There are enormous types of assessments that is at the disposal of the designer/ educator that can be utilized at various stages of teaching. Like internal-external, formal-informal, traditional-nontraditional, reflective, authentic, alternative, performance-based, differential assessments. But are they being used in the class-room? The answer to this is that either the teacher does not have enough training or lacks the skills to see it or it can be due to background of the learner or teacher. The other reason is that the administration sets some ground goals & puts too much pressure on the teacher for certain goals that has conflict with the way the teacher wants to groom the learners. Hence the teacher does not get enough time for all the assessments or make cyclic form of assessments.
Other-times we just see that teaching is just considered as source of income and as a profession thus the passion to work the extra mile and thus make that extra effort to uplift the skills of the student is not made.
The only way the assessment works if it is well planned and cyclic process. It’s the teachers decision at the end, to which assessment is being used, as every learner is unique and every circumstance is different hence the combination of assessment to be used is different this implies that no assessment has greater value over the other, it cannot be debated if traditional assessment has more values or more effective than non-traditional assessment as both are important in their own place of use.
Finally I hope that myself and my fellow future educators find the time to properly implement and we can influence the administration to let the educators make decision if the final exam is the traditional written or it is spread across the whole semester and the grades only partially depends on the final exam.
Ajima 