Abstract:

Evaluation and feedback on a student's progress are important both to the student and to the teacher. Feedback is also important in relation to motivation. Students need information on their overall progress to make long range plans. The teacher needs to make evaluations to advise students, to make support decisions, and to write recommendations to potential employers.
Assessment can be used to encourage students' interest in and commitment to the study of a subject. It can be used to help students develop a self-critical approach to their work. It can also provide intellectual challenge and enhance independence and responsibility for learning.

In the past, assessment tasks were designed to measure and demonstrate how much students had learnt. Assessment was also concerned with ranking and comparing students according to their achievements in quantitative terms. The current focus of assessment in higher education is to link assessment tasks with anticipated learning outcomes and criteria of competence. Methods of evaluation are designed to assess a broader range of student abilities and they allow the involvement of students in the process and develops students' capacity to monitor their own performance. Moreover, new techniques pay more attention to self-assessment as a result of concern for reflective and self-sustained learning and they should reflect desired learning outcomes and have a beneficial effect on the learning process.

There are an endless number of ways that assessment might be undertaken. They all have advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits. Some key concepts relevant to assessment and some major assessment methods are discussed in this work just like student preferences.

Keywords:

assessment, evaluation.