This is an introduction to Educational Assessment and the methods and tools used therein. Educational Assessment is not limited to the grading of students’ work: it encompasses all activities directed to increasing engagement in learning and extending diverse capabilities, and includes ascertaining and evaluating not only teaching but also curriculum and broad range of other educational activities.

Below you will see an overview of Educational Assessment, together with an introduction to methods tailored to the timing and subjects of assessment, effective methods of assessment in large-group classes, and assessment methods and tools to evaluate diverse capabilities.

• The two terms generally used in relation to Educational Assessment are “evaluation” and “assessment.” Evaluation involves making final judgments regarding learning outcomes in light of learning objectives. Concretely, it is the process of determining grades. Assessment, on the other hand, refers to the activities undertaken for the purpose of leading students toward the achievement of their learning goals such as setting a variety of tasks, gathering necessary information, providing feedback on the information gathered so as to make final evaluations.
• The meanings of these two key terms are incorporated in the definition of Educational Assessment as “educational activities designed to lead students to success in their learning, by ascertaining the actual status of learning, providing appropriate feedback, and evaluating the outcomes of learning activities in light of learning objectives.”

(1) Raise the quality of students’ learning

• One aspect of the quality of learning is the acquisition of more knowledge, but quality also encompasses learning dispositions and attitudes such as self-directed approaches to learning and learning behaviors.
• Moreover, it includes not only results (learning outcomes) such as examinations and grades, but also generic capabilities acquired in the course of various learning activities in class.

(2) Promote enhancement of teaching by instructors

• In order to accomplish the purposes above, it is essential to conduct reviews of the education offered by one’s organization and one’s own practices as an instructor. This involves considering whether or not the required capabilities are defined concretely as learning objectives, and whether or not teaching methods and content have been selected to enable students to achieve those objectives.
• Assessment methods should be selected in order to ascertain whether or not objectives are being achieved and what might be necessary to achieve them, and to prompt changes in learners’ behavior.
• Furthermore, instructors should reflect on the overall results of the assessment, identify points for improvement in their teaching, and make the necessary improvements.

(3) Be accountable to wider society

• As a social entity, it is extremely important for universities to be understood and trusted by the wider public.
• One of the key points in third-party evaluation systems such as certified evaluation/accreditation is the visualization and publication of learning outcomes. One of the standards established for certified evaluation is to measure and determine what students have acquired through their classes and education, and to implement improvements based on those findings.
• Educational Assessment is important for both students and instructors, but it also has great significance for universities, which are obliged to be accountable to wider society.

When should assessment be undertaken? In order to promote students’ learning, it is most effective to conduct assessments at three different points in the teaching process.

• The evaluation of learners with a view to providing optimal learning experiences for them is known as “diagnostic assessment.” In this form of assessment, instructors ascertain students’ abilities and prior knowledge before the start of class, and adjust their teaching content and plans accordingly.
• In concrete terms, diagnostic assessment may include pre-class questionnaires and basic academic ability tests to check how familiar students are with the material to be covered in class, and placement tests to divide students into class groups based on their abilities.
• The purpose of diagnostic assessment is to ascertain learners’ readiness for learning in advance and design learning plans based on that information.

• The term “formative assessment” refers to evaluations conducted to ascertain learners’ progress in the formative and developmental stages of their learning, with a view to improving that learning. Instructors check students’ degree of understanding and achievement during the teaching period and consider what modifications to future teaching content and plans may be necessary.
• In concrete terms, formative assessment includes such activities as class quizzes, mid-term tests, and mid-term questionnaires.
• The purposes of formative assessment are to ascertain learners’ degree of understanding and achievement at an interim stage, to modify their remaining learning plans on the basis of that information, to provide feedback to learners on their current status, and to encourage them to make improvements in their remaining learning.

• Evaluation conducted to review learning for the purpose of verifying its effectiveness is known as “summative assessment.” This is the type of evaluation that instructors carry out in order to determine students’ final grades.
• Concrete forms of summative assessment include final tests, final reports, and pass/fail determination.
• The purposes of summative assessment are to evaluate learning in its entirety, to provide learners with feedback on the outcomes of their learning, and to encourage learners to reflect on their learning activities as a whole.
• ・ It is important to make final determinations on whether learners have passed or failed, but an even more important goal of summative assessment is to offer learners final evaluative feedback on their learning outcomes and thereby prompt them to reflect on their learning activities as a whole.

Who conducts Educational Assessment? Naturally it is conducted by the instructor responsible for the class in question, but there are also forms of assessment that are undertaken by students, and by third parties other than the instructors and students involved in the learning activities.

• Instructors are responsible for ascertaining students’ learning progress and degree of understanding during class, and for making final evaluations.
• Instructors are well-versed in the content covered in class. They set tests and other tasks to measure students’ degree of understanding of the content they consider important, and gather information necessary for evaluating students.
• Instructors are the most reliable actors in assessment, but it is difficult for a single instructor to evaluate tens or hundreds of students. Evaluations are likely to be consistent if conducted using problems with a predetermined correct answer, but care must be taken in tasks that envisage a variety of responses rather than a single correct answer, such as reports, presentations, group work, and laboratory/practicum activities.
• It is important to set out the purposes and objectives of the class clearly, select the methods and standards thought to be best suited to evaluate those objectives, and present these clearly in the syllabus.

• In order for students to continue their learning not only at university but throughout the course of their lives, they need to learn how to evaluate their own learning.
• Assessment by students can be used by instructors as one of the materials for evaluating students’ learning outcomes in class, and it is also useful for enabling students to master assessment methods themselves.
• ・ Assessment by students themselves can be performed using methods such as open-ended written answers, written answers on specified topics, check-lists, rating scales, and rubrics.
• ・ Rather than simply having students perform self-assessments, it is important to provide opportunities for students to scrutinize their own assessments through comparison with feedback provided by the instructor. Another method that is effective in terms of providing more opportunities for feedback is peer assessment by students.

• In activities such as experience learning and internships, assessment may be undertaken by students’ supervisors at a host organization.
• Supervisors have expertise in the content to be studied and relevant field, as well as extensive practical experience. It is thus possible to gain information that contributes to assessment from a perspective different from that of the instructor.
• More importantly, these kinds of activities and assessment have great significance in terms of connecting university education with wider society. They can help students develop a more concrete idea of life after graduation and raise their motivation for learning.

Particularly in classes with large numbers of students, physical restrictions can make it difficult to perform assessment in the ideal manner. The following ICT tools and methods can be used in order to assess students effectively and efficiently even in large classes.

• Clickers are an ICT tool that is useful in assessment for large classes. They are an efficient way to check students’ degrees of understanding of their learning.
• Clickers can be used to conduct quizzes and instantly display students’ responses and the percentages of responses for each item in a graphic format. It is also possible to use report functions to automatically produce aggregate results.
• It is also possible to manage individual quiz results by linking each clicker ID to the user’s student number.
• In addition, software has been developed to enable students to use their cellphones to perform the same functions as clickers. Using such software can resolve problems in distribution and collection of clickers.

• Where it is difficult for the instructor to provide formative feedback on an assignment to each student individually, students can be made to evaluate one another as peers.
• For example, when setting a report assignment for a large class, the instructor can ask students to perform peer assessment prior to the final grading stage and incorporate the results of that assessment in their reports. This can improve the quality of final reports submitted by students.
• When conducting peer assessment in class, it is most efficient to assign students to pairs or groups in advance, and instruct them to bring along enough copies of their report for all members of their group.
• Alternatively, students can be required to share their reports and perform peer evaluation via the LMS outside class. Time in class can then be set aside for students to provide each other with more detailed feedback.

As the range of capabilities to be acquired through education continues to expand, advances are being made in research and development of assessment methods and tools to evaluate diverse kinds of capabilities. Here you will see the three leading approaches. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages, and none is universally effective.

Quantitative evaluation:

• Quantitative evaluation is conducted on the basis of quantitative data such as exams and questionnaires. It is possible to comprehend complex phenomena through such methods as relative analysis and factor analysis by calculating averages, deviations and other values, comparing results across different student cohorts and year levels, and performing statistical analysis.
• Because quantitative evaluation reveals trends across the whole student body, it is readily used in evaluations for external audiences. On the other hand, there is a limit to what numbers can reveal, and it is crucial to understand the risks inherent in simplistic comparisons and rankings.

Qualitative evaluation:

• Qualitative evaluation is conducted on the basis of qualitative data such as interviews. It brings about deeper insight into the background of various trends, meanings for individual students, and other things that are difficult to grasp through quantitative evaluation.
• The qualitative evaluation can give you concrete hints for use in the actual improvement of teaching practice, but there are also some limitations in comparison with quantitative evaluation, such as the high implementation costs, the inability to target large numbers of students at the same time, and problems of objectivity and data bias arising from targeting only a specific sample of students.

• A rubric is a matrix of evaluation standards composed of dimensions that indicate specific learning objectives (evaluation criteria) and rating scales that express degrees of achievement of those objectives as numerical levels, together with descriptors that outline the features of each dimension.
• A rubric is the optimal tool to use if you wish to assess the depth or quality of understanding, such as reasoning or expressive ability in a learning activity process or output, or if you wish to observe students’ actual activities in laboratory or practical settings and assess the diverse capabilities they demonstrate therein.
• Rubrics can be used to evaluate the quality of students’ performance in class tasks (report, essay, laboratory, exercise, demonstration/practicum, presentation, production, etc.)
• It is also possible to use rubrics to evaluate generic capabilities possessed by students, such as communication and critical thinking capabilities.
• The advantages of using rubrics include the ability to: (1) conduct reliable and valid evaluations, (2) provide feedback to students easily, and (3) raise student motivation (Suskie, 2015; Stevens & Levy, 2014).

• A learning portfolio is a “systematic and ongoing collection of evidence of what a learner has been working on, how and in what areas they have grown, and what they have achieved through their learning activities, in light of goals, objectives, standards, and criteria” (Kishimoto, 2010).
• The evaluation of items collected in a portfolio by an instructor, a third party such as a host organization, or the student him/herself is known as the portfolio assessment method.
• The primary point of a learning portfolio is to reflect on the pathway of students’ learning and growth so far and to apply it toward improvement of their learning and behavior from now on, through interaction with the instructors and other parties directly connected to the student’s learning, and based on learning outcomes and other accumulated evidence.
• At the same time as being a tool that combines instruction and evaluation, the portfolio itself can encourage students’ growth.
• A portfolio is an ideal tool for multi-faceted assessment of learning activities over an extended period of time, such as in PBL and other project-based classes, as well as laboratory and practicum classes. Elements such as course grades, rubric results, and self-assessment can be included in the portfolio, making it a tool for meta-evaluation of a variety of assessment results.