Assessment in education has different strategies, depending on the very purpose of the assessment. Some of the possible categorizations of assessment types are:
One of the possible categorizations of assessment in education is into formative and summative assessment.
Assessment of learning or summative assessment is a process that usually takes place at the end of instruction and measures degree to which the instructional objectives have been achieved.2)
Summative learning also:
Assessment for learning or formative assessment is a procedure, generally same as summative assessment, but including
Formative assessment:4)
Although there are clear differences between formative and summative assessment nicely illustrated by the quotation:
many theorists still emphasize that all assessment is preceded by a summative assessment (a judgement), which can be both implicit (and just the formative focus made explicit), or both processes can be explicit.7)
A norm-referenced assessment is any assessment which uses results of all students to determine the standard or grades.8) For example, grading on the curve, (also: curved grading, curving) means assigning grades to students in a way that will fit a predetermined distribution (usually Gaussian distribution)or predetermining the proportion of students who will be given every grade.
Criterion-referenced assessment is an assessment type in which an absolute standard is set before the assessment, and not after obtaining results of all students.9) For example, this would mean not to give the best grade to a student who is better than most others, but to the student who has proven his proficiency by satisfying certain criterion.
Objective assessment and subjective assessment usually refer to weather questions forming the assessment have predefined correct and incorrect answers or are open-ended. An objective test typically includes true/false, short answer questions, and multiple-choice questions. This kind of tests can foster rote learning in students.10)
While the difference between paper-based and computer-based assessment (and e-assessment in general) is obvious, a number of findings suggest different test scores as the result of administering the same test in a paper-based (also: Paper-Pencil-Test (PPT)11)) and computer-based version. Such findings and their causes are usually considered to be a part of the test mode effect.12)
The early findings about the test mode effect have mostly favored paper-based tests suggesting a slightly higher score on a paper-based test.13)14) This was explained as the result of
Recent findings findings, however, suggest that although absolute equivalence of performance on computer-based and paper-based test is not possible, technological advances and good practices largely contribute to this goal. Although studies still sometimes provide different results, more and more of them find no difference between two modes of tests20)21) and introduce new advantages of computer-based tests (e-assessment).22)23)