The role of classroom assessment in teaching

Classroom Assessment and its Role

Classroom Assessment is a systematic approach to formative evaluation, used by instructors to determine how much and how well students are learning. CATs and other informal assessment tools provide key information during the semester regarding teaching and learning so that changes can be made as necessary.

“Teaching and learning are reciprocal processes that depend on and affect one another. Thus, the assessment component deals with how well the students are learning and how well the teacher is teaching,” Kellough and Kellough, (1999).

Read: The concepts of measurement, assessment, and evaluation in education

Assessment does more than allocate a grade or degree classification to students – it plays an important role in focusing their attention and, as Sainsbury & Walker (2007) observe, actually drives their learning. Gibbs (2003) states that assessment has 6 main functions:

1. Capturing student time and attention

2. Generating appropriate student learning activity

3. Providing timely feedback which students pay attention to

4. Helping students internalize the discipline’s standards and notions of equality

5. Generating marks or grades that distinguish between students or enable pass/fail decisions to be made.

6. Providing evidence for others outside the course to enable them to judge the appropriateness of standards on the course.

Read this: Top qualities and skills of a good teacher.

Surgenor (2010) summarized the role of assessment in learning in the following points:

• It fulfills student expectations.

• It is used to motivate students.

• It provides opportunities to remedy mistakes.

• It indicates readiness for progression.

• Assessment serves as a diagnostic tool.

• Assessment enables grading and degree classification.

• Assessment works as a performance indicator for students.

• It is used as a performance indicator for teachers.

• Assessment is also a performance indicator for institutions.

• Assessment facilitates learning in one way or the other.