Over the past two decades, colleges and universities across the United States have faced increased demands to show evidence that students are meeting appropriate educational goals. Designing and implementing assessments at the course level is quite instrumental in ensuring that students are not just learning the material, but also providing important information to instructors on the extent of the progress students are making in attaining the intended learning outcomes of the course. A formal process of assessing a course can help instructors effectively facilitate student learning by:
Assessment at the course level addresses the following critical questions:
These questions provide an excellent opportunity for classroom assessment process to directly address concerns about better learning and effective teaching. Below is a simple process of instructors can use to developing a course assessment plan:
| Elements of the Assessment Plan | Key Questions | Tips and Resources |
|---|---|---|
| Step 1: Define the overarching course goals and articulate student learning outcomes (SLOs). | What do you expect students to know and be able to do upon completion of your course? | Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to define goals and articulate SLOs. |
| Step 2: Determine course learning activities. | What learning activities have you planned to promote student learning in your course? | Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) provide excellent and practical classroom learning activities. |
| Step 3: Select appropriate strategies for gathering information/data on student learning and determine appropriate criteria for success. | How will you determine how well your students are meeting the expectations of your course? | Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) provide excellent and practical formative assessments. Others include embedded assessments such as essays, class presentations, exam questions, etc. Use rubrics to evaluate the quality of student work. |
| Step 4: Analyze and interpret student performance. | How did students perform (on aggregate)? | Find out the extent to which your students met or did not meet your expectations. |
| Step 5: Make adjustments in student learning and instructional methodologies (“close the loop”). | What modifications do you intend to make in the curriculum and/or teaching process based on actual student achievement data? | Prepare an assessment report showing changes you intend to make in the course as a result of student performance. Include action plans on how the changes will be implemented. |
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to huge challenges regarding the teaching and assessment of student learning process in higher education. As a result of this, the Office of Academic Assessment has developed and put together resources to assist faculty as they continue to develop and/or adopt assessment strategies appropriate for and applicable to the current online/remote teaching and learning. As you continuously refine aspects of your course in the online environment, you may find the following best practices and answers to frequently asked questions relating to online assessment particularly helpful and useful. Please feel free to reach out to the Office of Academic Assessment for consultations to help provide insights regarding practical, classroom or course-level assessments appropriate for online or remote environment.
Given that during the Fall 2020 semester, most tests and examinations were delivered to students digitally, irrespective of course modality, and the same is expected to continue in spring 2021, we strongly encourage all faculty to plan assessments well in advance of scheduled delivery. This will help ensure that online or remote assessment continues to not only be rigorous, but also appropriate and meaningful to the teaching and learning process. Below are useful questions to ask you may ask yourself:
The tumult and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the teaching and learning process across institutions of higher education. This is particularly evident in assessment of student learning process, which continues to be challenging, especially in courses that were designed to be taught fully in-person or using the blended format. There are various practical and authentic assessment strategies and tools that can help faculty create or fine-tune assessment to better determine the degree to which students are learning in your class. On this page, we chare several assessment options you may consider applying to your class in addition to using Quiz tools in Canvas.
Developing strategies for promoting student engagement online during the ongoing pandemic is difficult. However, there are ways to continue deeper learning and engagement despite these challenges such as maintaining constant communication, listening to and (where possible) accommodating student needs, creating a welcoming atmosphere, building strong relationships with students and, offering both synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities as a means to ensuring equity.
Peer assessment (or “peer review”) is mostly used as a technique for students to assess their fellow students’ work. This typically involves students evaluating and providing feedback to their peers using a rubric or a set of assessment criteria. A well-designed peer assessment process can potentially lead to increase in student motivation and engagement, and help students in development of self-awareness, reflecting on the feedback and enhancing the quality of their own work.
The remote teaching and learning process can be very beneficial if students are engaged and active. One of the strategies to accomplish this is to use brief, more regular assessments such as collaborative projects, weekly writing assignments, short problem sets or quizzes as they provide students a much better and firm foundational knowledge and practice with the planned course materials particularly at this time when high stakes assessments/examinations are not optimal. If you are considering to use low stakes assessments, ensure that objectives of the assessments/assignments are guided by your course student learning outcomes.
Whether required for individual students or required as a group, research projects/term papers of a variety of lengths and complexity work well in a remote learning environment. Given that students develop research papers/projects throughout the semester, requiring them to submit portions of the project (e.g., the introduction and thesis, the literature review) at different times can be quite beneficial in ensuring quality of the project. In addition, grading each portion of the project separately using a rubric and providing feedback to students not only helps them refine aspects of the project, but also minimizes the possibility that students will be able to plagiarize work.
In addition to the above recommendations, please take a look at the assessment resources available in Canvas as they may be very helpful as you develop or refine assessment plan for your course.
