respect to their previous assessments (Harlen, 2007).

Actually, testing of students helps in their learning and creates motivation to learn more and improve their performance in the future examination. It also guides the teacher on ways of passing on the knowledge to the students. There are three purposes of assessment and these include assessment for learning, assessment to learning, and assessment of learning.

All these help the teacher in planning of his lessons and means of getting feedback from students. Moreover, these three factors of learning join the efforts of parents, student, and teachers in the process of learning. There are several repercussions realized when parents do not monitor closely the performance of their kids.

Education experts assert that parents who fail to monitor their children’s learning progress are like farmers who sow seeds during planting season and wait to reap during the harvesting season yet they did nothing about it. The success of the student is easily achieved when there is harmony among the parents, teachers, and the students.

Methods of assessment can be categorized into three steps: baseline, formative and summative (Stefanakis, 2010). The baseline is considered as the basic and marks the beginning of learning. The summative one carries the bigger weight than the formative in the overall performance of the student. It carries more marks and it is usually done at the end of the teaching period in the term paper.

The aim is to check for the overall understanding of the unit or topic by the student. As the formative assessment is a continuous process during the learning session in the classroom, the instructor should use the general feedback and observations while teaching. It can provide an immediate solution to the teacher because the area that troubles the student is easily identified and the teacher takes appropriate action.

Teachers should never ignore the formative or wait for the summative at the end of the learning term. Even if the teacher discovers weakness of the student, it might be less useful since there will be no room for improvement. Actually, it is more of a reactive measure rather than proactive summative assessment. Various mechanisms can be used to realize the formative assessment.

These include surveys, which involve collecting of students’ opinions, attitudes, and behaviors during class (Nitko, 2001). They help the instructor to interact with the student more closely, creating a supportive learning environment for the student. The teacher is able to clear any existing misconception from the students due to prior knowledge. It can also involve reflections of the student.

Here, the student is required to take some time and reflect on what was taught. It necessitates the student to ask several questions regarding what was taught, for instance, questions about the hottest topic, new concepts, or questions left unanswered. It also involves the teacher asking questions during a teaching session. This makes the teacher to point out the areas the students have not understood.

By doing so, the teacher is able to focus and put more effort on some topics as compared to others. The teacher can also decide to issue homework or assignments to students. This gives students an opportunity to build confidence on the knowledge acquired during class work (Stefanakis, 2010).

Most importantly, the teacher could include the objectives and expectations of each lesson and this can be in form of questions. These questions create awareness and curiosity of students about the topic.

For the above methods of assessment, various formats have been adopted. First is the baseline assessment, which aims at examining individual’s experience as well as the prior knowledge. There are pencil and paper easement method, which is a written test. It can be a short essay or multiple choice questions. It checks for the student’s understanding of certain concepts.

The third is the embedded assessment. It deals with testing the students in contextual learning and it is done in the formative stage. The fourth involves oral reports that aim at capturing the student’s communication and scientific skills. They are carried out in the formative stage. Interviews evaluate the group and individual performance during the formative stage.

There is also a performance task, which requires the student to work on an action related to the problem while explaining a scientific idea. Usually, it is assessed both in the summative and formative stages. All these formats ensure the objective of the assessment is achieved (Harlen, 2007). The above exam method promotes learning and acquiring of knowledge among the students.

Group methods of assessment

Assessment is a flexible activity as what is done to an individual during assessment can also be done in a group and still achieve the objectives of the assessment. Group work aims to ensure that students work together. The method is not as smooth as that of an individual’s assessment since awarding of grades is a bit tricky and not straightforward.

The instructors will not know which student has contributed a lot in the group work, unless the same grade is given to group members to create fairness in the process of assessment (Paquette, 2010). It is advisable to consider both the process and finished product when assessing group work.

By just looking at the final work of the group, no one can tell who did what and did not. Individual contributions are implicit in the final project. The teacher should employ some other measures to be able to distribute grades fairly.

The solutions of assessing group include consideration of the process and the final work. The instructor should assess the process involved in the development of the final work. The aspect of the project includes punctuality, cooperation and contribution of the individual student to the group work (Stefanakis, 2010). The participation of each student and teamwork should be assessed.

Fair grading requires looking at the achievement of the objectives of the project. In addition, the instructors can let the students assess and evaluate themselves through group participation. This enhances group teamwork and yields a fair distribution of grades. This is realized because the members of the group know how to research and present written analysis of their work.

Self-assessment aims at realizing respect, promptness, and listening to minority views within the group. Another effective way of ensuring that group work becomes successful is by holding group members accountable. This actually curbs the issue of joy riding among the group members. Individuals are allocated with a certain portion of the entire job.

This involves asking members to demonstrate what they have learned and how they have contributed into the group. In addition, the products and processes are assessed. Another interesting scenario is realized when the instructor gives students the opportunity to evaluate the work of other team members. The gauging of individuals involves the investigating of various aspects of the projects.

These include communication skills, efforts, cooperation, and participation of individual members. It is facilitated by the use of forms, which are completed by the students.

Group work aims at improving both accountability of individuals and vital information due to dynamics experienced in the group. To some extent, an instructor can involve the external feedbacks. These feedbacks are finally incorporated into the final score of the student’s group grade.

There are various mechanisms for assessing and grading the group. First, there is shared grading. Through this, the submitted work of the group is assessed and same grade to all members is awarded without considering the individual’s contribution. Secondly, there is averaging of the group grade. Through this, each member is required to submit the portion allocated.

After assessing the individual’s work, an average of all the members is evaluated and this grade is awarded to group members. This average group grade promotes members to focus on group and individual work. There is also individual grading, where the student’s allocated work is assessed and grades given to individuals.

This enhances efforts during working with all the members. In fact, this method is the fairest way of grading group work. There is also an individual report grading in which each member is required to write individual report. After submitting, assessment is done and a grade is given to the student.

Finally, there is an individual examination grading where questions are examined based on the project. This encourages students to participate fully during the project. It is hard to answer the questions if you have not participated in the group work.

How assessment prepares students for higher education/ workforce/ student character

It is a fact that in any institution exam is an inevitable criterion of assessing students. Whichever the system adopted by the governments of various countries worldwide, exam is an important event as teachers are able to allow those students who perform well to progress in their learning (Stefanakis, 2010). Those who have not met the minimum grading will require extra tuition before they are promoted.

This will involve the initiatives of parents to hire tutors for the student. Exam assessment prepares the student for higher levels of learning, because the higher institutions of learning have exam assessment too. Therefore, it is important for the students to get used to exam as well as research, which will boost the student understanding during lectures in the university or in college.

Similarly, at the end of a university degree course the students are required to carry out a project either as individual or group work. The knowledge and experience of teamwork gained during the lower study levels will play a great role in successful completion of tasks in the university.

Another important factor of assessment is that it helps a student to develop his or her character from childhood to adulthood. For the first time a student joins the school the test should be initiated.

From small things the student is asked by the teacher or by other colleagues, he or she learns how to associate with other students especially during the group work tasks. The student learns and embraces teamwork, cooperation, and accountability. These virtues are a foundation for character. In addition, the student acquires communication skills especially during the presentation of project work or during class sessions.

These small facts about life accumulate and contribute to life outside the school. The student is able to work in any environment. The exam credentials are vital requirements in the job market. All firms base their employment qualification on exams. More often, employers choose best workers based on their exam papers.

This approach has been vital since employers might not have time to assess ability to demonstrate their skills (Stefanakis, 2010). Therefore, the underlying basis is both exam and group assessment. Group assessment helps to build teamwork, which is a vital virtue in the workplace. Most projects in an organization are done in groups. Hence, teamwork aspects are very crucial during implementation.

The student utilizes the knowledge and experience of group work during school. The working environment is not so much different from socialization in school. In any organization, the success of a company is determined by the teamwork and unity of the workers. These vital virtues are learnt and developed in school and are enhanced by assessment.

Harlen, W. (2007). Assessment of learning . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Nitko, A. J. (2001). Educational assessment of students (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.

Paquette, K. R. (2010). Striving for the perfect classroom instructional and assessment strategies to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners . New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Salvia, J. (2001). Assessment (8th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Stefanakis, E. H. (2010). Differentiated assessment how to assess the learning potential of every student . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, August 1). Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-of-students-in-schools-essay/

"Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay." IvyPanda , 1 Aug. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-of-students-in-schools-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay'. 1 August.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay." August 1, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-of-students-in-schools-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay." August 1, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-of-students-in-schools-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Students in School: Importance of Assessment Essay." August 1, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/assessment-of-students-in-schools-essay/.

• Summative and Formative Assessment
• Absolute and Relative Grading: Comparative Analysis
• Formative and Summative Roles
• Education and Its Grading Issue
• Education Theories: Formative and Summative Evaluations
• Changing the Structure of the Class Grading System
• Self-Confidence Survey and Formative & Summative Assessment
• The Essence of Summative
• Summative Assessment Planning and Procedure
• A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades
• Literacy: Diagnosing Reading Skills, Reporting Progress & Outcome Data
• Convenience and Flexibility of the Online Classes
• New Service to Be Offered: Information Literacy Seminars for New Students
• Teaching and Reading Plan
• Foucault on the Way Formal Institutions Regulate, Discipline or Train Us to Become Certain Kinds of Persons (Subjects)