Page 79 - Learning to Learn

LEARNING TO LEARN: BECOMING A SELF -GROWER 79
EXPERIENCE 4: S ELF-ASSESSMENT : THE ENGINE OF SELF -GROWTH READING
Why Assessment?
Evaluation is a given in education. As a student, you are
used to evaluation. In school, you’ve taken lots of tests. You
most likely took the SAT or ACT in order to get into college.
These are all examples of evaluations. Evaluation is common
in the workplace as well; supervisors are responsible for
evaluating employees. Often, companies have checklists that
are completed regularly for each employee. Sometimes there
is a benefit to a positive evaluation, such as a raise. And there
is that warm feeling when you receive a positive evaluation,
confirming that you have done a good job.
If evaluation is so prevalent and useful, what is assessment and why are we asking you to learn about it? To
answer the first part of the question, you’ve actually been performing assessments throughout this course
right from the beginning. Most have been in the form of SII Assessments: identifying Strengths, areas for
Improvement, and Insights.
Here’s the basic difference between the two: While evaluation is used to judge the quality of a current
product or performance against a set standard, the main purpose of assessment is to provide feedback that
helps a person improve the quality of a future product or performance. In this chapter, we’ll talk further
about assessment and evaluation including ways to perform more formal assessments.
Why is it important to improve your assessment skills? While an evaluation can be helpful, it usually
comes at the end of a process and is focused on a product or performance. It usually does not provide
information about how you can improve. A good assessment, however, can help you improve the quality
of your current and future performance. Without assessment, it is possible that you may repeat a process
over and over and yet have no change in the quality of the performance or outcome.
In this experience, you will learn more about assessment, so you can perform a high quality assessment
in a structured manner. This includes establishing guidelines for what is to be assessed, knowing how
the information is to be collected, and how the feedback is to be reported. You will also learn about the
differences between assessment and self-assessment and between evaluation and assessment.
David loves soccer. He’s been playing it ever since he was a child, when
he joined friends every evening to kick the ball around. He became good
enough to play on the varsity team and now has a scholarship to college
because of his playing ability. David has a favorite coach from middle
school who gave him lots of feedback. In fact, those assessments
were what helped him improve enough to catch the coach’s eye
when he moved on to high school. While David can easily see his
coach’s feedback as helpful, he has more trouble accepting help from his
professors, especially in English class. In fact, he’s really starting to
feel like just giving up and taking the class again next semester. He
knows his attitude is bad, but he feels like he just can’t help it. He’s
even started avoiding his professor’s office hours, in spite of the fact
that he knows he needs help. He has a final paper due in three weeks.