Tuesday, January 19, 2010

TestBag.com's Self Assessor a wise facilitator

The Self Assessor, a formative assessment system is like a patient, gentle and wise facilitator at school, college, office or home. The one who will suggest, invite and gently persuade the learner to discover the rewards of self-discipline, tenacity and perseverance. Depending on what level one is, the tests are available for students of ninth grade to twelfth grade, undergraduates, post-graduates and candidates appearing for professional exams.
One could take this module as a way to keep up with the teacher in class, or stay ahead, inspired by one’s own improvement or better still, the slow initiation into love of knowledge. This is one of the most exciting possibilities that this module holds forth; one could, by moving up through the levels of tests, go deeper into the subject or go onto other related topics and widen the the scope of one’s learning. Or preferably, get hooked onto both, the deepening and widening of one’s field of learning. Finally, this would translate into the building up of one’s own capacities through practice. This practice itself can get very thorough and precise, with the candidate being able to choose from a very relevant variety of objective and subjective questions – they are among others. Five kinds of options available in multiple choice, there are multiple choice matching type, assertion type , multiple response, multiple response matching type, fill in the blanks, true and false and integer type questions; comprehensive questions based on common data.
The module actually moves very subtly towards helping the user perceive gaps in his own learning by initiating , just through a comprehensive and systematc upgradation of testing and questioning, a process of self-review. And the test history which keeps a record of the user’s performance can actually clear away doubts and improve time-management through practice.
So, the uniqueness of this module is that it makes self-assessment itself a thrilling journey – one can become inspired to delve deeper into scholarly work, or keep fine tuning one’s understanding of subject-related topics and keep improving on one’s skills, speed and reflexes at exams. Among the more studious, it could also encourage inter-disciplinary learning. The possibilty of class room performnace and the relationship with the teacher changing also remains a clear possibility. Often teachers and students get locked in personal prejudice and preferential treatment simply because their perception of the challenges of learning are often neither assessed, nor fair, nor clear,focussed and interactive.
Finally, this is more or less given that the user will be able to perceive his own capabilities and enhance his perception of the subject vis a vis his performance in the tests.
The subjects covered in the module are Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Physics, Geography, History, Political Science, English, Professional Topics and General Topics.
One can start module tests by either going into the subject and seeing the topics or use key words or terms and zero-in on the area of specific, focussed learning. The key word facility is available for most subjects except general mental ability and English.
The general mental abilty includes verbal and reasoning tests and these are further classified into tests relating to analogy, classification, coding decoding, series and relationship tests.
Good news for candidates for most of whom general topics and English is compulsory; one can start as a beginner with basic grammar questions and then go into more usage practice. The level of difficulty can be increased from the clerical cadre and NDA tests to the Banking, SAT, GRE, CAT, MAT and IAS exams.

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