Page 217 - DEDU504_EDUCATIONAL_MEASUREMENT_AND_EVALUATION_ENGLISH

Unit 18 : Marking System : Need, Problems, Components

(iii) To know whether instructional effectiveness is satisfactory for achieving instructional Notes
objectives.
(iv) To judge whether the tests used were reasonably valid and reliable.
They provide the basis on which inferences and conclusions are drawn about students’ abilities,
parents’ decisions, teachers’ instructional impact, administrators’ views of performance standards,
and curriculum specialists; concern about relevance of curriculum and quality of measuring
instruments.

Thus we find that the marks or scores we award to students reflect the outcomes with
which the students, parents, teachers, administrators and curriculum specialists are all
interested.

18.3 Technical Questions in Marking
Some technical problems relating to assignments of marks are given below :

1. What should a mark be based on ?
What characteristics of a student be represented in a mark ?
(i) Should it be appraisal of competence in a curriculum portion?
(ii) Should it be modified by other factors like amount of work completed; mechanical aspects
of work completed such as neatness, legibility, oral expression etc.; and scholastic aptitude
indicated ?
(iii) Should it be judged by common standard or in relation to the student’s potential to
achieve ?
(iv) What type of tests, exercises or behaviours would provide evidence of achievement that
the mark is to represent, e.g. specified objectives or expected outcomes of learning.
2. How data or evidence on different components be weighted?
Achievement indicators of evidences on tests, orals, exercise, projects, assignments etc. are
reported on students’ performance. How weight for each component be decided ? Some of
these measures could be :
(i) Validity of the information is what an indicator provides (knowledge, skills, competency)
and the faithfulness with which it is reflected.
(ii) Reliability of the data or evidence, i.e. the more the errors of measurement the less the
weight, e.g. the highest reliability in objective tests, less in essay type tests and lowest in
orals.
(iii) Effective weight of each component is determined by its standard deviation. For example,
to determine the weight of term paper vis-a-vis written examination we note the S.D. of
each as also the mean. If the teacher wants to give double the weightage to the test than
the term paper, we have to see that the effect of test be twice that of the term paper in
combined score, as illustrated below.
Test Mean = 60 S.D. = 10
Term paper Mean = 3.0 S.D. = 0.5 (on a 5-point scale)
Here if marks are combined as such, test will have 20 times effect on paper in determining
the individual’s standing in the combined score. Since teacher wants only twice as great, we

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 211