Principles of Assessment: Expository of Scientific Report Writing as an Assessment Item

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Importance of Scientific Reporting Writing Skills for Undergraduate Science Students

Scientific report writing skills help the student manage to think critically and creatively in approaching scientific applications. Creative and critical thinking helps the student have analyzing power for science and related fields; this makes them write clear and detailed reports (Biggs 1999, p. 15).

In the field, a report must be produced for every research carried out; this helps the students be able to write satisfactory reports in the job field. This skill is trained to be applied for the course and outside the course.

According to Brown, Bull and Pendlebury (1997, p 45), scientific report writing assessment helps the student in learning and understand the report writing process; this helps the students to understand and not memorize the writing procedure. This assessment is used for grading and determines the student to qualify to the next level of study.

Assessment Contribution to Student Learning

Lloyd-Jones and Bay (1985, p. 65) note that assessment is the main determinant of the quality of training and learning in higher education level.

Assessment should be set in a way to have clear expectations, establishes a rational workload and presents opportunities for learners to rehearse and practice their skills (Nicol & Draper 2008, p. 6). Assessment is an important component of a sound learning practice in higher education (Gibbs & Simpson 2004, p. 19).

Assessments have their minimum target objective that is focused on high distinction, diction and credit, pass and fail (Rowntree 1997, p. 98). Students have the target of hitting a high distinction mark and as a result, this makes them learn because they are working hard to reach their goal.

The set targets in assessments and ambitions of students to hit the mark encourage them to learn to achieve them. Low marks are embarrassment to those who score them, consequently making the students learn to avoid the lowest results (Gibbs & Simpson 2004, p. 21).

According to Banta, Lund, Black and Oblander (1996, p. 52), assessments are the tests whether the students will succeed to the next level of study or not. This encourages students to learn and transfer to their next step in their studies.

Through learning, students meet the requirements of the examination board by excelling in their assessments (Hattie & Timperley 2007, p. 33). This helps students learn and retain beneficial materials for their future use in either the job market or life. Success is the baseline of the tertiary level, which is achieved through learning (Crisp 2007, p. 578).

Assessments help a student identify his or her weaknesses or strengths in certain courses; this presents a room for working on the failures and maintaining the strong areas.

This helps in learning since the student pulls up his or her focus towards the challenging chapters, while making the necessary consultation (Gibbs & Simpson 2004, p. 17). Learning is enhanced by the assignments offered to the students by the lecturers through constructing new concepts of approaching their challenges and strengths.

Assessments also involve personal approach that helps in identifying the less covered or unrevised topics. Personal assessment is carried out by a student before the university assignment is administered, thereby helping a student to learn and identify his or her weaknesses in the course and prepare how to answer the course questions (Crocker 1971, p. 78).

Assessment Involves Provision of Feedback to Students on their Performance

For assessment to be effective, results or feedbacks should be given to the participants to know how effective they are (Walvoord & Anderson 1998, p. 112). The aim of carrying out an assignment is to provide results, and these outcomes are important in making decisions on how the tutors and students have played their role.

The results act as a powerful motivator to the students in planning for the next assignment or activity (Taras 2003, p. 255). Higher distinction, diction and credit have a positive motivation to the students, but the pass and fail assignment demoralizes students. Results should be handled in a proper manner so that the students who have satisfied the board would be allowed to proceed with the higher level of study.

Students who keep on occasionally failing get an opportunity to review their performance and change their mode of learning to achieve the best results (Taras 2003, p. 259).

Feedback ought to encourage discussions between the students and their friends, peers and lecturers. When students receive feedback and act on it; rarely, they will forget about it (Chickering & Gamson 1991, p. 68).

For feedback to be valued as good, it should give room for open discussion among the students themselves, facilitate dialogue between learners and lecturers, and see how they can work on its results (Taras 2003, p. 260).

Assessment Aligns Specific Learning Outcomes at Course, Program, and Institutional Levels

A student study result is a testimonial of the skills, knowledge, values or abilities students gain from a course. Student’s learning outcome mostly includes several objectives, which allow direct assessment and anticipation for the application of studying outside of the lecture rooms (Taras 2003, p. 550).

Students learning outcomes are for them to know their progress and proceed on their study, making their own conclusion based on the results gained:

Internal departments and faculties meet to negotiate the expected experience with students who are to go through a certain course. The outcomes should be limited to five to ease the assessment challenge. These outcomes may be either a certificate, degree or a transfer (Palomba & Banta 1999, p. 102).

Course level: the faculty in charge of the course meets with the course students has to review their learning outcomes at their level (Brown, Bull & Pendlebury 1997, p. 35).

Particular performance on course examinations, writing assignments, project writing, lab reports, particular illustration of student work, case studies, noting student performance, internship evaluations, capstone projects, Performance on licensure examinations (Biggs, J and Tang, C 2011, p 85).

Biggs and Tang (2011 p. 57) note that the University aligns the following learning outcomes at the program level. Knowledge and understanding, intellectual skills, key practical skills, and the transferable skills the students will gain from the program.

For institutional level, outcome combines the course outcomes with the program outcomes. The institutions are the tools used to produce the ideal candidates for the job market (Wolfe 1995, p. 38).

The learning outcomes targeted by institutions include; producing critical thinkers, empowered candidates, ethical candidates, knowledgeable candidates, sustainability-focused students, problem solvers, team players, leaders, and information literate (Stufflebeam 2001, p. 58).

These three levels are interdependent of each other, the wants of one level determine the wants for the other levels. Institutional-level outcomes are the major determinants of the rest outcome levels.

List of References

Astin, A, 1991, Assessment for excellence: the philosophy and practice of assessment and evaluation in higher education, Oryx Press and the American Council on Education, Portland.

Banta, T, Lund, J, Black, K & Oblander, F1996, Assessment in practice: putting principles to work on college campuses, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Bond, L 1996, Norm and criterion- practical assessment, Research and Evaluation, vol. 5, no.2, pp. 1-10.

Biggs, J 1999, Constructing learning by aligning teaching: Constructive alignment. Teaching for quality learning at university: What the student does. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, pp 11-32.

Biggs, J and Tang, C 2011 Teaching for Quality Learning at University, McGraw-Hill and Open University Press, Maidenhead

Brown, G, Bull, J & Pendlebury, M 1997, Assessing students learning in Higher Education, Routledge, London.

Chickering, A & Gamson, Z 1991, Applying the seven principles for good practice in higher education, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Crisp, B. 2007, Is it worth the effort? How feedback influences students’ subsequent submission of assessable work, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 571-581.

Crocker, A, 1971, Statistics for the teacher, Penguin, London.

Duncan, N 2007, Feed-forward: improving student’s use of tutor comments, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 271-283.

Gibbs, G & Simpson, C 2004, Conditions under which assessment supports students learning, Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 1,no. 1,pp. 3-31.

Hattie, J & Timperley, H 2007, The power of feedback, Review of Educational Research, vol. 77, pp. 81-112.

Lloyd-Jones, R & Bay, E 1985, Assessment- for principles to action, Macmillan Educational Limited, London.

Nicol, D & Draper, S 2008, Re-designing written feedback to students when class sizes are large, Paper presented at the Improving University Teachers Conference, Glasgow.

Palomba, C & Banta, T 1999, Assessment essentials: planning, implementing, and improving assessment in higher education, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Rowntree, D 1997, Assessing students-how shall we know them? Harper Row, London.

Sternberg, R, J 1988, The triarchic mind: a new theory of human intelligence, Viking Press, New York.

Stufflebeam, D 2001, Evaluation models: new directions for evaluation, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Suskie, L1996, Questionnaire survey research: what works? Association for Institutional Research, Florida.

Taras, M 2003, To feedback or not to feedback in student self-assessment, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 3, pp. 549-565.

Walvoord, B & Anderson, V1998, A tool for learning and assessment, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Wolfe, A 1995, Competence-based assessment, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.

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