ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES THAT CAN INCREASE MOTIVATION

EleaxarAbesamis and Claren Dale Halili

Introduction
An indispensable part of the teaching learning process is assessment. It is usually at the end of a
lesson plan termed "evaluation". A lesson plan is not complete without an assessment. The instructional
cycle indeed is not complete without assessment.

Assessment is at the service of learning, thus the phrase assessment for learning. Assessment is
meant to ensure that learning takes place. This is possible only when the assessment process motivates
students to learn. Unfortunately, in many instances, assessment as a process does not motivate, instead
threatens. How can we make assessment a motivating and a facilitating experience is the concern of this
module.

Motivating students has consistently been a concern of educators. In 1987, Howard Hendricks
claimed that “the number one problem in education today is the failure to motivate students…..to get
them off the dime and into action.” A decade later, a survey of elementary school principals found that
ninety-seven percent identified motivating students as either an important or very important issue in
their schools. Motivation is defined as “the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and
sustained” (Pintrich and Schunk 1996). In the realm of higher education, student motivation can be
thought of as the overall drive of the student to succeed in the classroom – learning is the goal-directed
activity. It is not uncommon for teachers to blame students for lacking motivation when they do not
achieve at the level their teachers would expect them to. However, the literature on student motivation
indicates that teachers can have an extraordinary impact on their students drive to achieve and succeed
in their classes. Most research on student motivation focuses either on student characteristics or
teacher traits that impact, positively or negatively, students‟ motivation to learn.

How to Use Assessment to Motivate Students

As teachers, we often spend countless hours grading papers and writing comments in
margins, only to have our students look at the grade and then toss the paper in the
wastebasket.

While we must evaluate our students’ work, we also need to develop opportunities for
our students to think about their work and use our corrective feedback to develop next steps
for meeting the learning targets we have set.

How Assessment Affects Learning

The difference between good students and weak students is that good students are able
to absorb our feedback and use it to create a pathway toward understanding learning targets.
Weak students, however, have trouble understanding feedback and need us to give them
specific next steps in order for them to develop a growth mindset and see a path toward
understanding. Unlike our good students, our weaker students often have given up trying to
understand our comments written in the margins of their papers or don’t know how to find
solutions to the test items they missed. Because they don’t understand how to improve, they
often dismiss school and school work as “stupid” or simply say, “I don’t care.”

When we teach our students how to use our feedback to analyze their work, it not only
gives meaning to the time and effort we have put into grading and commenting on their work,
but also engages our students in the learning process. Requiring students to think about and
apply criteria for meeting learning targets in the context of their own work encourages students
to monitor their own work and take responsibility for their own learning.

Getting students involved in analyzing their mistakes on tests helps them to understand
the intended learning, the immediate next steps they need to take in their journey toward
learning targets, and gives them a clearer picture as to just where they are in the journey.
Hattie and Timperely’s (2007) review of the research on feedback determined that analysis of
mistakes is one of the most powerful ways students learn or increase their learning.

Assessment strategies that can increase motivation

How can we make assessment a palatable menu for our students? Experiences in classroom
assessment and principles of assessment tell us the following:

1. Make clear your learner's objective every time. It is good if students are clarified on the objectives
they are working on and the criteria that will be used in evaluating their learning.

2. Make your students own the lesson objective. Allow them to set their own personal learning targets
based on the lesson objective. Initially their personal target may be lower than the learning target set
for the class but with the expectation that they will gradually bring them up according to their pace until
their personal targets coincide with the class target. This will make them feel unthreatened and
comfortable.

3. Engage your students in self-assessment. They have established their own target against clearly set
lesson objectives. They are in the best position to determine if they have met their own targets and the
class target or objective.

When learners are given the opportunity to evaluate their own performance, they bring to mind the
personal task and strategy variables applicable to them. They reflect on their personal characteristics
that affect their learning task they need to work on and the strategies that can help them. In this way,
assessment empowers the student to take a more active role in their own learning process.
1. Practice criterion-referenced assessment rather than norm-referenced assessment. Make your
students compare their performance against establish criterion, i.e., the learning objective or target and
not against other students' performance. Comparing a student's performance with the latter makes
assessment threatening.

2. If you are indeed criterion-referenced, then your assessment is certainly based on established
criterion, your learning target or objective. It has been observed, however, that a number of teachers
set learning objectives but assess another. This leads to students' confusion and discouragement.

3. Inspire your students to have mastery-focus rather than performance-focus. Set their hearts on
lesson mastery for the love learning rather than on scores, grades and performance. If they fail to get an
item or items in a test, tell them not to worry and assure them that they will be taught again until
mastery.

4. Have a "growth mindset". Believe that your students can improve. Failure or wrong answer is
welcome. Assure your students that they are not made less of themselves by a wrong answer or a
mistake. What is most important is that they learn from their mistakes and continuously grow and
improve.

5. Your assessment practice must be sensitive and constructive because assessment has an emotional
impact. Bear in mind that your comments, marks and grades, as well as the manner you communicate
them to students, can affect their self-confidence. Assessment should be constructive as much as
possible. Judging students harshly to the point that they feel belittled or insulted will kill their spirit and
may lead them to have a negative view both of themselves and the subject.