readings for nov 1

I was grateful for the clarification on testing vs assessment. I agree that I am constantly assessing what my students know and what they still need information on. I had a really hard time setting up my syllabus for my comp 101 course this semester because I wasn't really sure what incoming freshman did and didn't know about academic writing. I found there were days that I needed to nix what I had planned and teach something completely different because they, for example, had no idea how to write dialogue. Which seems odd because anyone who reads sees example of how to write dialogue on an almost daily basis.

Validity is a difficult thing to achieve when creating a test. It is hard to test specific skills without testing other skills. For example, it is hard to test someone's ablitiy to do certain math problems without also testing their ability to read, expecially if it is a word problem. Or to test someone's reading ability in an online test without also testing their ability to use a computer.