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Study Guide in SSE 115 (Assessment and Evaluation in Social Studies) Module No. 2

STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. ___

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Assessment and Evaluation of Social Science Learning

MODULE OVERVIEW

Developing and delivering lessons by teachers are integral in the teaching process. It is hence
important for teachers to ensure that the three (3) domains of learning which include cognitive
(thinking), affective (emotions or feeling) and Psychomotor (Physical or kinesthetic) are achieved. It
is imperative to understand that there are different categories of learners who have varying needs and
as such different methods must be adopted in the planning and delivery of lessons to ensure that such
needs are addressed. The world of education has gradually adopted the strategy of ‘Every child
matters’ structure that requires that all learners with different needs are counted.

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

This module aims to evaluate the three domains of learning (cognitive, affective and psychomotor)
and their benefits to addressing the different learning styles of students.

LEARNING CONTENT

DOMAINS OF LEARNING

A holistic lesson developed by a teacher requires the inclusion of all the three domains in
constructing learning tasks for students. The diversity in such learning tasks help creates a
comparatively well – rounded learning experience that meets a number of learning styles and
learning modalities. An increased level of diversity in the delivery of lessons help engage students as
well as create more neural networks and pathways that helps with recollection of information and
events.

1. THE COGNITIVE DOMAIN

Learning helps develop an individual’s attitude as well as encourage the acquisition of new
skills. The cognitive domain aims to develop the mental skills and the acquisition of knowledge of
the individual. The cognitive domain encompasses of six categories which include knowledge;
comprehension; application; analysis; synthesis; and evaluation. Knowledge includes the ability of
the learner to recall data or information. This is followed with comprehension which assesses the

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ability of the learner to understand the meaning of what is known. This is the case where a student is
able to explain an existing theory in his or her own words (Anderson et al, 2011). This is followed by
application which shows the ability of the student to use the abstract knowledge in a new situation. A
typical case is when an Economics student is able to apply the theory of demand and supply to the
changing market trend of clothing during a particular season. The analysis category aims to
differentiate facts and opinions. The synthesis category shows the ability to integrate different
elements or concepts in order to form a sound pattern or structure to help establish a new
meaning. The category of evaluation shows the ability to come up with judgments about the
importance of concepts. 

Essay Tests

Essay questions provide a complex prompt that requires written responses, which can vary in length
from a couple of paragraphs to many pages. Like short answer questions, they provide students with
an opportunity to explain their understanding and demonstrate creativity, but make it hard for
students to arrive at an acceptable answer by bluffing. They can be constructed reasonably quickly
and easily but marking these questions can be time-consuming and grader agreement can be difficult.

Essay questions differ from short answer questions in that the essay questions are less structured.
This openness allows students to demonstrate that they can integrate the course material in creative
ways. As a result, essays are a favoured approach to test higher levels of cognition including
analysis, synthesis and evaluation. However, the requirement that the students provide most of the
structure increases the amount of work required to respond effectively. Students often take longer to
compose a five paragraph essay than they would take to compose five one paragraph answers to
short answer questions. This increased workload limits the number of essay questions that can be
posed on a single exam and thus can restrict the overall scope of an exam to a few topics or areas. To
ensure that this doesn’t cause students to panic or blank out, consider giving the option of answering
one of two or more questions.

They represent a continuum in how much freedom of response is allowed, ranging from restricted-
response essays on one end to extended-response essays on the other.

1. Restricted-response essay
a. limits content and response to be given
b. can limit via how narrowly question is phrased (e.g., as specific as a short-answer
question)
c. can limit via scope of the problem posed (e.g., with introduction like that of an
interpretive exercise)
d. therefore, can approach the objectivity of short-answer and interpretive exercises
2. Extended-response essay
a. great freedom so that allows problem formulation, organization, originality
b. therefore, shares similar scoring difficulties with performance-based tasks

Advantages

1. Measure complex learning outcomes not measured by other means

a. Restricted-response essays: (i) require students to supply, not just identify, the answer
and (ii) can target specific mental skills
b. Extended-response essays: emphasize integration and application of high-level skills
2. Can measure writing skills in addition to (or instead of) knowledge and understanding

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3. Easy to construct—but only if you don’t care what you actually measure and

how reliably you do so!
4. Contribute to student learning, directly and indirectly

Limitations

1. Unreliability of scoring (unless clear learning outcomes, good scoring rubrics, practice in
scoring)
2. Time-consuming to score—especially if follow guidelines. Can be impossible if
conscientious in scoring, give good feedback, and have many students
3. Limited sampling of content domain

Completion-Types Test
 Simple Recall

The simple-recall test is here somewhat arbitrarily defined as one in which each item appears as a
direct question, a stimulus word or phrase, or a specific direction.
The response must be recalled by the pupil from his past experiences rather than merely identified
from a list of suggested answers supplied by the teacher. The typical response to the simple-recall
item is short, preferably a single word or phrase.

Advantages:

1. As it needs very brief answer, does not result in bringing boredom and fatigue.
2. It is easy to construct.
3. It almost completely eliminates guessing as a factor in unreliability and thus minimizes one of
the most common criticisms of objective tests.
4. Thus items are sufficiently reliable and highly valid.
5. The familiarity of facts and naturalness is measured.

Limitations:

1. Such questions test only the factual things and memory. The powers of understanding, reasoning,
application, interpretation etc. cannot be tested through these questions.
2. Preparation of such items demands great skill and experience on the part of the paper setter.
3. It is costly in terms of time and labour for its preparation.
4. Administration of such tests may also create so many disciplinary and administrative problems.
The mode of responses of questions may also drift the students towards picking up unfair means.
5. If not properly constructed, scoring can be subjective.

Rules and Suggestions for Construction:

The simple-recall is one of the most familiar test forms and among the easiest to prepare. The main
problem is how to phrase the test situations so that they will call forth responses of a higher
intellectual level than mere rote memory, and so that they can be scored with a minimum of
expenditure of time and effort.
1. The test item should be so warded that the response is as brief as possible, preferably a single
word, number, symbol, or very brief phrase. This will objectify and facilitate scoring.
2. The direct-question form is usually preferable to the statement form.

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3. The blanks provided for the responses should be in a column, preferably at the right of the items.
This arrangement facilitates scoring and is more convenient for the pupil.
4. The question should be so worded that there is only one correct response. Whenever this is
impossible, all acceptable answers should be included in the scoring key.
5. Make a minimum use of textbook language in wording the questions.

 Filling in the blanks

The completion test may be defined as a series of sentences in which certain important words or
phrases have been omitted and blanks submitted for the pupil to fill in.
A sentence may contain a simple blank, or it may contain two or more blanks. The sentences in the
test may be disconnected, or they may be organized into a paragraph.

Advantages:
1. Completion-type items are easy to construct.
2. Such type of items are popular and widely used. The pupils are quite familiar with such items.
3. There is no scope of guess work and as such they are more reliable.
4. Such items can measure both knowledge and comprehension (understanding) of the subject
matter, while simple recall type items can measure the knowledge aspect only.

Limitations:
1. Such items cannot measure higher levels of objective like application, analysis, synthesis or
evaluation.
2. Such items fail to test the reasoning power, power to explain, discriminate, illustrate or estimate.
3. These questions are mostly based on memory.
4. Scoring is a bit more laborious as the blanks are scattered here and there.
Rules and Suggestions for Construction:
1. Avoid vague statements and see that there is a definite answer to the item.
2. Omit the keywords and phrases. Don’t omit trivial details as in the item—
3. Don’t omit too many keywords. This will make the question ambiguous and there may be many
possible answers.
4. Don’t omit a part of the sentence. A single word, a date, a number or at best of phrase may be
omitted.
5. Avoid giving gaps at the beginning of an item.
6. See that the items do not contain any clue—Ex. ‘Paper boats are made of……………. ‘.
7. Make the blanks of uniform length.
8. Avoid using statements directly from the text. It would encourage rote memory than
understanding.
9. Prepare a scoring key containing correct answers.
10. Each blank should be given equal credit (marks).

Enumeration

Enumeration type of test or exam is done by enumerating particular answers to a particular question.
Enumeration types of exam/quiz/test do not require you to answer in order, meaning, you can answer
an enumeration exam in any order of all possible answers.

Advantages
 Save instructors the time and energy involved in writing test questions

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 Use the terms and methods that are used in the book

Disadvantages
 Rarely involve analysis, synthesis, application, or evaluation (cross-discipline research
documents that approximately 85 percent of the questions in test banks test recall)
 Limit the scope of the exam to text content; if used extensively, may lead students to
conclude that the material covered in class is unimportant and irrelevant

 Selection- Type Test

True and False Test

True/false questions are only composed of a statement. Students respond to the questions by
indicating whether the statement is true or false. For example: True/false questions have only two
possible answers (Answer: True).

Like multiple choice questions, true/false questions:

 Are most often used to assess familiarity with course content and to check for popular
misconceptions
 Allow students to respond quickly so exams can use a large number of them to test
knowledge of a broad range of content
 Are easy and quick to grade but time consuming to create

True/false questions provide students with a 50% chance of guessing the right answer. For this
reason, multiple choice questions are often used instead of true/false questions.

Advantages
 Quick and easy to score
Disadvantages
 Considered to be “one of the most unreliable forms of assessment” (p. 195)
 Often written so that most of the statement is true save one small, often trivial bit of
information that then makes the whole statement untrue
 Encourage guessing, and reward for correct guesses

Tips for writing good true/false items:

Avoid Do use
 Negatives and  Your own words
double-negatives  The same number of true and false
 Long / complex statements (50 / 50) or slightly more false
sentences statements than true (60/40) – students are
 Trivial material more likely to answer true
 Broad  One central idea in each item
generalizations
 Ambiguous or
indefinite terms

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Suggestion: You can increase the usefulness of true/false questions by asking students to correct
false statements.

Matching Type

Students respond to matching questions by pairing each of a set of stems (e.g., definitions) with one
of the choices provided on the exam. These questions are often used to assess recognition and recall
and so are most often used in courses where acquisition of detailed knowledge is an important goal.
They are generally quick and easy to create and mark, but students require more time to respond to
these questions than a similar number of multiple choice or true/false items.

Example: Match each question type with one attribute:

1. Multiple Choice a) Only two possible answers

2. True/False b) Equal number of stems and choices
3. Matching c) Only one correct answer but at least three choices

Tips for writing good matching items:

Avoid Do use
 Long stems and options  Short responses 10-15 items on
 Heterogeneous content (e.g., only one page
dates mixed with people)  Clear directions
 Implausible responses  Logically ordered choices
(chronological, alphabetical,
etc.)

Suggestion: You can use some choices more than once in the same matching exercise. It reduces the
effects of guessing.

Multiple Choice

Multiple choice

Multiple choice questions are composed of one question (stem) with multiple possible answers
(choices), including the correct answer and several incorrect answers (distractors). Typically,
students select the correct answer by circling the associated number or letter, or filling in the
associated circle on the machine-readable response sheet.

Example: Distractors are:

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A) Elements of the exam layout that distract attention from the questions
B) Incorrect but plausible choices used in multiple choice questions
C) Unnecessary clauses included in the stem of multiple choice questions

Answer: B

Students can generally respond to these type of questions quite quickly. As a result, they are often
used to test student’s knowledge of a broad range of content. Creating these questions can be time
consuming because it is often difficult to generate several plausible distractors. However, they can be
marked very quickly.

Advantages
 Quick and easy to score, by hand or electronically
 Can be written so that they test a wide range of higher-order thinking skills
 Can cover lots of content areas on a single exam and still be answered in a class period
Disadvantages
 Often test literacy skills: “if the student reads the question carefully, the answer is easy to
recognize even if the student knows little about the subject” (p. 194)
 Provide unprepared students the opportunity to guess, and with guesses that are right, they
get credit for things they don’t know
 Expose students to misinformation that can influence subsequent thinking about the content
 Take time and skill to construct (especially good questions)

Tips for writing good multiple choice items:

Avoid Do use
In the stem: In the stem:

 Long / complex sentences  Your own words – not

 Trivial statements statements straight out of the
 Negatives and double- textbook
negatives  Single, clearly formulated
 Ambiguity or indefinite terms, problems
absolute statements, and broad
generalization In the choices:
 Extraneous material
 Item characteristics that  Plausible and homogeneous
provide a clue to the answer distractors
misconceptions  Statements based on common
student misconceptions
In the choices:  True statements that do not
answer the questions
 Statements too close to the  Short options – and all same
correct answer length
 Completely implausible  Correct options evenly
responses distributed over A, B, C, etc.
 ‘All of the above,’ ‘none of the  Alternatives that are in logical
above’ or numerical then ‘C’ is also

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Avoid Do use
 Overlapping responses (e.g., if true) order
‘A’ is true)  At least 3 alternatives

Suggestion: After each lecture during the term, jot down two or three multiple choice questions
based on the material for that lecture. Regularly taking a few minutes to compose questions, while
the material is fresh in your mind, will allow you to develop a question bank that you can use to
construct tests and exams quickly and easily.

THE AFFECTIVE DOMAIN

The affective domain includes the feelings, emotions and attitudes of the individual. The categories
of affective domain include receiving phenomena; responding to phenomena; valuing; organization;
and characterization (Anderson et al, 2011). The sub domain of receiving phenomena creates the
awareness of feelings and emotions as well as the ability to utilize selected attention. This can
include listening attentively to lessons in class. The next sub domain of responding to phenomena
involves active participation of the learner in class or during group discussion (Cannon and
Feinstein, 2005). Valuing involves the ability to see the worth of something and express it. This
includes the ability of a learner to share their views and ideas about various issues raised in
class. The ability of the student to prioritize a value over another and create a unique value system is
known as organization. This can be assessed with the need to value one’s academic work as against
their social relationships. The sub domain of characterization explains the ability to internalize
values and let them control the behavior of the individual. In view of this, a student considers the
academic work highly important as it plays an important role in deciding the career path chosen
rather than what may be available.

 Evaluating the Affective Domain

 Sample checklist for Evaluating Attitudes
 Semantic Differential Scales
 Thurstone and Likert Types Scales

THE PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN

The psychomotor domain includes utilizing motor skills and the ability to coordinate them. The sub
domains of psychomotor include perception; set; guided response; mechanism; complex overt
response; adaptation; and origination. Perception involves the ability to apply sensory information
to motor activity. For instance, a student practices a series of exercises in a text book with the aim of
scoring higher marks during exams. Set, as a sub domain, involves the readiness to act upon a series
of challenges to overcome them. In relation to guided responses, it includes the ability to imitate a
displayed behavior or utilize a trial and error method to resolve a situation (Sousa, 2016). The sub
domain of mechanism includes the ability to convert learned responses into habitual actions with
proficiency and confidence. Students are able to solve exams questions after they have confidently
been able to answer some past questions. Complex Overt responses explain the ability to skillfully
perform complex patterns of actions. A typical instance has to do with the ability of a student to have
an increased typing speed when using a computer. Adaptability is an integral part of the domain

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which exhibits the ability to modify learned skills to meet special events. An instance is when a
student who has learnt various underlying theories is able to invent or make a working model using
everyday materials. Origination also involves creating new movement patterns for a specific
situation (Sincero, 2011).

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