2.3 Assessment: Considerations and Options

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What should I consider when I create assessments?

The goal of assessment is to encourage and promote learning. There are approaches you can take to your assessment strategy that will help create a positive and effective learning community and environment. 

Formative Assessment Considerations

Low-stakes, formative assessments keep students engaged, provide feedback to both students and the instructor to gauge learning, and they provide the instructor with a continuous flow of information about whether mid-course corrections are necessary. Assessing student progress frequently using low-stakes assessments is an important part of a balanced strategy, but may be more important than ever in remote and blended teaching and learning.  With students dispersed and perhaps facing very different challenges inside and outside of school, related to Covid-19, methods for both you and your students to keep an eye on progress will be especially helpful.

Using lower-stakes assessments, you have a good opportunity to provide formative feedback for students as they work through the course.  In a remote or blended course, it's possible to structure these types of assessments in many of the same ways as you would in the face-to-face version of your course; you might even consider ways to break up high-stakes assessments into smaller, more frequent assessments throughout the term. 

Formative Assessment Options

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)

In addition to your "homework" and "in-class" activities Classroom assessment techniques Links to an external site. (CATs) such as those listed below can, with careful planning, translate well to Canvas, Zoom, and other tools supported at OSU, and provide opportunities for gathering formative assessment data:

  • a poll or survey
  • muddiest point,
  • pro/con grid,
  • focused paraphrasing, or
  • a concept map

Many of these CATs ask students to use what they remember by applying it, evaluating it, or creating something new with it.  As you incorporate these techniques, it's important to ensure that you're assessing more than whether or not your students remember individual facts.  

 Multimedia

Another option for formative assessment is student presentations (whether regarding cases or other projects) that allow you to leverage online multimedia resources to support student learning and motivation.  Students can record and share video or narrated presentations asynchronously using Zoom and Canvas, or you can gather students together in Zoom to allow them to present live to the class. 

Canvas Assessment

The Canvas Quizzes tool provides auto-grading and auto-feedback features with a variety of question types. You can provide video, audio, and images as part of a question, and students can record or upload video, audio, and images as part of their answers. You can pre-set different feedback for different incorrect answers and even re-route students to a review page explaining the question in more depth. 

Watch this video for an overview of assessment options in Canvas:

Download Transcript of Assessment Options in Canvas

Academic Integrity Considerations

The Canvas Quizzes tool can be used for short quizzes and surveys, but also for higher-stakes exams. A Canvas quiz is an easy option for both multiple-choice and essay exams, but delivering high-stakes summative assessments remotely comes with unique challenges, relative to academic integrity, that should be considered. 

Remote and blended teaching raises concerns about cheating (e.g., plagiarism, unsanctioned collaboration). Instructors need to communicate the importance and expectations of academic integrity in remote and blended courses. Make sure to do this at the beginning of the term in the syllabus or related documents so that students are clear on the expectations and consequences.  

OSU's Center for Teaching and Learning created this Download "Academic Honesty in Remote Instruction" guide

to help you walk through several types of challenges and practical solutions (**) that support academic integrity:

    1. Changing forms of assessment
    2. Modifying the administration of assessments
    3. Changing the culture of assessment and testing

** Please check with your department/unit chairs for any specific policies related to administering exams remotely.

As you think about how you might modify your summative assessments for remote delivery, make sure to consider how you will grade the assessment; for example, you can use Canvas SpeedGrader Links to an external site. to view and grade student work submitted through Canvas Assignments Links to an external site., Quizzes Links to an external site., and  Discussions Links to an external site.. Attaching a Canvas rubric Links to an external site. to an assignment may help increase the efficiency and consistency of the grading process.

If requesting that students submit photos or scanned images of hand-written work, encourage students to carefully review their photo or scanned image to ensure clear readability of the content. Scannable Links to an external site. (for iOS) and Genius Scan Links to an external site. (for Android) are good resources to share with your students if you will require hand-written work submitted through Canvas. 

Options that Support Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity Statement

Consider sharing a statement of this sort with your students and having them sign it:

Integrity is a character-driven commitment to honesty, doing what is right, and guiding others to do what is right. Oregon State University students and faculty have a responsibility to act with integrity in all of our educational work, and that integrity enables this community of learners to interact in the spirit of trust, honesty, and fairness. 

Academic misconduct or violations of academic integrity can fall into seven broad areas, including but not limited to: cheating; plagiarism; falsification; assisting; tampering; multiple submissions of work; and unauthorized recording and use. 

It is important that you understand what student actions are defined as academic misconduct at OSU. The OSU Libraries offer a tutorial on academic misconduct, and you can also refer to the OSU Student Code of Conduct Links to an external site. and the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards for more information.  If you are unsure if something will violate our academic integrity policy, ask your instructors, GTAs or academic advisors. If a student is found responsible for academic misconduct, the College Hearing Officer (or other hearing body) will make a determination of sanctions that are appropriate to the violation and the surrounding context). College Hearing Officers are authorized to assign Academic Sanctions.

Canvas Quiz Options

  • Using Availability Dates to control when the exam should begin and end.  Students will only have the amount of time you set to complete the exam within these date/time parameters. 
  • You may want to add written questions at the end of each exam section and/or at the end of the exam where students need to justify their process and/or answers. 
  • Adjust quiz settings in Canvas. Consider: 
    • Adding a time limit. Provide approximately one minute a question for multiple-choice exams. (Note: if you have students working with DAS that are allowed extra time on the exam, you will need to input that added time for each student on each timed exam.) 
    • Enabling shuffle answers. Be certain you have removed any "all/none of the above" answers to Multiple Choice questions in Canvas. 
    • Enabling shuffle questions by putting them into a question group. 
    • Disabling “Let Students See Their Quiz Responses (Incorrect Questions Will be Marked in Student Feedback)” to minimize answer-sharing. 
    • Enabling “Display One Question at a Time.”  This prevents students from easily taking a screenshot of the whole exam.  If you have high-value questions at the end of the exam, consider how students might be affected if it is harder to skip ahead to those questions when time is running low. 
  • Do not add an exam password (except for an Ecampus course with formal online proctoring). 
  • If you have students needing to take the exam at a date later than the rest of the class, consider providing an alternate version of the exam. 

Automated Remote Proctoring

Automated remote proctoring is available for high-stakes assessments at OSU through Proctorio. Please review the requirements of the proctoring service and use the link at the bottom of that page to submit a request. The request must be submitted two weeks prior to the date of the exam. After the request is submitted, the OSU Canvas administrator will contact Disability Access Services (DAS) so they can review whether any additional accommodations may be necessary for students with DAS accommodations in your course.

Additional Resources: Assessment

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