Effective assessment of your students’ learning does not necessarily take a lot of time. Many of the the ideas on this website:

• allow you to spend less time than you might already on your classes;
• will help you to know more than you might currently know about your students’ learning; and
• do not require you to grade the work students do.

Assessing learning throughout the quarter:

• On the first day of class (assessing the skills, preconceived ideas, and abilities your students bring to your course)
  • Knowledge inventory¹
  • Diagnostic writing exercise
• In any class session²
  • Build in time to assess
  • Classroom assessment techniques
• Between class sessions
  • Student self assessment
  • Short Blackboard quiz over the reading
  • Journal response
• At the mid-quarter
  • Anonymous survey about how the class is going, misconceptions
  • Mid-term exam or paper
• At the end of the quarter
  • Final exam/project
  • Student reflections on learning

Courses with a large project or writing component

In courses with a large project or writing component, the majority of your assessment effort should come early in the quarter. Early assessment allows students to reflect on their work with enough time to implement and utilize the feedback from the assessment. Throughout this process they will gain the skill necessary to assess the quality of their own work.

¹ Assessing Prior Knowledge from Carnegie Mellon University. Tips and tools for assessing prior knowledge.

² Angelo and Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques is a classic classroom assessment resource. See chapter 4 of this book for more on assessing student learning every class. The book is available in the Office for Teaching, Learning and Assessment library.

³Diagram of the progression of assessment effort for courses with a large project or writing component.