There are several types of assessments: 1) Assessment of learning, 2) Assessment for learning and 3) Assessment as learning
Assessment of learning
This refers to summative assessment. It could be in a form of final examination or any examination that meant to see to what extent students have understood certain concepts.
Assessment for learning
This refers to formative assessment. One of the main purposes of formative assessment is to see to what extent teachers could improve their teaching and support that they provide to students based on students’ performance. For example, a quiz that is given to students based on certain topics covered. Based on the quiz results, teacher would make a decision for improvement of teaching and learning activities in class.
Assessment as learning
This refers to reflective self-evaluation. This type of assessment is not meant for grading purposes but it is meant to help students to understand themselves better in terms of what they have learned and how well they have understood the concepts/topics they have learned.
Can a quiz be formative and reflective self-evaluation at the same time?
For me, it can be when you let the students decide if they want to quiz to be graded or ungraded. Meaning, they can take any quiz that I give without feeling pressure of being graded and this would be “assessment as learning” – because they take the quiz as a means to help them reflect on their understanding and learning i.e. reflective self-evaluation. But at the same time, the same quiz can be considered as formative assessment [assessment for learning] if the students want the marks of the quiz to be graded.
How can we (as teachers) implement all three assessments?
In my case, what I normally do is, I have a mixture of assessments that I give to my students such as quiz, presentation, report and final exam. Final exam is an example of summative assessment i.e. assessment of learning. For quiz, I make it in such a way that there will be graded quizzes (formative assessment or assessment for learning) and there are also ungraded quizzes (assessment as learning). For the ungraded quizzes , I normally give after we have finished discussing about a topic, for instance. But for graded quizzes, it comprises of several topics. So, in this case prior to take any graded quiz, students have self-assessed themselves on any given topic. Of course, since it is ungraded, I notice that some students don’t take it seriously and thus, will not make any attempt to take the ungraded quiz. I have seen it in the recent courses that I taught this semester (Semester 2, 2018/2019).
What should I do then?
Well, I give soft reminder several times but in the end of the day, I have to respect the students’ decision. If they think it is the best for them to skip any ungraded quizzes, it is their right. I have no right to force them in their learning. After all, as adult learners, they should be responsible towards their learning. They are not secondary school students. The major difference between secondary school students and university students is for secondary school students, they need extra guidance when it comes to helping them in decision making. University students? What a heck! They are adults, and they should be responsible and accountable with whatever decision that they make. Welcome to adulthood!