Page 358 - Foundations of Learning, 4th Edition (Revised)

David loves soccer. He’s been playing it ever since he was a child,
where 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.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Distinguish between assessment and evaluation
• Understand what criteria are and be able to establish them in order to complete assessments
• Complete an assessment for another so that the assessee is able to then improve the quality of his

or her performance or product

READING

Measurement, Evaluation, and Assessment

Consider the following scenario to help you distinguish between measurement, evaluation, and assessment.
Assume you took a 20-question multiple-choice exam. You receive your exam back and see that you
answered 17 out of the 20 questions correctly. Your instructor has marked the letter grade “B” next to
your score of 85%.

In order to determine the score of 85%, your instructor needed to come to a decision, or perform a
measurement, to determine whether each individual answer was right or wrong. After determining which
answers were correct, your overall performance on the exam was graded or evaluated against a set standard
or grading scale used by your instructor. In other words, the instructor used the results of the measurement
(17 out of 20 possible or 85%) to make an evaluation (give you a grade) of your performance on the exam.

352 Foundations of Learning