Assessments and Feedback

The importance of formative assessment in student learning is generally acknowledged, but it is not well understood across higher education. Formative assessment is often more complex than it first appears. It can be formal or informal, performed by peers or by educators. The central purpose of formative assessment is to contribute to student learning through the provision of information about performance, as opposed to summative assessment whose purpose is to find out what a student knows.

Often times, there can be some misleading data about student evaluations of professors. For example, students may not rate a professor on how much they learned but rather how much they liked the class or how easy they thought it was.

Student evaluations have been used as a basis for promotion and recognition in academia for years, but research shows that student evaluations are full of biases and do not accurately reflect the quality of instruction received. Some universities are seeking to improve the way their evaluations and the way they make tenure/promotion decisions.

Learning outcomes describe the measurable skills, abilities, knowledge and values that students should be able to demonstrate as a result of a taking a class. Often our courses are designed in ways that make it difficult, if not impossible, to allow students to physically demonstrate mastery of their skills and abilities. Instructors often have to rely on exams to assess knowledge a student has gained and to demonstrate their mastery of a subject. Writing effective learning outcomes and connecting our learning outcomes to specific assessment questions allow instructors to track a student's mastery.

Effective assessment design enhances student learning, and engages students with different learning styles. Assessment influences what a student interprets to be the important learning goals for a course. This article, from Brown University Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, provides a set of guidelines about designing assessments that promote students’ learning.

To learn well, students need to use their learning and receive high-quality feedback. But who has time to give a lot of great feedback? Explore how to super-charge the student’s learning environment with productive feedback without burning out.

This website comes from the University of Southern Florida and is a great resource for creating an effective rubric. This page addresses what a rubric is, why a rubric should be used, and the steps to creating a rubric.