Evaluation - Tools and Techniques

 

Table of content :

• ASSESSMENT
• EVALUATION
• LEVELS OF EVALUATION
• CHOOSING THE METHOD
• TOOLS OF EVALUATION
• CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD EVALUATION
• EVALUATION METHODOLOGY

Education is incomplete without Assessment and Evaluation.

Assessment:

Assessment is a fact finding activity that describes conditions that exists at a particular time. It describes the progress students have made towards a given educational goal at a point of time, mainly used to collect quantitative data.

Evaluation:

Evaluation adds value judgment to assessment. It estimates the worth of the process or programme in order to reach meaningful decisions about that process or programme. Thus, it a a qualitative measure of the prevailing situation.

Levels of Evaluation

Kirkpatrick’s Levels of Evaluation

Choosing An Evaluation Method

Tools of Evaluation

Let’s see the various tools and technique for an effective evaluation.

1) Testing Procedure

A formal testing that is intended to measure the student’s knowledge, skill aptitude, physical fitness, which can be administered formally or informally in the following ways :

a) Written Test - A test that are administered on paper or on a computer.

• Multiple Choice
• True/ False
• Matching
• Fill in the blank
• Essay - Short / Long

b) Verbal Test – Which is also know a mental test, it consists of items measuring vocabulary, verbal reasoning and comprehension.

• Spelling
• Grammar
• Word group
• Analogies
• Sentence completion
• Verbal deductions
• Instructions
• Critical Resoning

d) Practical Test – Students performs a visual enactment of a particular activity and teacher observes and rates the students performance.

e) Performance test – It involves students in performing various activates through the teacher evaluates.

• Oral presentation
• Dance / movement
• Lab demonstration
• Sports competition
• Dramatic reading
• Enactment
• Debate
• Musical recital
• Projects

 

2) Self reporting or Self Evaluating techniques

In this the children evaluate themselves.

a) Questionnaire :  Questionnaire consist of a set of pre-determined questions, by which the factual information about the children is known and the children are able to understand themselves.

b) Autobiography : This method helps the child to write about themselves and they understand where they stand and which area needs improvement.

c) Interview : Interviews are good at producing data which deal with topics in depth and in detail.  The teacher is likely to gain valuable insiges based on the depth of the information gathered.  It can be a structured or non-structured interview.

d) Personal diary / Portfolio : It is collection of evidences of students’ work over a period of time. In which, the students demonstrate to other his/her learning and progress. It provides a cumulative record or a picture of how a skill or knowledge area develops emerges.

3) Observation Method

It is observing with a specific objective, but without giving any inputs.  The student is exactly observed in the given situation. There is no possibility of bias. Here no body influences the behavior of the child.

a) Anecdotal Records – Notes written by the teacher regarding the student’s unique behavior across time, to establish patterns and causes.

b) Checklist – A list of response categories that respondents check if appropriate.

c) Rating Scale – It is a set of categories designed to elicit information about a quantitative or a qualitative attribute.

Types – Numeric rating , Graphic rating, Comparative scales

d) Sociometry – We identify the child’s social relationship. It measures relatedness among people.

Types – Sociogram, Sociometric Matrix, Social Distance Scale, Guess who Technique

 

4) Projective techniques are a method of understanding the inner world of the individual.

a) Association Test – Sight words / flash cards / jumble words - are given to the students to associate it.

b) TAT – A theme is shown and asked to the students what actually comes to the childs mind. We all could have seen the clouds and we assume it to be some animal / bird image from that.

c) Ink Blot test – We all would have done this in our childhood.  Dropping few ink on the paper, floding it and when we open it, we can see some image or picture in it.

d) Story completion test – once strory is narrated. The sequesce of the story is shuffled and the child is asked to arrange in a proper order.

e) Sentence completion test – Giving a hint – and the child is asked to develop a story or complete the sentence.

f) Make a Picture story test – where the child is asked what does the story interpret.

The answers in such test will not be same, each students will have a different story and interpretation.

So far we have seen all the tools and techniques of evaluation.  Now, lets see what a good evaluation tool must have. It should have a good –

• Validity
• Reliabitly
• Usability

a) Validity

• Quality of a tool enables it to determine what it was designed to determine.
• Validity is always concerned with the results of a test and not to the test itself.
• Validity is a specific and not a general quality.

b) Reliability

• It is the quality of consistency that the tool maintains over a period of time
• An estimate of reliability always refers to a particular type of consistency.
• Reliability refers to the results obtained with as evaluation instrument and not to the instruction itself.

c) Usability

• The tool must be practicabiliy accplicable.
• The should be not be expensive and time consuming.
• Evaluation tool should be easy to interpretation and comparable.

Evaluation Methodology

You need to select the methods of evaluation according to educational objectives and domains to be evaluated.  Below are different evaluation methods for each educational domains.

Cognitive Domain

Written Test

• Objective type
• Subjective type

Oral Test

• Observational rating scale
• Questionnaire

Affective Domain

• Direct Observation
• Rating Scale
• Checklist

Psychomotor Domain

• Direct observation
• Practical test
• In real situation
• In simulation condition

So, we have identifies or evaluated the students using the various toos and techniques. Now what is the next step?  Based on the performance and rating, we are now able to identify where the child needs improvement or where is the gap and where we need to focus on.

Looking at the gaps, we need to identify whether the child is slow learner or under achiver or having a learning disabilities. And we need to find out the remedial teaching strategies to fill the gaps.  Which is the main aim for evaluation.

Hope, this post was useful for the you and I would try to write about the various remedial strategies for the students with learning disabilities.

Attendance Template - using Google form and sheet

 Are you finding it difficult to maintain students attendance for online classes ? Now, there is a solution for it.  You can easily do it by just by one click, one form and one sheet. Yes, you read it right.  

Click the link below for a video in two parts 

First part - explaining how to download the readymade template and to use it

Second part - explains how to create the template by yourself. 

I have given the link below to download the attendance to get your copies in the editable form.

 

https://youtu.be/mLS7iJXStZE

https://youtu.be/C4KCvm79wCE

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GOOGLE CLASSROOM - YEAR END CLEANUP TIPS

Its time to cleanup your google classroom and begin with new one for the next school year. We are now at the end of the academic year and everyone will be wondering how to cleanup or close their digital classroom.

So, let us see, what are the steps to cleanup and some useful tips you must consider before you cleanup or archive the classroom.

Points to remember before you archive or cleanup your digital classroom.

1) Take time to Reflect :

Just take some time to look through your Google Classroom assignments, their coordinating folders in Google Drive, and calendar. Just what went on well and what dint work so well, what can be done differently next year, so that we don’t repeat the same mistake the next time, reflection is the key for our growth and for the students.

2) Review and return :

Check your “To Review” in Google Classroom to see if any of your work need to be reviewed, or graded, or returned. By this, you can view all the pending works at the same time. You can open up each assignment individually if you have several assignments left to grade and return.  You can also click on the three dots to “mark as reviewed,” by doing this you can move the assignments to reviewed tab.

3) Move old class folders to drive :

For each class you create in Google Classroom, a folder gets created in your Google Drive automatically where all of the resources, assignments, documents and other files are stored. You may create a New Folder and save them in that, so that it can be used whenever required in future. You also can create master folders for each school year, like “2020-2021” and so on.

4) Remove old class calendars :

When a classroom is created and some assignments are due, it is automatically shown in Google calendar of the class.  However, during the end of the year, you don’t really need the calendar showing up amymore. We can remove the calendars of old class in two types :

•  Hiding from the list : By doing this we can actually hide the calendar from showing up.
•  Delete or remove permanently: You can go to the settings and delete the calendar of that particular class permanently.

5) Remove old class files from "Shared with me" in Drive :

When files are shared in the Classroom as resources or assignment, sometimes the files will also show up in the "Shared with me" area of your Google Drive. If you have a lots of students and lot of assignments will show up in "Shared with me".

The files shared are of two types:

• When students submit the assignments, you become the owner of the file (so make sure that you have returned all the assignments to your students) and you can delete the file.
•  When someone shares files or documents with you, you are not the owner of the file, so if you delete the file, it simply removes from the “shared with me” list. The file will still be in the classroom folder, even if it removed or deleted.

Now let us see the ways to archive the class, you can use anyone of the method to prepare for the new class:

1) By Un-enrolling the students

Another possible way to cleanup your classroom is to remove students from the old class. You can choose this if you prefer that the students alone will be changed and all the other things remains to be same.

But there is the possibility of the new students to view the resources and assignments that you have already posted for the old students.

Steps to Un-enroll the students from old class:

• Go to the People
• Selected students section and choose all students.
• Click Action button and choose Remove from the drop-down.

2) By making a copy of the classroom

You can make a copy of the old classroom, when you do so you can see that there are no students and staff in that new classroom, but all the resources and assignments that you posted in the old classroom are saved as drafts which you can edit and repost or reschedule it again. This saves much of your time, so that you need not again create or upload it.

My advice will be, if you are going to handle the same subject and grade, would be to make a copy of the classroom so that you can reuse the same class year after year.

I have shown step-by-step direction on how to archive the classroom in my youtube video, you can click on to the link to watch it.

Steps to make a copy of a class:

• In the Google Classroom homepage
• click on the three dots on the class card, then choose “copy” and rename it accordingly.

3) By Archiving the old classes

The Last method to cleanup classroom is to archive you class. By doing this is it removes the class from main page. If freezes the class and no one can make any change in it. But, important thing is that, it allows you to copy and reuse the old resources and assignments from the archived class in your new class.

This might be the best way when you are done with a class, and it can be accessed and restored if needed.

Steps to archive a class:

• In the Google Classroom homepage
• click on the three dots on the class card, then choose “Archive.”

Steps to access or restore the old class:

• Go to your main menu (three lines) and scroll down to the bottom
• Select “Archive” to see your archived classes.
• You can also copy, restore, or delete them from here.

 

So, that’s it, but still there are multiple ways to do almost everything, but if you have any other best way to archive the class, tell me in the comments, I would love to learn more new things.