As individuals, we constantly evaluate our decisions and options to know how well they meet specific goals, hence assessment. However, in formal contexts like schools and the workplace, assessments happen on a larger scale, and you need particular tools to pull them off.
In this article, you’ll learn about different assessment tools that will help you evaluate performance in various contexts. We’d give an overview of each method, its pros and cons, and specific features to look out for as you decide.
What is an Assessment Tool?
An assessment tool is a technique or method of evaluating information to determine how much a person knows and whether this knowledge aligns with the bigger picture of a theory or framework.
Assessment methods differ based on context and purpose. For example, personality tests use your responses to discover character traits, and financial assessments measure how much you know about concepts like saving and investments.
Regardless of the context, all assessment tools depend on a set of well-thought-out questions to gather insights and arrive at informed conclusions by interpreting these insights.
Read: Motivation Assessment: Definitions, Types, Tools + [Questionnaire Examples]
Characteristics of an Assessment Tool
1. Reliability
The right assessment tool produces the same results over time. So there’s a consistency, or accuracy in these results. Here, you should consider whether the test can replicate results whenever it is used.
For example, if the students perform the same tasks simultaneously, then such assessment passes as reliable.
2. Validity
The validity of an assessment boils down to how well it measures the different criteria being tested. In other words, it is the idea that the test measures what it intends to measure.
This means your assessment method should be relevant to the specific context. For example, if you’re testing physical strength, you shouldn’t send out a written test. Instead, your tests should include physical exercises like pushups and weightlifting.
3. Equitable
A good assessment tool is equitable, which means it doesn’t favor or disfavor any participant. Fair assessments imply that students are tested using methods and procedures most appropriate to them. Every participant must be familiar with the test context so they can put up an acceptable performance.
4. Standardization
Standardization means applying consistency to your testing methods. For example, if you’re sending out a questionnaire, it should have the same set of questions for all participants, and all the answers should be graded using the same criteria.
Other characteristics of assessment tools include:
- A good assessment tool should provide a window for high-quality feedback.
- It is feasible and accounts for equivalence.
- It should motivate participants to be involved in the testing.
- It should be transparent, non-discriminatory, and match expectations.
Types of Assessment Tools
Educational Assessment Tool
An educational assessment tool is used for evaluating students’ performance and their level of knowledge in a particular subject. Educational assessment tools can be used during the learning process or on an ongoing basis.
For example, in formative assessment, the teacher deploys different methods to track a student’s performance as learning progresses. This allows the instructor to identify and fix knowledge gaps as they move from one learning phase to another. But in summative assessment, the teacher waits till the end to measure the student’s performance using a rubric of expected learning outcomes.
Expectedly, different assessment tools work for different types of educational assessment. So, while quizzes and straw polls are suitable for formative evaluation, end-of-term examinations with close-ended questions are better-suited for summative assessments.
Examples of Educational Assessment Tools
1. ASSISTments: This is a free online platform that teachers can use to assign Maths tests to students, whether during the learning process or outside the classroom. ASSISTments allow instructors to provide immediate feedback as students turn in their tests.
2. Formplus: Teachers can use Formplus to create surveys, questionnaires, and polls for classroom assessments. Students can participate in these assessments even without an internet connection, and teachers can analyze responses immediately.
3. Google Classroom Question Tool: Google classroom allows you to create and share questions with your students right in the app. Teachers can each student’s answer separately or set up a discussion with different groups.
4. Quizizz Tool: If you’re conducting fact-based tests, then the Quizizz tool is a great option. In Quizizz, you can set up self-graded tests, which helps you save time on assessments.
Pros of Educational Assessment Tools
- Educational assessment tools help teachers to track and evaluate progress throughout the learning process.
- They provide enough data for improving the overall teaching and learning experiences.
Cons of Educational Assessment Tools
- Educational assessment tools can cause anxiety or affect students’ motivation, mainly when they do not perform as well as they wanted.
- It is not always an accurate reflection of how much progress the students have made.
Research Assessment Tool
A research assessment tool is used to measure the impact of a systematic investigation based on specific criteria. These criteria could be the research results, level of participation from research subjects, and other similar metrics.
For example, after a systematic investigation, you can send out an internal survey to gather feedback from key players in the process. A research assessment tool can also help you determine the extent to which the research outcomes solve the identified problem.
Examples of Research Assessment Tools
1. Formplus: Formplus can be used to create post-research surveys for your reports and dissertations. You can send out private forms to your team members for feedback, analyze responses, and identify ways to improve future investigations.
2. AAC&U Value Rubrics: This assessment tool allows you to measure key learning outcomes, including critical thinking, inquiry, and analysis, communication, literature comprehension, as part of your research evaluation process.
3. Research Reports: Apart from providing details of the research process, a research report offers an opportunity to evaluate the entire process to know what worked and what didn’t. It allows the researcher to identify any gaps in the research for further investigation.
Pros of Research Assessment Tools
- Research assessment tools help you to identify gaps in your process.
- They allow you to determine the extent to which your systematic investigation solves the problem.
Cons of Research Assessment Tools
- Research assessment tools are subjective and easily affected by bias.
- It is time-consuming.
Project Assessment Tool
A project assessment tool is a method of evaluating the success of your project. These tools can be used in different contexts, such as launching a new product, introducing an additional feature in an existing product, and launching a new branch of your business.
Before choosing a project assessment tool or method of evaluation, you should consider different factors like the project scale, how much money you’ve invested into it, and if you have the resources to pull it off. For example, a simple project might not require a complex evaluation with complex assessment tools.
You should also define the project’s success parameters. If success is quantitative, you need a tool that can measure numerical data like the number of people who signed up for an event. If success is qualitative, then the assessment tool should evaluate the participants’ perceptions and impressions of the project.
Examples of Project Assessment Tools
1. Surveys: Tools like Formplus allow you to send out surveys, questionnaires, and polls for opinion sampling and feedback. Before launching your project, you can send out a baseline survey, and after the project, you can administer a post-event survey. This allows you to compare project outcomes with the issues raised in the baseline survey.
2. Observation: Participant and non-participant observation methods can be used to gather first-hand feedback from participants after your project launch.
3. Case Studies: A case study is an in-depth exploration of a subject matter related to real-life occurrences.
Pros of Project Assessment Tools
- Project assessment tools help you identify when the goals of a project have been achieved.
- It helps you to measure the ROI of your project.
Con of Project Assessment Tools
- It is time-consuming.
HR Assessment Tool
An HR assessment tool evaluates employees’ workplace performance to help organizations provide the best support for their teams. At the same time, these tools help employers develop strategies that improve the human resource system and make it more effective.
Tools like Adface, Berke, and Athena Quotient can identify the most suitable candidates for roles during the recruitment process. HR assessments cut across psychometric testing, personality tests, and 360-degree feedback.
Examples of HR Assessment Tools
1. 360 Degree Feedback: Here, the HR manager collects feedback from everyone affiliated with an employee. These include the people who work with the employee, team managers, and peers. You can use Formplus to create surveys for 360-degree feedback.
2. Assessment Center: This method requires employees to perform tasks in groups, together with their managers, assessors, and other team members.
3. HR Accounting: Here, the HR manager examines how much money is spent on training, research, and employee development against their level of productivity and whether the training and development programs have resulted in a higher yield for the company.
Pros of HR Assessment Tools
- These tools help you to monitor labor law compliance and other administrative functions.
- HR assessment tools can review employee compensation packages to ensure that workers are paid their worth.
- These tools help you map out training and development strategies for staff.
Cons of HR Assessment Tools
- These tools require significant effort and coordination.
- The data sets may be complex to analyze.
Importance of Assessment Tools
- In educational research, assessment tools help instructors evaluate students’ knowledge and make informed decisions that improve their learning experience.
- Assessment tools help participants measure their progress towards specific outcomes and modify their behavior to meet those goals.
- They provide an opportunity for valuable feedback that improves the lives of the participants.
- An assessment tool is a lens for understanding learning, identifying invisible barriers, and helping instructors to improve their approach to evaluation.
- They clarify the expectations for participants in different contexts.
Why Should You Use Formplus as an Assessment Tool?
Quizzes
Formplus supports multiple data gathering functionalities, including creating quizzes and exams for assessments. Quizzes come in handy for formative assessments where you have to evaluate the participants’ knowledge of the subject matter as they learn.
You have access to different field options to help you create a suitable quiz. Checkboxes and radio fields come in handy, plus you can add image options to make the quiz more interactive. As participants send in their responses, you can review them and provide feedback.
Offline Capability
Formplus allows you to collect data from participants in offline mode. All Formplus forms are automatically available offline which means respondents can fill and submit responses when they have poor or no access to the internet.
For example, in the classroom, students can complete quizzes and surveys without access to the internet. Any responses received in offline mode are uploaded on our secure servers or your preferred cloud storage system when there’s an internet connection.
Research/Survey
As a research tool, Formplus is an effective way to create surveys for systematic investigation. In some way, assessments are forms of research since they involve collecting and analyzing data to arrive at results. Formplus can help you build different surveys and other research tools for data collection.
After creating your survey on Formplus, you’ll have different sharing options for survey distribution. Asides from sharing it on social media using the direct share buttons, you can share your survey via QR code or send out email invitations to preselected participants.
Calculation
With calculation fields, participants can perform simple arithmetic processes in your Formplus forms. Calculation fields come in handy during Mathematical assessments—students can add and subtract variables to arrive at the correct answers.
They also process payments on product order forms, event registrations, online bookings, expense reimbursements, online donation forms and calculate date ranges for appointment bookings.
Conclusion
The most important thing you should consider when choosing your assessment tool is context. Although specific tools overlap, you still need to tailor them to suit particular, suitable use cases. For example, surveys for educational research are quite different from the ones used for 360-degree feedback.
Once you tie the tool to the context, you can choose the right questions to help you to gather valuable data. Most importantly, the results from assessments should inform improvements, whether at school, at work, or for your projects.
FAQs
Assessment Tools: Types, Examples & Importance? ›
Assessment tools aid in assessing and evaluating student learning and can provide different options to assess students beyond the traditional exam. Several tools are available including grading rubrics , Canvas Assignments , plagiarism detection, self-assessment, and peer assessment, surveys, and classroom polling.
What are the examples of assessment tools? ›Assessment tools aid in assessing and evaluating student learning and can provide different options to assess students beyond the traditional exam. Several tools are available including grading rubrics , Canvas Assignments , plagiarism detection, self-assessment, and peer assessment, surveys, and classroom polling.
What are the 3 types of assessment tools? ›There are three types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative.
What are the 4 types of assessments? ›A Guide to Types of Assessment: Diagnostic, Formative, Interim, and Summative.
What are the 7 assessment methods? ›Pre-assessment or diagnostic assessment, Formative assessment, Summative assessment, Confirmative assessment, Norm-referenced assessment, Criterion-referenced assessment and Ipsative assessment.
What are the 5 components of an assessment tool? ›- the context and conditions required for assessment.
- the tasks to be completed by the learner.
- a clear outline of evidence to be gathered from the learner.
- the evidence criteria for making a judgement on competency.
- the administration, recording and reporting requirements.
The employment interview is probably the most commonly used assessment tool. The interview can range from being totally unplanned, that is, unstructured, to carefully designed beforehand, that is, completely structured.
What is the most effective assessment tool? ›Formative Assessment is the most powerful type of assessment for improving student understanding and performance.
What are the 3 types of assessment and examples? ›- Assessment for Learning (Formative Assessment) ...
- Assessment of Learning (Summative Assessment) ...
- Comparing Assessment for Learning and Assessment of Learning. ...
- Assessment as Learning.
Assessment tools should be selected for their relevance to the situation and their ability to help the assessor make job-related inferences. The specific tools used will vary depending on the context of the assessment. It's up to the assessor to review evidence of a tool's validity and reliability.
What are the 8 assessment methods? ›
- Task-Based Simulations. ...
- Branching Scenarios. ...
- Online Group Collaboration Projects With Feedback. ...
- Open-Ended Questions. ...
- Problem-Solving Case Studies. ...
- eLearning Blogs. ...
- Online Interviews.
- Summative assessment (knowing what you know) ...
- Formative assessment (knowing what you don't know) ...
- Diagnostic assessment (knowing if there's a gap) ...
- Benchmarking assessment (knowing how you compare) ...
- Continual assessment (knowing how you're tracking)
An assessment tool is made up of the following components: • the context and conditions for the assessment; • the tasks to be administered to the student; • an outline of the evidence to be gathered from the student; • the evidence criteria used to judge the quality of performance, for instance, the decision‑making ...
What is a common assessment tool? ›The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a tool to support early intervention, this means when used effectively it ensures families receive the right support at an early stage before a small need grows into a larger one.
What are the 4 important concepts in assessment? ›The principles of assessment are that assessment is Valid, Authentic, Current, Sufficient and Reliable – known as VACSR.
What are the standard assessment tools? ›- Norm-Referenced Tests. ...
- Criterion-Referenced Tests. ...
- Selecting and Interpreting Standardized Assessments. ...
- Analog Tasks. ...
- Naturalistic Observation. ...
- Systematic Observation and Contextual Analysis.
A checklist is an assessment tool that lists the specific criteria for the skills, behaviors, or attitudes that participants should demonstrate to show successful learning from training. Checklists usually feature statements or questions about the participant's performance of each criteria.
Which assessment tool is most commonly used by teacher? ›Performance assessment
The assessment tools teachers often employ for this are oral presentations, written essays, journals and portfolios that cover a variety of projects.
Information about student learning can be assessed through both direct and indirect measures. Direct measures may include homework, quizzes, exams, reports, essays, research projects, case study analysis, and rubrics for oral and other performances.
Why are assessment tools important? ›Assessment tools refer to learning methods educators use to make informed decisions regarding strategies to enhance student learning. This helps determine if learning interventions are needed to ensure student success.
What is the difference between an assessment method and assessment tool? ›
An assessment method is defined as the philosophical or pedagogical approach to assessing. For example, written assessment or practical assessment, formative or summative assessment. Assessment tools are used for different assessment methods and are more specific.
What is the best example of assessment? ›Examinations, finals, quizzes, and graded papers are examples of summative assessments that test student knowledge of a given topic or subject. These graded assessments and assignments are often high stakes and are geared towards testing students.
What are qualities good assessment tools? ›Reliable: assessment is accurate, consistent and repeatable. Feasible: assessment is practicable in terms of time, resources and student numbers. Educational impact: assessment results in learning what is important and is authentic and worthwhile.
What are the two tools for assessment? ›Direct and Indirect: Assessment tools can generally be placed in two categories, direct and indirect measures. Direct measures are those in which the products of student work are evaluated in light of the learning outcomes for the program.
What are the main assessment techniques? ›There are seven techniques that can be used, the assessment of performance, attitude assessment, written assessment, project assessment, product assessment, the use of portfolios and self-assessment. Performance appraisal is an appraisal done by observing the activities of learners in doing something.
What are the 5 characteristics of effective assessment? ›- Content Validity.
- Reliability.
- Fairness. Student Engagement and Motivation. Consequential Relevance.
They include: 1) multiple choice questions; 2) short answer questions; 3) essay-type questions; 4) peer review exercises; 5) self-assessments. Daily assessment strategies include Multiple Choice Questions. An MCQ is an open ended question where there are several possible answers.
What are the two main types of assessment? ›There are two main types of assessment: summative assessment and formative assessment. These are sometimes referred to as assessment of learning and assessment for learning, respectively.
What are the five purposes of assessment? ›- Assessment drives instruction. ...
- Assessment drives learning. ...
- Assessment informs students of their progress. ...
- Assessment informs teaching practice. ...
- Role of grading in assessment. ...
- When student learning outcomes are not met. ...
- Assessment. ...
- Classroom Assessment Techniques.
There are three key elements of Assessment for Learning: assess, diagnose, and remediate.
What are 3 the four principles of assessment? ›
There are four Principles of Assessment – Reliability, Fairness, Flexibility and Validity.
What are the assessment tools and methods? ›Assessment tools are used for different assessment methods and are more specific. For example, posters, essays, exams, interviews etc, and can be used across a number of assessment methods. Also the tools used to mark assessments, e.g., rubrics can be considered as assessment tools.
Which assessment tools were most commonly used by teachers? ›The assessment tools teachers often employ for this are oral presentations, written essays, journals and portfolios that cover a variety of projects.
What are at least 3 affective assessment tools used by teachers? ›Thus, broader terms including self-report, survey, questionnaire, and checklist often are used to describe commonly used methods of affective assessment.
What are 4 traditional assessment tools? ›The most widely used traditional assessment tools are multiple-choice tests, true/false tests, short answers, and essays.
What do popular assessment tools include? ›- Rubrics. For assessing qualitative student work such as essays, projects, reports, or presentations, we recommend the use of rubrics. ...
- Curriculum Mapping. ...
- Focus Groups. ...
- Portfolios. ...
- Structured Interviews. ...
- Surveys.
Performance assessments often use the following components: Developmental checklists. Portfolios of student work. Progress reports.
What are the assessment tools to measure learning outcomes? ›Information about student learning can be assessed through both direct and indirect measures. Direct measures may include homework, quizzes, exams, reports, essays, research projects, case study analysis, and rubrics for oral and other performances.