Assesments

This week I'll start my blog off talking about the different ways students can be assessed.  First I will make a distinction between two different forms of assessment.

First is Formative assessment.  This is when an assessment is made to gather information about what previous knowledge the student or group of students has.  I have a perfect example of this.  While studying in my Instrument ground school class, my instructor would periodically give us ungraded pop-quizzes from the Gleim-software.  These quizzes were not graded, and we did not study from them.  However, they were very valuable in letting us know how well we were learning the information we needed.
Second is Summative assessment. This is the typical end-of-course exam that gives a summary of the course in one exam.  The teaching of that group of students is not influenced by the results of the assessment.

There are a couple more ways to assess performance that especially work well in the aviation field.
The first is a Criterion referenced assessment, and is based on the performance needed for that specific field.  For example, a pilot is assessed in an airplane and is put into specific situations and evaluated on his/her performance compared to Practical Test Standards (usually anywhere from 80-90% correct).

Another is a Norm-referenced assessment, which doesn't have any standards to be graded on, and the grading is subjective.  For example an English essay that is graded without any sort of agreement on what a person must know to pass the test. It is based on how well it is written in comparison to other members of the class, or the "norm" of the class.

Third is self-referenced assessments. SRA are based on personal, private goals.  These tests are kept private, and the results are based on the student's opinion of how well he/she did.

On a slightly different topic, Self-directed learners are people that are very self-motivated, and want to learn just to learn, and do not want to regurgitate information in the way the a multiple-choice test will demand.  They want to apply the learning to real situations and want feedback after the performance has been made.

All of these ways of learning have been applied to me as an aviation student, and I'm sure that I will have to use these things as I teach other students how to fly..  It should be a blast..