Evaluation:

Evaluation, particularly educational evaluation, is a series of activities designed to measure the effectiveness of the teaching-learning system as a whole. We are already familiar with the fact that the teaching-learning process involves the interaction of three major elements i.e., Objectives, learning experiences and learner appraisal. Evaluation takes care of all the interactive aspects of three major elements i.e…, the whole teaching-learning system.

“Evaluation is the collection, analysis and interpretation of information about any aspect of a program of education, as part of a recognized process of judging its effectiveness, its efficiency and any other outcomes it may have.” 

The above Definition offers the following

Evaluation is not just another word for assessment. The quality of our learner’s learning may well be one of the outcomes we need to evaluate. But many other factors may be equally worth looking at.

Assessment: 

By assessment, we mean the processes and instruments that are designed to measure the learner’s achievement, when learners are engaged in an instructional program of one sort or another. It is concerned with ascertaining the extent to which the objectives of the program have been met. The term assessment/is often used interchangeably with the terms evaluation and measurement. However, assessment has a narrower meaning than evaluation but a broader meaning than measurement. In its derivation, the word assess means “to sit beside” or “to assist the judge”. It, therefore, seems appropriate in evaluation studies to limit the term assessment to the process of gathering the data and fashioning them into an interpretable form; judgment can then be made on the basis of this assessment.

Assessment as we define it precedes the final decision-making stage in evaluation e.g., the decision to continue, modify, or terminate an educational program.

 Measurement:  

It is mainly concerned with the collection or gathering of data e.g., students scores in an examination. It is an act or process of measuring the physical properties of objects such as length and mass. Similarly, behavioral sciences, it is concerned with the measurement of psychological characteristics such as neuroticism, and attitudes towards various phenomena.

Evaluation involves assessment and measurement it is a and more inclusive term than assessment and measurement.

Hence evaluation process is quite comprehensive and it is very much desired for effective teaching and learning.

Types of Evaluation

Formative Evaluation

The goal of formative Evaluation is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative Evaluations:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative Evaluations are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative Evaluations include asking students to:  draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic

• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture  turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative Evaluation

The goal of summative evaluation is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative Evaluations are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative Evaluations include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a paper
• a senior recital

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation  

Continuous and comprehensive evaluation is an education system newly introduced by the Central Board of Secondary Education in India, for students of sixth to tenth grades. The main aim of CCE is to evaluate every aspect of the child during their presence at the school. This is believed to help reduce the pressure on the child during/before examinations as the student will have to sit for multiple tests throughout the year, of which no test or the syllabus covered will be repeated at the end of the year, whatsoever. The CCE method is claimed to bring enormous changes from the traditional chalk-and-talk method of teaching provided it is implemented accurately.

The basic features or characteristics of a good evaluation process are follows 

Validity: A valid evaluation is one that actually tests what is sets out to test i.e., one which actually measures that behavior described by the objective(s), under scrutiny. Obviously, no one would deliberately. Construct an evaluation item to test irrelevant material but very often non-valid test items are in fact used e.g. questions that are intended to test recall of factual material but which actually test the candidate’s powers of reasoning, or questions that assume a level of pre-knowledge that the candidates do not necessarily possess.

Reliability: The reliability is a measure of the consistency with which the question, test, or examination produces the same result under different but comparable conditions. A reliable evaluation item gives reproducible scores with similar populations of students. It is, therefore, independent of the characteristics of individual evaluations. In order to maintain reliability, one evaluative question should test only one thing at a time and give the candidates no other option. The evaluation should also adequately reflect the objectives of the teaching unit.

Practicability: Evaluation procedures should be realistic, practical, and efficient in terms of their cost, time is taken, and the case of application. It may be an ideal procedure of evaluation but may not be put into practice,

Fairness: Evaluation must be fair to all students. This can be possible by accurate reflecting on range on expected behaviors as desired by the course objectives. To keep fairness in evaluation, it is also desired that students should know exactly how they are to be evaluated. This means that students should be provided information about evaluation such as the the nature of the materials on which they are to be examined (i.e., Context and Objectives), the form and structure of the examination, length of the e examination, and the value (in terms of marks) of each component of the course.

 Usefulness: Evaluation should also be useful for students. Feedback from the the evaluation must be made available to the students weaknesses. By knowing their strength and weakness, Students can think of further improvements. Evaluation should suggest all the needful requirements for their improvement.

Interpretation of Results: Another factor that must be considered in the choice of a test is the ease of interpretation of test results. A test score is not meaningful unless the teacher or counselor is able to decide what significance or importance should be attached to it and to make some judgment concerning its relationship to another kind of information about the student. Nearly all test publishers produce manuals designed to aid the teacher in interpreting test results.

But these manuals vary greatly on quality and in the thoroughness with which they do this important job. From the point of view of the teacher, principal, or counselor, the quality of the test manual should be just as important a factor in the choice of a test as the quality of the test itself