Classroom Assessment usually addresses the status quo of 'what' questions of teaching and learning. What is going on in this class today? What did students find interesting or memorable? What did they learn from the day's lesson? What did they fail to understand or what did they have further questions about? Classroom Research, in contrast, attempts to answer questions having to do with understandings--the 'why' and 'how' questions. Why did students respond as they did? Why did they confuse two concepts that the teacher worked especially hard to distinguish? How do students learn to contrast two different points of view?
(Cross, 1995, p. 7)
The worksheets used for practical assessments are usually gapped, the students are expected to complete the worksheets from knowledge gained during the practical sessions. The practical sessions happen on a weekly basis and the students perform various network activities. The assessments that are done at the end of the chapters are electronic and they are vendor managed on the cisco.netacad.net website (Cisco is the vendor of the qualification). Each student is required to complete a chapter assessment before they can progress further; each teaching session covers all the knowledge required for the students to complete the chapter assessments.
The combination of worksheet assessment and online assessment are designed to give an accurate account of the students current ability, they help highlight any problem areas and give the tutor valuable information on a learners strengths and weaknesses. Students are allowed 3 attempts at each chapter assessment, after 3 attempts the students are required to restart the course from the beginning.
The final (Summative) assessment is either passed or failed with no middle ground, the students have 2 chances to pass the final assessment and a failure on the second attempt requires the student to restart the course from the beginning.