Different Types of Assessment

Types of Assessment

We categories assessment in two ways: Types of assessment by format and types of assessment by nature. 

1. Types of Assessment by Format

Types of assessment by format are further categorized into two types: Fixed Choice Assessment and Complex Performance Assessment.

(a)  Fixed Choice Assessment

Fixed choice assessment is sued to measure the skills of people efficiently and for this we usually use fixed choice items, i.e. multiple choice question, fill in the blanks, true false, and matching exercises.

It is known as fixed choice because the student who is attempting the test does not need to write the answer, but he can choose a correct answer from fixed choices.  By these tests, teachers can assess student abilities of lower level learning. It is used for efficient measurement of knowledge and skills. 

(b)  Complex Performance Assessment

Complex performance assessment is assessment of an advance level where it is used for measurement of performance in contexts and the problems valued in their own right. Complex performance assessment includes projects, hands on laboratory experiments, oral presentations, and essays. If a teacher wants to assess essay writing skills of his students, he cannot judge this by fixed choice assessment items.

2.  Types of Assessment by Nature

Types of assessment by format are further categorized into two types: Maximum Performance Assessment and Typical Performance Assessment.

(a)  Maximum Performance Assessment  

Maximum performance assessment determines what individuals can do when performing at their best. Maximum performance assessment includes achievement tests and aptitude tests.

By aptitude test, we predict the success of a student in future learning activity, e.g. it is used when we want to see the interest of students in a particular field like, sports, medicine, music and teaching. We know that different abilities used for going in different professions, we make a test depending on these abilities and then try to assess, in what abilities the students perform well.

By achievement test, W assess the student that how they learn by themselves or we teach them and at the end, we want to see that how much student learn against our target so in this situation we make a test from which we can determine their best abilities. It is designed to indicate the degree of success in any past learning activity.

(b)  Typical Performance Assessment

Typical performance assessment determines what a learner will do under natural circumstances. Such assessment includes interest, personality inventories, peer appraisal, observational techniques and attitude. In typical performance assessment, the emphasis is on what students will do rather than what they can do.