Traditional Assessment

Traditionally, assessment is held at the end of teaching-learning process. Its purpose is to know whether the students have understood the subject that is learned or not. Certain grade is used to decide the understanding degree of the students to the subject. If the students get a good grade at the test, it means that they passed. On the contrary, they didn’t pass if they get bad grade. This notion is the traditional notion of assessment (Budimansyah, 2002).

According to Solomon (2004), the traditional purpose of assessment is to summarize student knowledge and progress at the conclusion of a unit of study. Traditional assessment includes multiple-choice questions and asking students to respond the questions with short answers.

From those notions of assessment, it is clear that traditional purpose of teaching and learning process is in order the students can respond the questions with correct answers. The product of learning is more emphasized then the process it self. Teacher gives quizzes and tests to assess cognitive aspect only. This kind of assessment is just recall students’ memorization. This is seldom requiring students to apply what they know and can do in real-life situations. It encourages instruction of less important skills and passive learning.

Table 2.1 bellow represents differences between Traditional Assessment and Portfolio Assessment (Brown, 2004:13).

Table 2.1   Traditional and Portfolio Assessment

Traditional Assessment	Portfolio Assessment
One-shot, standardized exams Timed, multiple-choice format Decontextualized test items Scores suffice for feedback Norm-referenced scores Focus on the “right” answer Summative Oriented on product Non-interactive performance Fosters extrinsic motivation	Continuous long-term assessment Untimed, free-response format Contextualized communicative tasks Individualized feedback Criterion-referenced scores Open-ended, creative answers Formative Oriented to process Interactive performance Fosters intrinsic motivation

Strength of Traditional Assessment

Although alternative forms of assessment are currently popular, traditional assessment should not necessary be eliminated by other type of assessment because it do have strength over other forms of assessment. According to Watson and Taylor (1994), traditional tests are less time consuming than most other forms of assessment, even when they include higher level thinking items. It is also relatively easy to validate and determine internal consistency for traditional multiple choice test. Brown and Shavelson (in Watson and Taylor, 1994) say that traditional tests are valid for testing students’ factual knowledge.

Weakness of Traditional Assessment

The weakness of traditional assessment are described by Applebee (in Luitel, 2002) that the traditional notion of assessment cannot assess the student learning process realistically because it views the assessment as the notion of knowledge-out-of-action. It tends to prompt the students to overcome with basic skills only. Although basic skills may be important goals of education, they are often over-emphasized in an effort to raise test scores. Basic skills and minimum competencies become the overarching goal of schools and teachers as accountability and minimum competency exams concentrate on these areas (Bond, 1995).

In traditional assessment process, teachers give less attention and rarely to assess the student’s work in every meeting. It brings the students become lack of attention toward their error in finishing their work. According to Kasiram (1984:10), learning will be on the decline if the students do not know the result of their work. The students want to know feedback of their effort in doing the work as a motivation in learning process. Dimyati and Mudjiono (2002:48) stated that students would be more motivated in learning if the students know the result of their work as a feedback.