Assessment Questions

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I am sitting at a PD session on assessment.  A couple of questions have come up.  Some I am asking as a devils advocate.  Others are true burning questions that I don't have answers to yet.  They are not really in any particular order.

1.  Is it our job to sort and rank students for universities?  Is my responsibility to the universities or do I have a greater responsibility to those university bound students?  Is it my job to give them the best chance to get in and succeed at university?

2.  Ryan Hackl built upon the earlier question by asking "What is our end goal if we are teaching with the end in mind?"

3.  What if one student can complete an assessment in half the time of another?  Assuming the same level of achievement and effort do they both deserve the same grade?

4.  When you give a zero for an incomplete assignment does that really mean that the student knows zero about the concept?

5.  Why do students cheat?  Is it because they are lazy? Is it because they don't understand the content? Is it because I did not explain the task well enough or did not provide enough scaffolding?

6.  What does it say about our assessment if the mark is based purely upon the right answer?  Is process part of your assessment?

7.  How do you do formative assessment with poor attenders?  What happens if the group you did formative assessment with yesterday is different than the group you are teaching the adjusted lesson to today?