2.2 Aligning and Developing Assessments
Just as you can't confirm a hypothesis without testing it, so, too, you can't confirm whether your students have achieved the course learning outcomes without some form of assessment. This is why assessment is the second stage of backward design - if you know where you want students to go (learning outcomes), you next need to decide how you'll know if they've gotten there (assessment).
Although the types of assessments that often first come to mind are a test, paper, or lab exercise, many other activities can be used for assessment, including portfolios, discussion forums, concept maps, diagrams, and presentations. Any tangible output from a learning activity can be assessed. Your choice of output—and the activity designed to generate that output—should be determined by your learning outcomes, and we'll think here about options that are particularly suited for digital and remote delivery so that students need not turn in a physical artifact of their work to you.
Why is it important to align assessments with learning outcomes?
Alignment between assessments and desired learning outcomes is foundational if your assessments are to be valid. Just like in a research study where you want to make sure that your research instrument is measuring what you want it to measure, by aligning your assessments to your learning outcomes you are making sure you are assessing what you want to assess. Assessments that are aligned with your learning outcomes provide dependable evidence as to how well students are reaching the desired outcomes.
Clearly aligning assessments to desired learning outcomes also reinforces to students what needs to be mastered and helps them track their progress in the course. Students pay attention to what you test. For example, if your intent is for students to be able to apply, critique, or evaluate a certain concept, but your assignments and exams ask students to remember, identify, and describe the concept, then your assessments aren't aligned with your desired learning outcomes. Asking students to describe a concept doesn't encourage them to evaluate the concept in context and doesn't provide evidence that they can evaluate the concept.
A Balanced Assessment Strategy
Students need to get frequent feedback on how they are doing in your course. Are they learning what they are supposed to be learning? Are they achieving the learning outcomes? Students might feel more anxiety about these questions in the unfamiliar, remote or blended learning context. The most effective way to ensure that students get the feedback they need to stay on track is through a balanced assessment strategy that includes both formative and summative assessments. Courses that use a blend of summative and formative assessments provide more consistent support for learning than relying exclusively on a midterm and a final exam.
Formative Assessment
Formative assessment is designed to provide feedback to both student and instructor about how well the learning process is going. Formative assessment activities are especially critical when you can't rely on visual and non-verbal cues with all of your students seated in front of you in the classroom to get a sense of how they are doing. Smaller, lower-stakes assessments are good opportunities to provide formative feedback for students as they work through the course.
Examples of formative assessment that you could use in your revised course include:
- Regular ungraded "Check Your Understanding" quizzes with the Canvas Quizzes tool; after completing one, students can receive feedback based on the answer they chose in a multiple-choice section or compare their answers to those of an excellent example in a short answer section. You can even set these quizzes up to allow for multiple attempts if students want to retry them.
- Larger summative assessment broken into smaller components that can be turned in throughout the term. This allows you to catch and address misconceptions, challenge students’ early analyses, and provide the opportunity for them to revise and resubmit each piece in a unified whole at the end of the term or unit.
- Consider offering ways for students to assess their own understanding of course concepts on low-risk assignments, such as think-pair-share activities using Canvas Discussion forums or Canvas Groups.
Summative Assessment
Summative assessment, on the other hand, is designed to provide evidence that students have achieved a learning outcome or otherwise gained skills or knowledge throughout the course. Even if you have taught your course before, your summative assessments may need revision so that you can deliver them digitally and remotely (remembering that all fall finals at OSU will be delivered remotely).
End-of-semester exams, projects, portfolios, and presentations are often used to summatively assess students' knowledge and skills.
Final papers, projects, and portfolios have a variety of options in a remote or blended class. Here are a few:
- Incorporate media in a Canvas Assignment, Discussion, and Pages - either for project instructions such as presenting a video case for analysis, or in student work such as recorded presentations, interviews, and demonstrations.
- Use Zoom for synchronous assessments such as oral exams in languages.
- Have students use Zoom to record individual video presentations or interactions such as mock counseling sessions and other role-play scenarios that students can submit to a Canvas Assignment or share in a Discussion.
Keep in mind that summative assessment doesn’t necessarily mean “graded” nor does formative assessment necessarily mean “non-graded.” You might provide complete/incomplete grades on certain staged tasks as long as students meet the minimum requirements, for example.
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