Evaluation guides education, and student learning is the goal of education. "Assessment is a process to collect information that accurately reflects the extent to which the student meets the curriculum's expectations in a given subject or course. The primary purpose of any performance evaluation and communication is to improve student learning. (Grow success. 2010). By following the curriculum, the evaluation ensures that all students know they need to be ready to participate in the world. Evaluation can improve student learning because it can guide itself while also ensure that learning is achieved, and can increase critical thinking.
Diagnostic, formative and summative assessment ensures that the student learns correctly. Diagnostic evaluation is used to guide the unit, to understand what needs to be learned a little more prior to new learning. When we know what needs to improve, the student and teacher can create next steps.
The formative assessment is used during the learning of a particular subject and analyzes whether the student is on the right track. Like the diagnostic, the evaluation is used to create next steps in order to understand a subject properly by the end of the unit. It happens constantly and can be done in many ways, but the feedback must be quick so that the student can transform learning to achieve their goals.
Finally, the summative assessment is used to analyze the total learning of a particular subject. Although this is the last assessment to determine learning, it is still very important to develop student learning. By analyzing the information, the student can create the next steps to learn what they have missed. Learning from what was missing or the mistakes they had, will help them avoid these problems in the future. Especially for myself, I learned the best by analyzing my faults.
By self-assessment and peer evaluations, students learn new perspectives. They know what they are already mastering and what they still need to learn. They learn that everyone thinks differently and that we are all unique. With these assessments, students begin to think of metacognition; why they write, and how they should write for example. We learn how to create next steps, how to ensure that the criteria based on the curriculum are met and finally how to create their own criteria for units. When students can create their own criteria, they have created learning goals from the beginning of the unit and can create their own next step to accomplish them.