When a course is completed, one usually designs a test to study the final achievement of students. Unfortunately, most tests tell us little about student learning, our ability as teachers to stimulate new ways of thinking or discovering new approaches to content. With most assessment, we do not find if we ever successfully helped our students learn. Worse yet, attempts at assessment can undermine attempts to foster learning and inquiry. Any attempt at assessment should look at ways the course has benefitted learning. Assessing students should also test the ability of the teacher to facilitate learning.The final assessment is, therefore, a way of seeing if you have become better learners and thinkers.Through an assessment such as this, we can glimpse ways in which you have developed.
BW