Educational assessment

Educational assessment or educational evaluation^[1] is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, aptitude and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning.^[2] Assessment data can be obtained from directly examining student work to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or can be based on data from which one can make inferences about learning.^[3] Assessment is often used interchangeably with test, but not limited to tests.^[4] Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), a course, an academic program, the institution, or the educational system as a whole (also known as granularity). The word "assessment" came into use in an educational context after the Second World War.^[5]

As a continuous process, assessment establishes measurable and clear student learning outcomes for learning, providing a sufficient amount of learning opportunities to achieve these outcomes, implementing a systematic way of gathering, analyzing and interpreting evidence to determine how well student learning matches expectations, and using the collected information to inform improvement in student learning.^[6] Assessment is an important aspect of educational process which determines the level of accomplishments of students.^[7]

The final purpose of assessment practices in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human mind, the origin of knowledge, and the process of learning.