Student's Role of Assessment

• Student's Role of Assessment:

  
  

    I would like you to briefly (paragraph or two) reflect on assessment from the perspective of the student.  What is the role of assessment for the student?  How should they use it or what do they stand to gain?  Please sumbit post your reflections by Thursday morning at 6 a.m. 

  Personally, I think the role of students in assessment is to be completely honest, both with themselves and the instructor.  This honesty is evident when the instructor asks if one understands something.  Sometimes just a simple "yes" or "no" response  is all it takes for formative assessment to be complete.  If the student is not completely honest, he or she may be missing out on an opportunity to gain feedback about what they think they know or clarification, prompting of metacognition, or even removal of misconceptions.  Another role of students in assessment is to take the feedback and do something with it- throw away the misconception, change study habits, realize they don't know as much as they think they did, or choose another mechanism to problem solve.

  
  

  Tanner and Allen put the importance of the student's role in assessment into perspective for me when they said that it bridges the divide between what is being taught and what is being learned.  It is the student's opportunity to gain insight into what they think they've learned by listening to formative assessment and challenging their ideas, constructs, or conceptions if they were wrong or had a superficial understanding.  Finally, toward the end of the unit or chapter, the students receive concrete evidence on what they actually do know via measures of summative assessment.  If both students and teachers work together on assessment, students at this point should fully know if they know something.