Exam Analysis: The Difference Between Testing &
Assessment and Why it’s Relevant
To highlight the differences between testing and assessment, let’s take three fun angles:
a) the academic b) the old-schooler and c) the progressive.
First the academic:
Professional assessment folk get it. Assessments include a broad range of tools to collect
evidence. Assessments vary widely, from a student’s final exam to an alumni satisfaction
survey. ‘Assessment’ is all encompassing. By contrast, tests, exams and quizzes
(collectively “tests” for simplicity) are a focused type of assessment that directly
measures some attribute of a student’s knowledge. Oversimplifying yet again, tests can
be subjective or objective. Subjective tests (i.e. a presentation) need to be graded by a
human. Objective tests are one of the few highly scalable assessment tools available (i.e.
a multiple choice online exam is easy to give to 300 students). The good news: writing
objective tests is very easy; the bad news: writing a good test takes practice. Since
assessments are very complicated, three things happen: 1) It is relegated to a highly
trained unit that is isolated from the daily lives of faculty, 2) very smart people can’t get a
top down solution implemented, and 3) limited resources go toward solving the problem
since there are limited results to show.
Now the old school folk:
Exam analysis and assessments tend to focus on broad institutional metrics and are very
important to the success of an institution. These types of assessments generally happen
every year or two (or 10), and often depend on accreditation cycles. As such, a broad
committee needs assessment evidence and it has little time or money to find it. So,
naturally, this committee relies on sampling or indirect measures. Think of student
satisfaction surveys or professor evaluations. On the other hand, testing is a necessary
process that is best left to faculty to muddle through during their courses. Testing is
messy, hard to control and the mostly the domain of fiercely independent faculty.
Occasionally, faculty will (begrudgingly since they get little value out of this exercise)
provide some testing data for a broader assessment or accreditation push. Assessments
are sometimes considered separate, or even above, in-course testing.
Finally, the progressive view:
A good assessment program needs to have a good testing program embedded in it. More
importantly, students and faculty are the MOST important stakeholders and consumers of
assessment information. They want and need testing feedback to tweak their pedagogy
and the tests as real-time as possible. Faculty, assessment offices, student services and
students in general should be using the same testing data to make decisions and take
action as a team. The reality is that faculty wants students to learn, and students are bored
with the test-it-and-forget-it approach. Progressives understand that the high-level metrics
that often fall into the institutional assessment bucket (retention, graduation,
employability, satisfaction, etc.) all measure the distant past. Faculty find themselves
rolling their eyes at long accreditation cycles because teaching, learning and tests are
taking place every day. It’s like driving with only the rear-view mirror—and they need
feedback now. In short, progressive leaders in academia increasingly build testing
feedback loops back into strategic assessments; they realize that direct assessments
(including tests) are by far the best source of actionable feedback to fundamentally
improve institutional effectiveness…starting with the most important stakeholders.
An article by our CEO, Daniel Muzquiz. Daniel is currently the CEO of ExamSoft and
responsible for guiding the company’s overall strategy. In addition, Daniel is a founding
partner at Phoenix Strategy Investments, a private equity firm. Daniel holds a BS in
Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas, where he was selected for Pi Tau
Sigma Honor Society, and a MBA from Harvard Business School.
ExamSoft offers a turnkey solution for computer-based testing, exam creation, delivery, scoring and analysis an easy and reliable process. ExamSoft has served the testing needs of prominent academic, certification, and licensing institutions for more than 13 years. More information on computer based exams is available at http://www.examsoft.com
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