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Assessment
It is the use of assessment which makes teaching into teaching.
Mere presentation—without assessment of what the learners
have made of what you have offered them—is not teaching.
Assessment should not therefore be seen as a discrete process,
but as integral to every stage of teaching, from minute to
minute as much as module to module.
Validity
A valid form of assessment is one which measures what it is
supposed to measure.
Reliability
Or "replicability". A reliable assessment will produce the same
results on re-test, and will produce similar results with a similar
cohort of students, so it is consistent in its methods and
criteria.
Fairness
This is really an aspect of validity, but important enough to note
in its own right. Fairness ensures that everyone has an equal
chance of getting a good assessment. This may include (where
appropriate) anonymity of submitted material, so that
extraneous considerations (such as the quality of contributions
in seminars, if they are not part of the assessment scheme)
cannot influence the final result.
Purposes of Assessment
The traditional distinction is between summative and formative
assessment.