Six Types of Assessments (And How They're Changing!)

Want a three-to-five minute crash course in assessment models? This infographic is just for you! I'm a big fan of formative assessment. I know there are lots of controversies surrounding the legitimacy and execution of other types of assessment such as the criterion-based and norm-referenced models. I suspect the ideal lies somewhere in the dynamic hybrid that meets the needs of various learning communities but I also suspect that formative assessment plays a prominent role in any learner-centered process. The key word to remember about formative assessment is "feedback"—and lots of it. Continuous feedback has a double-edged benefit in that it helps assess both the learner's learning and the teacher's teaching, if that teacher is so tuned to read and hear feedback to their feedback. The ideal is a continuous feedback loop. With a steady, continuous communication with learners, we learn to adapt to and overcome individual obstacles to learning as well as modeling to learners how to overcome those obstacles by and for themselves.