My Glossary

04/04/07

WHAT IS A EVALUATION? is the systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of something or someone. Evaluation often is used to characterize and appraise subjects of interest in a wide range of human enterprises, including the Arts, business, computer science, criminal justice, education, engineering, foundations and non-profit organizations, government, health care, and other human services.http://www.nicenet.org/ICA/class/document_add.cfm

ASSESSMENT is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. This article covers educational assessment including the work of institutional researchers, but the term applies to other fields as well including health and finance.

TESTING: is a measuring tool to determine academic progress and potential. Though there is much debate about 'Standardized Testing' and its appropriate use, testing has and will continue to improve educational expectations, accountability and performance results at both the student, teacher, school, state, and provincial levels.
http://specialed.about.com/cs/assessment/a/Testing.htm

MEASUREMENT: A procedure for assigning a number to an object or an event.


09 / 04/ 07

TEACHER BELIEFTS: are related to student learning through some event or sequences of events, mediated by the teacher, that happen in the classroom. These events might be said to "cause" student learning in the sense that the events in the classroom lead, in the case of effective teaching, to student learning.
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/96_docs/orton.html

STRATEGY: is that which top management does that is of great importance to the organization.
Strategy refers to basic directional decisions, that is, to purposes and missions.
Strategy consists of the important actions necessary to realize these directions.
Strategy answers the question: What should the organization be doing?
Strategy answers the question: What are the ends we seek and how should we achieve them?

http://home.att.net/~nickols/strategy_definition.htm

SKILLS:This is used in two ways: (i) the four main language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing (ii) "enabling" skills, which are sub-skills

APPROACH:ideas or actions intended to deal with a problem or
situation; "his approach to every problem is to draw up a list of pros and cons"; "an attack on inflation"; "his plan of attack was misguided" [syn: attack, plan of attack]
http://dict.die.net/approach/

12/04/07

PEDAGOGY: The strategies, techniques, and approaches that teachers can use to facilitate learning.

ACCESSIBILITY: The ease by which students may grasp educational information or use campus facilities.

LEARNING STYLES: The manner in which a learner perceives, interacts with, and responds to the learning environment. Components of learning style are the cognitive, affective and physiological elements, all of which may be strongly influenced by a person's cultural background.

http://ftad.osu.edu/CSP/glossary.html

METHOLODY: The way in which information is found or something is done. The methodology includes the methods, procedures, and techniques used to collect and analyze information.

MATCHING: A method utilized to create comparison groups, in which groups or individuals are matched to those in the treatment group based on characteristics felt to be relevant to program outcomes.

http://www.epa.gov/evaluate/glossary/m-esd.htm

23/04/07

"The teacher undertakes that:
if the student produces such work as the teacher specifies,
to a standard which the teacher will determine (whether or not that standard is based on fixed criteria or personal whim, and regardless of whether the standard is known to the student),
the teacher will award a mark to that work.
The student indicates acceptance of this 'agreement' by producing the work"

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA: are critical values for relevant measures which are the basis for the assessment of a service or product.
http://www.ucc.ie/hfrg/baseline/glossary.html

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA: different criteria for assessing people
Prof. Juan Molina

TASK: is described in terms of the goals or a desired end-result of activities a user wants to achieve. More than one user procedure (a sequence of commands to be executed to carry out a task or to reach a goal) may exist to solve the task.

Summative assessment: Evaluation at the conclusion of a unit or units of instruction or an activity or plan to determine or judge student skills and knowledge or effectiveness of a plan or activity. Outcomes are the culmination of a teaching/learning process for a unit, subject, or year's study. (See Formative Assessment.)
www.journeytoexcellence.org/practice/assessment/glossary.phtml

Assignment: a task or piece of work that sb is given to do, usually as part of their job or studies.
EVALUATION: Evaluation has several distinguishing characteristics relating to focus, methodology, and function. Evaluation (1) assesses the effectiveness of an ongoing program in achieving its objectives, (2) relies on the standards of project design to distinguish a program's effects from those of other forces, and (3) aims at program improvement through a modification of current operations.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/evaluation/glossary/glossary_e.htm

NEGOTIATION ASSESSMENT OR LEARNING CONTRACT: Learning contracts are agreements between a teacher (or teaching team) and a learner (or occasionally a group of learners). They normally concern issues of assessment, and provide a useful mechanism for reassuring both parties about whether a planned piece of work will meet the requirements of a course or module: this is particularly valuable when the assessment is not in the form of a set essay title, or an examination.
http://146.227.1.20/~jamesa//teaching/learning_contracts.htm

TASK ACHIEVEMENT: is another way of saying 'achieving/completing/finishing the task'
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=227303

Performance assessment: Evaluation administered at the conclusion of a unit of instruction to comprehensively assess student learning and the effectiveness of an instructional method or program