Welcome to Module 1 ESE 503

As a masters level university student you have likely been exposed to hundreds of hours of assessment in your academic career. You may be surprised to realize how many hours of your life are spent in one form of assessment of another. It is vital that you come to understand just what assessments are and what they are used for.

In its most purified vision assessment is a singular test or a series of tests that an individual must endure that once completed will indicate if the individual has a particular area of weakness or perhaps strength depending on your vision of what testing was created to do. In this course that is indeed what you will focus on.

In reality assessment is an ongoing process that everyone everywhere is subjected to everyday. Assessment begins in the morning when you put on clothes and stop to make sure they look all right. Assessment is that brief second when you check your teeth to make sure you have nothing stuck in them. Assessments happen when your boss tells you that you are or aren't doing a good job.

The outcome of the assessment has a lot to do with who is performing the assessment. A woman's view of her body will traditionally return with a much more negative response then the same assessment by a man. A dentist's vision of your teeth often is much less positive then out own vision of our dental hygiene. This is a key concept to learn in assessment at any level. The assessor and his or her vision of the world often biases the results of an assessment, no matter how scientific and measured the tests are. Understanding this about assessments adds credence to the saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'

Assessment is a process that every individual undergoes. It is important to recognize and to help not only yourself but also your own students understand that assessments are a regular part of life. Assessments are an opportunity to show a person, student in the best possible light. Assessments are also a way to gain introspection and realization about what you still can do to make yourself even stronger in the area being assessed.

In the same vein it is important to keep in mind that assessments are a snapshot; a momentary glance of how that person was doing in that moment. Every person has had a bad picture. Fortunately for most individuals it is possible to tear up and remove any trace of those terrible pictures. With formal assessment it may not be quite as easy to remove traces of a bad snapshot of the individual's psyche or intellectual process.

In this course you will be examining yourself through a series of assessments to which you can respond. You will look at what formal assessment is, what it measures, and why we use it. You will be looking at the implications of assessment and how to work within the system to assure students that they will receive the best treatment possible in their formal assessments. Finally, you will be looking at how to use assessment to ensure that every student in your classroom will receive the best possible education.

E-mail J'Anne Ellsworth at Janne.Ellsworth@nau.edu

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Course developed by Martha Affeld & J'Anne Affeld

Copyright © 2006 Martha Affeld
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