Evaluation and Feedback

I believe the main objective of evaluation and feedback is to encourage students to continue the good job and learn more. As Mamchur writes, “ the teacher has to think of evaluation as a teaching process and the student will see the value in the evaluation.” In fact, this is the main goal of learning and teaching.

Personally, I am against negative feedbacks, since it does not achieve a lot, except generates a sense of inability and desperation. This does not mean that the teacher should cover weaknesses of the student but she needs to find a way to be more specific and show the student a path to improve her weaknesses rather than just put them in some words or generalize them. “Mamchur advocates teaching ‘to show, not tell’.” For example, if the student has a problem with writing, instead of saying that ‘your writing is not in a good level or it needs to be improved’, the teacher can points out to a more specific problem in student’s writing such as, grammar, content, or spelling. Then the teacher needs to come up with a solution like, ‘OK your grammar is not strong but if you use this website or this book it will help you to improve your grammar’. This is a more effective feedback that as Mamchur writes, ” will be directly helpful to the individual”. In fact, “[t]ogether, they go over the strategy and practice together going step by step, different students having a chance to try the strategy and extend the ideas. Both the teacher and student understand and can evaluate clearly what progress has been ‘shown’ not ‘told’.”(Six Traps of Evaluation to Avoid)

Evaluation and feedback at every level such and elementary, high school, and university need to give more positive motive to students and encourage them to try hard and do not discourage them. While at every level methods of evaluation require to be different, its principles should stay similar. Also, evaluation and feedback have to take into consideration the different personality types. Mamchur indicates that in an ideal learning conditions a student needs to feel personally “acknowledged, recognized, valued”. In this process every learning type such as intuitive students, thinking students, and feeling students feel a sense of acknowledgement and recognition.