Self Assessment: What Is Self-Assessment?

|assessment as a process of making judgments of learners’ knowledge, skills and competence against set criteria |

Assessment plays a significant role in the learning experience of students. It determines their progression through their programmes and enables them to demonstrate that they have achieved the intended learning outcomes. It is assessment that provides the main basis for public recognition of achievement, through the awarding of qualifications and/or credit.

Formative assessment, or assessment for learning as it is often called, is the assessment that

The system should be able to produce a final score out of ten for each student.

According to the School curriculum and standards authority (2014) assessments should arise naturally out of teaching and intended learning developed from the curriculum and syllabus, the judgements made by educators assists in students ongoing learning (para. 1).

Assessment is carried out to ensure that learning has taken place. This is used to measures the learner’s knowledge and skills in their chosen area of learning. Assessment can be used to encourage learners to ask questions on anything they have not understood, learners at some point will have to know that they will have to prove their knowledge and understanding to the standards of the awarding body.

As the awarding body will require the teacher to assess the student’s level of learning, the teacher will still need to decide what methods of assessment are required. This may be observation during any session, and completing assignments. It is important when any assessment has been made the teacher must give the student feedback. Finally the teacher needs to review any assessment and make any changes where necessary. It is important that the teacher maintains a record of student progress as this may be a requirement of the organisation.

Principles of assessment, different methods, strengths and limitations of these, relevant to their subject area, which can effectively meet the individual needs of learners.

Formative assessment can be an effective tool in building positive relationships as it gives cause for two-way communication at any point of a learning course. It can be written or verbally delivered, offering the opportunity to appeal to a variety of learning styles. It enables the learner to influence their learner programme and helps them build essential life-skills such as goal setting and self assessment. Its main disadvantage for the trainer is the amount of time the type of assessment can consume, and a learner may become disengaged by repetitive assessment exercises that interrupt the flow of learning.

The assessment method must take into account the characteristic of the learner and needs to be consistent and relevant to what is being assessed. The assessment will not only focus on improving the learning, it will measure their achievements and also remind the learner of how they are progressing.

Assessment is all about making judgements. A major argument for involving students in self and peer-assessment is that it helps them to develop the ability to make judgements, in particular about themselves and their work. This is an important life skill as well as an academic one.

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting further student learning and enabling improved student learning through purposeful interaction and providing meaningful feedback. Formative assessment is specifically intended to generate feedback and feed forward on performance to improve, accelerate and enable learning (Sadler, 1998). Formative assessment can and should occur throughout a daily class, through implementation of learning and teaching strategies that lead to both oral and written feedback. The Formative assessment approach is equitable and reliable, producing some significant indicator of student developed understanding that links directly to the syllabus outcomes. This then allows the teacher or other students to respond by trying to

Self assessment is a process in which you examine yourself in attempt to discover and learn more about yourself. Your likes, dislikes, behaviors, attitudes and habits can be found during this process. You can use the discoveries to your advantage by accepting or changing strengths and weaknesses. I plan on using this course to enhance my personal skills to become a better student and find success in earning my Bachelor of Arts degree at Ashford University in Social Science. Self Assessment is the first step in my successful future.

Self-assessments are a journey of understanding and discovery, there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to the results of

Assessment enables educators to provide feedback to their learners, this in turn promotes self-evaluation by the learner, as they use the assessment feedback to scrutinise and make judgements about the quality of their work (Spiller, 2009:6 & 7).