Tackling Subjective and Objective Summative Assessments in a Year

Many of my students ask me at the end of a lesson why they should attempt subjective type CFUs when they are supposed to be assessed for learning through Multiple Choice Type of questions in their summative assessments. Unfortunately most learners don't realize that one cannot attempt multiple choice type questions unless one is very well grounded in the concepts, ideas and value points in a particular lesson. You can learn about the format, language and the value points of a formal letter only if you write one! Most students believe that an objective form of assessment means that they do not have to write lengthy letters because all they have to is tick on the right choice in the question paper.

The reasoning behind introducing Multiple Choice questions is that you can assess a student on a wider portion of the syllabus though it does not really cater to an in-depth knowledge of a topic. Therefore, in order to ensure that the student has a sound understanding of a concept you will have to resort to a subjective type of  assessments in the formatives. Students will continue to be assessed for their written essays, articles, reports and articles even if at the end they are given Multiple Choice questions. Some of my students even questioned me for making them right long answers based on character portrayals, plot movements, themes and metaphors in literature, including articles, and letters, notices and invitations in the writing section. The answer to this query lies in the fact that while Multiple Choice or objective type of assessments are based on deductive reasoning they can only be successful in what they assess only if the student has gone through inductive learning. In other words deductive reasoning can only take place after inductive learning has taken place and inductive learning can take place and thereof, be assessed through subjective type of assessments.

Inductive learning is also called concept learning takes place through observation to generate classification rules. Ironically enough, inductive learning is more learner-centric than deductive learning. This will become clear from the following example given by the British Council English teaching website-https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/deductive-approach:'The form and use of the third conditional is explained to learners, then they have a gap-fill exercise to complete, then prepare their own examples'. Another explanation for deductive learning might be summed in the following words, It is when you take two statements or premises to form a conclusion. For example, A is equal to B. B is also equal to C. Given the two statements, one can conclude that A is equal to C using deductive reasoning.

Somehow, I very strongly belief and advocate Inductive learning, which is data intensive to be a precursor to Deductive learning. As such, you need to write and read numerous essays and articles in order to be able to deduce and infer whether a particular essay is discursive, factual or descriptive in nature. Deduction can only take place after you have gathered enough information. 

It makes sense for competent assessing boards that have split the summative assessments into two assessments in a year to have the first one as a subjective assessment and then the second one as an objective or multiple choice based assessment. The reasoning here is that students who give the objective, multiple assessment before their subjective or written type assessment tend to lose out on written expression skills. They forget all about formats and language conventions. Having the objective type of assessment at the year end will ensure that the students will have had enough of written assessments to tide them over the year in terms of written exam skills.