IP&T 301 Week 2

1.) Bloom’s Taxonomy divides thinking into higher-order and lower-order levels. The six levels are 1.) Remembering 2.) Understanding 3.) Applying 4.) Analyzing 5.) Evaluating 6.) Creating.
2.) If a test is valid, it successfully measures what it is supposed to measure: if it is meant to test how well students can add fractions, the test should ask students to add different fractions. If a test is reliable, the test results are consistent. This means that if a student took the same test twice, the score should be the same. Tests must be valid because it allows teachers to see how well the students’ learned the material and/or how well the material was taught. Tests also need to be reliable so teachers can know that the test will accurately and consistently measure the knowledge and abilities of the students.
3.) Assessing the final draft of a research paper would be product performance assessment. Assessing the research strategies, brainstorming activities, rough drafts, as well as the final draft would be process performance assessment.
4.) Performance assessments can be evaluated using checklists (does the paper have a topic sentence?), rating scales (was the student’s research thorough and useful? Rate unsatisfactory, good, outstanding, etc), and rubrics (5 points for a creative title, 4 points for an appropriate title, etc).
5.) Even teachers that genuinely have their students’ best interests at heart can unknowingly be affected by assessment bias if they are not careful. I know that for myself, if I know that a student really tries hard to succeed, I would want to grade them more generously than a student who puts forth little effort, even if they obviously do not have a perfect understanding of the subject matter. Even if teachers try to be fair and unbiased, some of their assumptions and conceptions about their students will unintentionally affect their grading if they are not careful.