Evaluating your learning

August 19, 2014  ~  Jeff Mitchell

Using your learning edge

Part 9 – Evaluating your learning

Jeff Mitchell – Community Sport Advisor – Sport Auckland

A learning plan is designed to help increase your knowledge, leading to an increase in

your effectiveness as a coach. Rather than being a static document, your learning plan
should be regularly reviewed and updated. In this issue we will look at the role of
evaluation and how to review your learning plan.
Purpose of evaluation
Evaluation is an important stage in the process of using of your learning plan. A
learning plan should be an ongoing document that helps you to keep improving your
coaching. It is important that you regularly evaluate the plan to make sure that it is
effective and to improve your processes in implementing it.

You want to ensure that the plan is effective so that you know that you are improving.
This means evaluating the plan itself and determining the effectiveness of the learning
activities within the plan. You want to know if your learning objectives are being met.
Implementing the plan will use up a precious resource: your time. As such, you also
want to determine if the activities and resources identified in the plan are being used
correctly.

Along with evaluating the plan, you also want to review it and renew it on a regular
basis. This will involve looking at its strengths and weaknesses and using your
evaluation information to improve your learning processes as well as your decision
making.

Evaluation should be performed throughout your implementation of the learning plan,

as you will want to track your short, medium and long-term progress. It should
occur prior to a learning episode to make sure the learning objectives and actions are
well written and relevant. It should occur during a learning episode to confirm that
the learning activities are well conducted. And evaluation should also occur after a
learning episode to check that the outcomes have been achieved and that there has
been a real impact on your coaching.
Planning your evaluation
You need to plan your evaluation as you are writing the plan. Make sure you are clear
on the purposes of your learning plan and also of its evaluation. Planning for
evaluation involves determining some evaluation questions. What is it that you want
to know? For the evaluation of a learning plan you could use some of the following
evaluation questions:

Evaluation of Learning

Definitions of Evaluation:
The word ‘evaluation’ refers to the act or process of determining the value of
something. The data are all measurements until we assign a degree of quality
to them. When we do so, we make an evaluation.
Evaluation is a process of delineating, obtaining and providing useful
information for judging decision alternatives. Evaluation is a systematic
process of determining the extent to which educational objectives are
achieved by pupils. Evaluation includes both qualitative and quantitative plus
value judgments concerning the desirability of that behaviour.

Evaluation is the Process of Determining:

a. The extent to which an objective is realized at the curriculum.

b. The effectiveness of the learning experience provided at the classroom.

c. How well the goals of education have been accomplished by the

curriculum.

Real evaluation encompasses much more than measurement and rating,

although they play a part with maturity as the ‘intention’.

Evaluation from our perspective becomes a broad process and differs in

three significant respects from the narrower conception:
1. Measurement and rating take an analytic and diagnostic function rather
than a punishment and reward function.

Evaluation is no longer a judgment upon the child, it is an illumination

of his strength and weakness, his loss and gains so that:
a. The child may use the findings to improve his learning’s and grow.

b. The teacher may use what he sees to improve the handling of the learning.
In this sense evaluation becomes an integral part of the learning process.

2. Evaluation can no longer be a final process marking a conclusion. It takes

place continuously as part of the learning.

3. Evaluation takes place always in relation to the goal of reaching maturity.

The clearer the goal, the more effective the evaluation.

With these concepts of evaluation, there is much more emphasis on

planning:
a. To making a plan

b. To knowing exactly what the short-range goals are for each planned.

Forms of Evaluation:
1. Individual evaluation:
It is necessary to evaluate his own progress to help the progress of the group
when this evaluation is made against his own capacities and accomplishments
rather than in comparison with some already established norms, the
individual gains more profit.

2. Teacher evaluation:
In an evaluation of learning, not only the child is evaluated but, the teacher.
The teacher’s behaviour does affect how pupils learn. His personality, his
ways of handling children, his ways of instructing; all enter into learning
process.

3. Administration evaluation:
It is the job of the school administration to help society understand the
schools and to attempt to bring educational thinking and public thinking
together. Because of this the administration bears the brunt of society’s
scrutiny and must answer for the performance of individual teachers, this
gives added impetus to the administrator’s regular evaluation of each teacher.

Methods of Evaluation:
1. Formative evaluation:
Formative evaluation is one that is carried out during the process of
curriculum planning. The evaluation results provide useful information for
correcting the flaws detected in the curriculum and for modifying the
programme elements.

2. Summative evaluation:
Summative evaluation is one which is carried out after offering the
curriculum once or twice. It may be useful for the specification of the
optional conditions for usage and for overall modification and improvement
of the curriculum.
Tools of Evaluation:
1. Standardized tests:
Standardized tests include tests for intelligence, achievement, personality,
study skills, aptitude and interest. These have been developed scientifically
by psychologists and educators after long experimentation.

In this type of tests, interpretation are all fixed or standardized or a particular

age group or grade with the help of some statistical technique. So that
precisely the same test may be given to the students of that age group at
different times and places.

2. Achievement tests:
Generally fall into two categories:
a. Level of achievement tests show at what level a student is able to function
in a variety of subjects and skills. A teacher would use this type of test at the
beginning of the year to assess the range of achievement in his class so that
he may screen the class into working groups.
b. Qualitative achievement tests—once the teacher has determined range of
achievement, he will find these tests helpful to show the breadth and depth of
each child’s understandings and skills in a particular subject.
Other Important Tools of Evaluation:
1. Check lists

2. Rating scales

3. Attitude scales

4. Observation schedules

5. Interview schedules

6. Questionnaires containing restricted response and open-ended questions.

Purposes of Evaluation:
1. To determine and understand the level of knowledge and skills of the
students, at various times of the learning period.
2. To be aware of the specific difficulties of individual students, or of an
entire class, as a basis for further teaching.

3. To identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses and to suggest

remedial measures this may be needed.

4. To encourage students learning by measuring their achievements and

informing them of their success.

5. To help students to acquire the attitude of and skill in self-evaluation.

6. To help students to become increasingly self-directing in their study.

7. To provide motivation to develop critical thinking to help them to apply

principles and to make judgments.

8. To estimate the effectiveness of teaching and learning techniques of

subject content.

9. To meet the graduation requirements.

Process of Evaluation:
1. Evaluation is a continuous process.

2. Evaluation is a comprehensive process.

3. Evaluation is a co-operative process.

Functions of Evaluation:
1. To validate the hypothesis upon which the educational institution operates.

2. To identify pupils who are exceptionally gifted on unusually poor in their

attainments.

3. To compare the current subject matter achievement of a pupil with miss

previous and future achievement in the same field.

4. To estimate a pupil’s potential or aptitude for learning.

5. To evaluate the teaching effectiveness

6. To provide basis for modification of curriculum

7. To make provision for guiding the growth of individual pupils.

8. To diagnose the weakness and strength of the pupils.

9. To pin point the areas where remedy measures may be desirable.

10. To test the efficiency of teachers in providing learning experiences and

the effectiveness of instruction and of classroom activities and also to
improve instruction.

Test Construction
Most tests are a form of summative assessment; that is, they measure
students’ performance on a given task. (For more information on summative
assessment, see the CITL resource on formative and summative assessment.)
McKeachie (2010) only half-jokes that “Unfortunately, it appears to be
generally true that the examinations that are the easiest to construct are the
most difficult to grade.” The inverse is also true: time spent constructing a
clear exam will save time in the grading of it.