Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

The Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education. Nursing assessment is used to collect objective and subjective data from patients to guide nursing management. The results of the nursing assessment were used as screening factors to determine nursing needs.

The Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

Tests can be extremely motivating and give students insight into their learning progress. They identify areas they need to work on and show them what has and has not been effective in contributing to their learning.

In nursing education, learning objectives serve as a guide for teaching and assessment, ensuring that assessments accurately reflect students’ acquired knowledge and skills. Objectives clearly define what students should know, understand, and be able to do, and facilitate the development of assessments and tests aligned with these learning objectives. This approach ensures a more focused and effective learning experience and leads to improved learning outcomes.

The primary goal of assessment is to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and can apply. Its purpose is to gather relevant information about students’ performance or learning progress, or to identify their interests, in order to evaluate their learning process.

Assessment is the first step and involves critical thinking and data collection, both subjective and objective. Subjective data includes verbal statements from the patient or nurse. Objective data are measurable and tangible data, such as vital signs, admission and discharge, and height and weight.

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing

As described earlier, the taxonomies provide a framework for the teacher to plan instruction and design assessment strategies at different levels of learning, from simple to complex in the cognitive domain, from awareness of a value to developing a philosophy of practice based on a value system in the affective domain, and increasing psychomotor competence, from imitation of the skill to performance as a natural part of care.

These taxonomies are of value in assessing learning and performance to gear tests and other strategies to the level of learning anticipated from the instruction. If the outcome of learning is application, then test items also need to be at the application level.

Outcome of Learning is Valuing

If the outcome of learning is valuing, then the assessment methods need to examine students’ behaviors over time to determine if they are committed to practice reflecting these values.

Outcome of Skill Learning is Precision

If the outcome of skill learning is precision, then the assessment needs to focus on accuracy in performance, not the speed with which the skill is performed. The taxonomies, therefore, provide a useful framework to ensure that test items and assessment methods are at the appropriate level for the intended learning outcomes. In developing test items and other types of assessment methods, the teacher first identifies the objective or outcome to be evaluated, then designs test items or other methods to measure it.

The objective specifies the performance at a particular taxonomic level to be assessed. For the objective “Identifies characteristics of premature ventricular contractions” the test item would examine student ability to recall those characteristics. The expected performance is at the knowledge level: recalling facts about premature ventricular contractions, not understanding them nor using that knowledge in clinical situations.

Objectives as the Basis for Testing and Evaluation and Instead develop Test

Some teachers choose not to use objectives as the basis for testing and evaluation and instead develop test items and other assessment methods from the content of the course. With this process the teacher identifies explicit content areas to be evaluated; test items then sample knowledge of this content. If using this method, the teacher should refer to the course outcomes and placement of the course in the curriculum for decisions about the level of complexity of the test items and other assessment methods.

Throughout this book, multiple types of test items and other assessment methods are presented. It is assumed that these items were developed from specific outcomes or objectives, or from explicit content areas. Regardless of whether the teacher uses objectives or content domains as the framework for assessment, test items and other methods should evaluate the learning outcome intended from the instruction.

This outcome specifies a behavior to be assessed, at a particular level of complexity indicated by the taxonomic level, and a content area to which it relates. The behavior and content area provide the framework for developing test items and other assessment methods in a course.

A Quick View About Learning Objectives and Assessment In Nursing Education

Assessment is the collection of information for making decisions about learners, programs, and educational policies. With information collected through assessment, the teacher can determine the progress of students in a course, provide feedback to them about continued learning needs, and plan relevant instructional strategies to meet those needs and help students improve performance.

Assessment provides data for making judgments about learning and performance, which is the process of evaluation, and for arriving at grades of students in courses. Measurement is the process of assigning numbers to represent student achievement or performance according to certain rules, for instance, answering 20 out of 25 items correctly on a quiz.

There are two main ways of interpreting assessment results: norm-referencing and criterion-referencing. In norm-referenced interpretation, test scores and other assessment data are interpreted by comparing them to those of other individuals. Norm-referenced clinical evaluation compares students’ clinical performance with those of a group of learners, indicating that the learner has more or less clinical competence than other students.

Criterion-referenced interpretation, on the other hand, involves interpreting scores based on preset criteria, not in relation to a group of learners. With criterion-referenced clinical evaluation, student performance is compared with a set of criteria to be met. A test, which is one form of measurement, is a set of items each with a correct answer. Tests are a commonly used assessment strategy in nursing programs.

Evaluation is an integral part of the instructional process in nursing. Through evaluation, the teacher makes important judgments and decisions about the extent and quality of learning. Evaluation fulfills two major roles: formative and summative. Formative evaluation judges students’ progress in meeting the outcomes of learning and developing competencies for practice. It occurs throughout the instructional process and provides feedback for determining where further learning is needed.

Summative evaluation, on the other hand, is end-of-instruction evaluation designed to determine what the student has learned in the classroom, an online course, or clinical practice. Summative evaluation judges the quality of the student’s achievement in the course, not the progress of the learner in meeting the objectives.

Objectives play a role in teaching and evaluating students in varied settings in nursing. They provide guidelines for student learning and instruction and serve as a basis for developing assessment strategies in a course. The objectives represent the outcomes of learning; These outcomes may include the acquisition of knowledge, development of values, and performance of psychomotor and technological skills.

Evaluation serves to determine the extent and quality of the student’s learning and performance in relation to these outcomes. Some teachers choose not to use objectives or learning outcomes as the basis for testing and evaluation and instead develop their assessment strategies from the content of the course.

With this process the teacher identifies explicit content areas to be evaluated; test items and other strategies assess how well students have learned that content. The important principle is that the assessment relates to the learning outcomes of the course.

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

Use Of Objectives For Assessment And Testing In Nursing Education

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