The Blog

REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

MINDANAO STATE UNIVERSITY

GENERAL SANTOS CITY

We are a Mindanao State University - General Santos City ED 103 (Assessment of Student Learning) students. This blog is a partial requirement for Ed103 subject. With this blog, the members are aspiring for strategies and methods to develop our 21st century skills which are blended with higher order thinking skills (H.O.T.S), multiple intelligences (M.I), Information Communications Technology (ICT) and multimedia.

Objectives of this Blog:

• To discuss and enumerate theories and practices that are presented with the understanding that the viewer can pick and choose those methods and strategies that coincides with his or her personality and philosophy.

• To identify theoretical concepts and principles into practice by developing specific methods and strategies that work on the job. Where, the integration process, or the leap from theory to practice, is not easy.

About the Blog:

      This blog is done for all who are interested in learning how to teach or improve their teaching and also assessment of student learning, as well as teaching students how to learn. It will help prepare novice teachers for their new roles, and provide seasoned teachers with new insights into what they are doing.

       Also, the blog focuses on the theories and assessment of teaching. it attempt to blend the theories with practice by analyzing important research and assessment of student learning, then presenting practical procedures and adaptive strategies or teachers to use. For example, what do successful teachers do to start a lesson? How do they monitor classroom activities? How do they deal with disruptive students? How do they proceed with a student who doesn't know the answer? These are some of the problems that teachers must deal in a daily basis. The answers to these questions depend on how we apply the theory we have learned in our course work (assessment of student learning) to the classroom setting.

       Welcome to our BLOG!!!!!

E-Portfolio

Using e-Learning To Facilitate 21st Century Learning

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff

E-portfolios are a valuable learning and assessment tool. An e-portfolio is a digitized collection of artifacts including demonstrations, resources, and accomplishments that represent an individual, group, or institution. This collection can be comprised of text-based, graphic, or multimedia elements archived on a Web site or on other electronic media such as a CD-ROM or DVD. An e-portfolio is more than a simple collection—it can also serve as an administrative tool to manage and organize work created with different applications and to control who can see the work. E-portfolios encourage personal reflection and often involve the exchange of ideas and feedback.

Three types of e-portfolios are described in this report: student e-portfolios, teaching e-portfolios, and institutional e-portfolios. E-portfolios can support student advisement, career preparation, and credential documentation; the sharing of teaching philosophies and practices; department and program self-studies; and institutional and program accreditation processes. This report defines and categorizes e-portfolios, offers examples of higher education e-portfolio implementations, reviews e-portfolio technology, and addresses adoption issues.

A Presentation for the subject-course ED103

Assessment Of Student Learning

View more PowerPoint from Arlan Villanueva

Module 1 - Overview in Assessment of Learning

Assessment plays a key role in how teachers teach and how students learn. There are different types of assessment and not all are about results and exams. The best forms of assessment will combine data analysis with ways of getting to know pupils and understand their educational needs more fully: at an individual, subject, class, school and Ofsted level. Indeed, whole-school self-evaluation is now a key part of school management as a tool for looking at how different groups of pupils are performing in different subjects, measured against their age peers, personalized targets and, in national exams, across the country.

Assessment of student learning may be formative or summative. Assessment, especially if it is summative, is usually graded. Achievement of satisfactory summative grades is frequently used to signify progress or the achievement of an award. (The award of a Ph.D., for example, is a situation where summative grading is rarely used.)

Assessment covers the whole development of student learning evaluation, while grading refers to the specific attachment of marks/grades. The UK QAA (2000) notes:

“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.”

Assessment is usually construed as being either diagnostic, formative or summative. … Any assessment instrument can, and often does, involve more than one of these elements. So, for example, much coursework is formative in that it provides an opportunity for students to be given feedback on their level of attainment, but also often counts towards the credit being accumulated for a summative statement of achievement. An end-of-module or end-of-programme examination is designed primarily to result in a summative judgment on the level of attainment the student has reached. Both formative and summative assessment can have a diagnostic function. Assessment primarily aimed at diagnosis is intrinsically formative, though it might, rarely, contribute towards a summative judgment.

It is important to distinguish between assessment of student learning as described here and the USA notion of assessment as part of the Assessment Movement, which is more akin to improvement of the student experience.

Module 2 - Establishing Learning Target

Establishing Learning Targets is a means of meeting the description on what expectations that a teacher should have in the end of the unit instructions. It also include whether the students understand the lessons or not, about students behavior which regard the lessons presented in the class. This subject matter is best explained with the aid of the “Three Students Learning Outcomes”. Having this, allow us to calculate students outcome as manifested in their performance. The main point of having this is to determine definite objectives as to student’s performance before and after the unit’s instruction.

It is important that we should establish learning targets along with the precise objectives because it is important that we can visualize the outcome of the student’s performance. This technique enables us to identify factors as to effective learning paradigms. It is in this way that we can formulate a good teaching regime. In this means of educational matters we can answer the questions behind the students slow and fast learning. This technique also enables us to understand the role of the domains and its importance. Learning these facts can help us redirect or divert the mind and attention of the students from the external world to the four corner of the study setting. We mold the students and by molding we motivate them in its broader sense.  By this means we can eradicate the negative force and help them focus in their studies in which on the long way they can feel self efficiency. We cannot deny that in the long run we will encounter the feeling of being tired; discouraged and lazy that is why we set up behavioral objectives. This is a way of teaching them of the virtue called “Patience”. We teach them to take things step by step. In answering we should eradicate the attitude of being rushed because in some cases we forget important details or worst during examinations we forget to read the instructions and guidelines which sometimes causes our failure. Having this subject matter help us to manage things in a proper manner. Managing means you are able to grasp the instructions clearly and be able to produce good outcomes.




Having a clear objective in line with teaching strategies and effective domains is a must in order to have a good outcome both in teaching and learning process. Objectives served as the motivational force between the two key players of this subject matter. Motivation in the sense that the teacher will find ways for clear instructions and students for great outcomes. Setting objectives is indeed a need because it can provide aid for clear instructions and for better explanations as to the domains that binds the students learning and behavioral process.

Module 3 - Keys to Effective Testing

        This module contains the keys to effective testing and the making of table of specification. Testing is a technique of obtaining information needed for evaluation purposes. Test administration is concerned with the physical and psychological setting in which students takes a test. Test scoring may be done by competent persons or sometimes by the use of scoring machines and lastly the test interpretation of the test scores on any test should not take place without a thorough knowledge of the technical aspects of the test. There are two test- preparation first is the Professional Ethics Guidance and the Educational Defensibility Guidelines. The no test preparation practice should violate the ethical norms of the education profession is called the professional ethics guidance , where the no test practice should increase students’ test scores without simultaneously increasing student’s mastery of the assessment domain tested is the educational defensibility guidelines. In constructing classroom tests, the first thing that a teacher should do is to identify instructional objectives and learning outcomes, listing the topics to be covered by the test, prepare the table of specification selection of the appropriate types of tests, writing and sequencing of test items then writing the direction or instructions and lastly, preparation of the answer sheet and the scoring test. A good test is one that measure learning and accurately discriminates between those students who have mastered the content and required skills from those who have not. A good test must possess the validity, reliability, objectivity, scorability, administrability, and relevance.  In this module we also tackled the ways in preparing table of specification, first thing to do is to list down the topics covered for the inclusion in the test, determine the objectives to be assessed by the test, specify the number of days/hours spent for teaching a particular topic, determine the percentage allocation of test items for each topics covered, determine the number of items to construct foe each topic and distribute the number of items to the objectives to be tested.

Module 4 - Development of Assessment Tools

This module contains different kinds of test, and assessment tool that a teacher can used in assessing students learning. A teacher can choose among true or false modified true or false, multiple choice, matching type, completion test, cloze test, and essay test in making his or her examinations such that it is congruent on his or her objectives. The advantages and the disadvantages of these tests were also discussed in this module. The intelligence test, personality test, aptitude test and interest inventory were also discussed in this module and the importance of it. Intelligence test measures the intelligence quotient of an individual. There are two types of intelligence test, the verbal which is the ability to comprehend ad solve language-based problems and the nonverbal intelligence which is the ability to understand and solve visual and spatial problems. The personality test are those test s in which it measures the ways in which the individual’s interest with other individuals or in terms of the roles an individual has ascribed to himself and adopts in the society. The Aptitude test refers to the possessing more of a natural talent for a task, even if that talent is not yet fully developed. It is one of the most important tests that could be considered in choosing one’s career. The Interest inventory is a self -assessment tool used in career planning, which assess ones like or dislikes of a variety of activities, objects, types of persons. Teachers can also choose among case study, questionnaire, rating scales and sociogram in assessing his or her students. Teachers can use sociogram or also called as the friendship chart in knowing his or her students attitude in class.

Module 5 - Characteristics of a Good Test

  In this module, there are certain characteristics of a good measuring instrument that make it useful; the characteristics of a good test otherwise it may not serve its purpose well. A good test must be reliable and valid, thus it should be measured and evaluated. Generally, they are thought of as processes by which students are given examinations and then given school marks or grades on the basis of what they obtain in a good test .Measurement and evaluation, however, are complicated processes.

Module 6 – Analyzing and Using Test Item Data

The purpose of Test Item Analysis is to select the best available items for the final form of the test, to identify structural or content defects in the items, to detect learning difficulties of the class as a whole and to identify the areas of weaknesses of students in need of remediation. The three Elements in an Item Analysis are Examination of the difficulty level of the items, Determination of the discriminating power of each item, and Examination of the effectiveness of distracters in a multiple choice or matching items.

The difficulty level of an item is known as index of difficulty. Index of difficulty is the percentage of students answering correctly each item in the test Index of discrimination refers to the percentage of high-scoring individuals responding correctly versus the number of low-scoring individuals responding correctly to an item. This numeric index indicates how effectively an item differentiates between the students who did well and those who did poorly on the test.

Using Information about Index of Discrimination The index of discrimination tells a teacher the degree to which a test item differentiates the high achievers from the low achievers in his class. A test item may have positive or negative discriminating power. An item has a positive discriminating power when more students from the upper group got the right answer than those from the lower group. When more students from the lower group got the correct answer on an item than those from the upper group, the item has a negative discriminating power.

There are instances when an item has zero discriminating power – when equal number of students from upper and lower group got the right answer to a test item. In the given example, item 5 have the highest discriminating power. This means that it can differentiate high and low achievers.

A test item can be retained when its level of difficulty is average and discriminating power is positive. It has to be rejected when it is either easy/very easy or difficult/very difficult and its discriminating power is negative or zero. An item can be modified when its difficulty level is average and its discrimination index is negative.

Examining Distracter Effectiveness is an ideal item is one that all students in the upper group answer correctly and all students in the lower group answer wrongly. And the responses of the lower group have to be evenly distributed among the incorrect alternatives.

Developing an item data file encourage teachers to undertake an item analysis as often as practical Allowing for accumulated data to be used to make item analysis more reliable. Providing for a wider choice of item format and objectives. Facilitating the revision of items. Facilitating the physical construction and reproduction of the test. Accumulating a large pool of items as to allow for some items to be shared with the students for study purposes.

 The Limitations of Item Analysis is: It cannot be used for essay items. Teachers must be cautious about what damage may be due to the table of specifications when items not meeting the criteria are deleted from the test. These items are to be rewritten or replaced.

Module 7: Educational Statistics

       This module includes lessons such as Descriptive Statistics vs. Inferential Statistics; Measures of Central Tendency: meanings and properties of Mean, Median, Mode; Measures of Variability: range, correlation and Standard Deviation. Though the module is all about statistics, we, BS Math group still learned from the reporters. Our impression before is that, this module will just review us about stat and we don’t have new things to learn on. But we were wrong. Honestly, only in this ed103 that we learned how to compute the mean, median and mode when the data are grouped. Through the help of technology, presenters had used PowerPoint but failed to project it in a larger screen since no projector was available during their reports. But in another way they prepared presentations which only mean that they really determined in their task-that is to discuss to us their topics very well. Anyway, they had done their best thus, making us understand and appreciate their topic.

Module 8 - Rubrics, Portfolio and Performanced Based Assessment

 Every school, college, university or school institution rubrics, portfolio and performance based assessment ought to have an evaluation program for the purpose of maximizing the effectiveness of instruction. A rubric is an attempt to communicate expectations of quality around a task. In many cases, rubrics are used to delineate consistent criteria for grading. Because the criteria are public, a rubric allows teachers and students alike to evaluate criteria, which can be complex and subjective. A rubric can also provide a basis for self-evaluation, reflection, and peer review. An educational (or professional) portfolio is a collection of evidence that demonstrates the progressive acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. It also gives a picture of your individual experience in a learning situation. The outcome of performance-based testing has largely been reviewed as a technique that has the potential to encompass a wider base of learning levels.

Module 9 – Grading and Reporting Practices

      A rating of DEFICIENT is appropriate if any of the following exist:

§  The school does not have a formal process, based on school-wide rubrics, to assess whole-school and individual student progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations

§  Teachers, generally, fail to provide specific, timely, and corrective feedback to ensure students revise and improve their work

§  Teachers, generally, fail to regularly use formative assessments, including school-wide rubrics  

A rating of LIMITED is appropriate if the school does have a formal process, based on school-wide rubrics, to assess whole-school and individual student progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations; teachers generally provide specific, timely, and corrective feedback to ensure students revise and improve their work; and teachers generally use formative assessments, including school-wide rubrics, but:  

§  Teachers, generally, fail, prior to each unit of study, to communicate to students the school’s applicable 21^st century learning expectations and related unit-specific learning goals to be assessed

§  Teachers, generally, fail, prior to summative assessments, to provide students with the corresponding rubrics

§  Teachers, generally, fail to use formative assessments to inform and adapt their instruction for the purpose of improving student learning

§  Grading and reporting practices are not regularly reviewed and revised to ensure alignment with the school’s core values and beliefs about learning

A rating of ACCEPTABLE is appropriate if the school does have a formal process, based on school-wide rubrics, to assess whole-school and individual student progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations; teachers generally provide specific, timely, and corrective feedback to ensure students revise and improve their work, and teachers generally use formative assessments, including school-wide rubrics; and teachers generally also use formative assessments to inform and adapt their instruction for the purpose of improving student learning; teachers generally, prior to each unit of study, communicate to students the school’s applicable 21^st century learning expectations and related unit-specific learning goals to be assessed;  teachers generally, prior to summative assessments, provide students with the corresponding rubrics; grading and reporting practices are regularly reviewed and revised to ensure alignment with the school’s core values and beliefs about learning; and:

§  Professional staff collects, disaggregates, and analyzes data to identify and respond to inequities in student achievement

§  Teachers and administrators, individually and collaboratively, examine a range of evidence of student learning for the purpose of revising curriculum and improving instructional practice, including most of the following:

-                    student work          

-                    common course and common grade-level assessments

-                    individual and school-wide progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations

-                    standardized assessments

-                    data from sending schools, receiving schools, and post-secondary institutions

-                    survey data from current students and alumni

§  The school’s professional staff communicates:

-                    individual student progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations to students and their families

-                    the school’s progress in achieving the school’s 21^st century learning expectations to the school community

A rating of EXEMPLARY is appropriate if all the descriptors in the ACCEPTABLE rating are met and:

§  Teachers collaborate regularly in formal ways on the creation, analysis, and revision of formative and summative assessments, including common assessments

In each unit of study, teachers employ a range of assessment strategies, including formative and summative assessments

REFLECTION of the Members in this Activity

1. What was your reaction to the online blog activity?

LAWRENCE REGALADO  

• It was exciting, because learning can be blend through the use of technology, by this we can encounter the different portals of the classroom, another classroom environment and also this is a lifetime achievement.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• I was amaze on how she (Prof. Robles) gave and teaches us (students) on being a future teachers using new technology. I was a bit exciting for I love doing blogs 'coz I have one, only not being updated.

ROMEO GONZAGA

• My reaction at first was happy to know that we'll be making an online blog. We could get more knowledge with this activity. 

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• When I heard it, I was in a bit of shock because I didn't have any idea on how to make a blog but when our professor said that this was a group activity my heavy feelings lighten up for I have a group-mate that already know how to do this that she can teach me how to manipulate the blog.

MA. ELENA BERING

• It was an activity to look forward because it's my first time having this kind of activity. 

2. Are you having some difficulties in configuring the use of web blogging? Explain.

LAWRENCE REGALADO

• I think some sort of mediocrity, at first you have to construct the advantages and disadvantages of it. But I give an emphasis on the advantages, it is lifetime and not costly.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• In some ways, I do have difficulties but it was not that so hard to learn it mostly when someone's guiding you to manipulate it.

ROMEO GONZAGA

•  Yes. Even this was a group activity; it was not all the time that all of you was there to teach and guide each other exploring the web-blog.

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• Yes, because you should spend your time, effort and money in knowing the right way in web-blogging if you don't have a personal computer and personal broadband.

MA. ELENA BERING

• Yes, because in making an "educational" blog you can't put or post something that is not a fact or reliable that's why you need to study the content of the blog which should relate to the subject you enrolled. 

3. Did the activity gave you deeper or broader understanding about the use of blogs? Why?

LAWRENCE REGALADO

• Yes, because it gives a realization that we are facing a new world, a new generation wherein we have to face the technology, not also that I can foresee different opinions and views regarding making a blog through assessment o learning.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• Yes, it gives me more understanding on how to use blog for a more important purpose posting and giving information to the readers of the blog. Blogs is not just for fun for you to post something not reliable. 

ROMEO GONZAGA

• Yes because I thought blog is just use for personal archiving of things you want to read or share to the public but instead blogs are also used in giving facts and reliable knowledge to the reader.

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• Yes. As a future teacher, it is indeed a very helpful activity for starting up your knowledge in web-blogging. That web-blogging helps teachers to inform the public in some educational matter or subject.

MA. ELENA BERING

• Yes. As a student, it broadens your knowledge in understanding the important use of web-blogging to in enhancing student's capability in using new technology by web-blogging.

4. Did the activity increases your enthusiasm, willingness or effort to learn more about technology? Why?

LAWRENCE REGALADO

·         Yes, because I belong to computer era, internet-era. I have to impart my knowledge about making a blog. not also that technology brought up something that I should be proud of. a new learning is so much exciting.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• Yes, because we now already live in a world full of new and improving

ROMEO GONZAGA

• Definitely yes. Some of the benefits having technology is making easy in accessing course materials. Instructors can post the course material or important information on a course website, which means students can study at a time and location they prefer and can obtain the study material very quickly

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• Yes, because it's so hard to be an ignorant when it comes to new technology for our world today is revolving in technology.

MA. ELENA BERING

• Yes, because technology is very helpful in our daily lives right now. For technology create shortcuts in working and can make tasks easier also mostly in acquiring new information.

5. What important things have you learned from this activity?

LAWRENCE REGALADO

• The important things I learned in making a blog is fun because o new learning and To introduce the existence of Educational Web tools to the students, teachers and all interested individuals.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• I learned that Educational Web Tools is very important for the educational purpose now a day. It helps the students and teachers to gain and teach knowledge easier and quicker.

ROMEO GONZAGA

• In making this web-blog, cooperation and more understanding must be present in each member of the group so that this blog will be successfully presented.

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• That as a future teacher you should not be a traditional teacher. You should also include newly technology so that the students will actively collaborate in the classroom discussions.

MA. ELENA BERING

• That students’ use of technology outside of the classroom raises the bar for its use within the classroom, making it an important component for student engagement. Collaboration can be fostered by using class wikis, blogs, learning management systems, and custom social networks.

6. What generalization can you formulate with this activity?

LAWRENCE REGALADO

• Blog is one of the examples of this technology advancement. Most people consider internet for gathering information, entertainment, social networking and some other stuff. Now, internet has been found to be of great purpose in education. The web, which is accessed through internet, created a new face in the learning process. Documents and multimedia’s found in web, served as tools in this generation of education and has been brought more access for a wider range of learning.

NIÑA LEBANAN

• This activity is a one way of applying technology in our subject to enhance and develop paper works to online works. This activity is indeed an opener for all of us.

ROMEO GONZAGA

• This activity really helps us, the students, to bear in mind that technology is important for acquiring more knowledge and this activity gives me new experience in educational technology.

NEZA MAE BULAT-AG

• This activity is a way of acquainting education with technology to the extent that these two keys (education and technology) of success is like a rail-truck in the railway running parallel leading to the same destination.

MA. ELENA BERING

• This activity is a means of attaining full adaptation in the modern world.