This paper is from Session 5B: Methods for large scale assessment of meaningful knowledge of statistics
Full topic list
which comes under Topic 5: Assessment in statistics education


(Tuesday 13th, 14:00-16:00)

What do you know? Assessment beyond the traditional roles


Presenter


Abstract

The main emphasis of this paper is to look at non-traditional ways of assessing students work. Assessment is often described as having two purposes: one is for measuring student’s performance to indicate how well a student is progressing and to allocate a grade or mark on that performance; the other is in helping a student to learn. The National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK and other educators who study assessment often argue that there is too much emphasis on performance at the expense of aiding students learning. The NUS has stressed that assessment should be ‘for’ learning and not simply ‘of’ learning and calls for more formative assessment. The aim of this paper is threefold namely: (i) to briefly look at traditional methods; (ii) to identify other assessment methods and (iii) to elucidate the advantages and disadvantages of the assessment methods and their usefulness in statistics education.