Assessment Strategies

Assessment Focused + Simple

20 Fair, Clear and Sim­ple IDeas for Assess­ing Learn­ing

Twen­ty ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly-sound ideas for the assess­ment of stu­dent learn­ing in both online (asyn­chro­nous, syn­chro­nous and blend­ed) and face-to-face class­es with the intent to fos­ter a more flex­i­ble, acces­si­ble, inclu­sive and sup­port­ive learn­ing envi­ron­ment for all stu­dents. Choose one or two and learn more.

Assessment Idea 1

Aim for 3–5 for­mal assess­ments with no one assess­ment worth more than 40% (as per North Island Col­lege Pol­i­cy 3–33) unless you have a pro­gram with exter­nal adju­di­ca­tion or reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments that indi­cates oth­er­wise. In most cours­es, 3–5 well-designed and aligned assess­ments are often suf­fi­cient for stu­dents to appro­pri­ate­ly demon­strate core learn­ing out­comes. Include many infor­mal assess­ments to help pro­vide feed­back to stu­dents and give you a broad­er pic­ture of stu­dent learn­ing. A larg­er num­ber of assess­ments doesn’t mean you have more data to deter­mine a grade. Too many assess­ments can cre­ate increased stu­dent stress/anxiety and most like­ly will not give stu­dents the best expe­ri­ences to demon­strate their learn­ing. Too many assess­ments caus­es more work for instruc­tors to mark and man­age.

Ensure all for­mal assess­ments are direct­ly linked to course learn­ing out­comes. Note: Not all learn­ing out­comes require a for­mal assess­ment. Once you have linked the out­comes to your assess­ments, con­sid­er the instruc­tion­al activ­i­ties for your course. This is called con­struc­tive align­ment of a course. Stu­dents should see a direct link­age from the learn­ing out­come to the course activ­i­ties and the for­mal assess­ments. Con­sid­er list­ing your learn­ing out­comes on your assign­ment instruc­tions and mark­ing tools.

Ensure stu­dents are 100% clear on what is expect­ed of them. If pos­si­ble, pro­vide an exam­ple or two so stu­dents know what to do. Con­sid­er mak­ing a video describ­ing the assess­ment, the cri­te­ria, and the expec­ta­tions. Stu­dents with all abil­i­ties will be able to down­load the video, stop it at any point, take notes, replay the video, and have your words to refer to when they are doing the assess­ment.

Con­sid­er giv­ing stu­dents choice around the media for­mats for demon­strat­ing learn­ing (e.g., com­put­er vs. paper, in-class exam vs. take home, pre­sent­ing on video or live), choice with­in an assess­ment (e.g., 3 out of 4 essay ques­tions, 10 out of 15 math ques­tions) or choice between assess­ments (e.g., writ­ing a paper, or doing an oral pre­sen­ta­tion, or cre­at­ing a video, or build­ing a con­cept map, or teach­ing class­mates). Choice builds engage­ment in the learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Choice is a core prin­ci­ple of Uni­ver­sal Design for Learn­ing.

Non-dis­pos­able assign­ments are activ­i­ties that add val­ue to the local or glob­al com­mu­ni­ties, pro­fes­sions, or dis­ci­plines. They are assign­ments root­ed in cur­rent and rel­e­vant issues, top­ics, or chal­lenges. They are assign­ments not like­ly to be tossed out after a course is com­plete. Stu­dents appre­ci­ate non-dis­pos­able assign­ments because they are more engag­ing and fun to do. These types of assign­ments are often pub­licly shared (e.g., a web­site, blog post, pub­li­ca­tion etc.) Also con­sid­er assess­ments that are authen­tic – mean­ing they are focused on messy, com­plex real-world sit­u­a­tions.

Keep your mark­ing tools, espe­cial­ly rubrics, sim­ple and easy to use. Sin­gle point rubrics are one exam­ple of uncom­pli­cat­ing assess­ment. A sin­gle point rubric is a col­lec­tion of state­ments about what is expect­ed writ­ten in the mid­dle of a 3‑column chart. A blank col­umn to the right is for com­ments about work exceed­ing learn­ing expec­ta­tions. A blank col­umn to the left for work not yet meet­ing the learn­ing expec­ta­tions. Sin­gle point rubrics focus on what is expect­ed and give space for instruc­tor com­ments and stu­dent self-reflec­tions.

Ask stu­dents to assess them­selves before hand­ing in their assign­ments or after doing a test – by answer­ing a spe­cif­ic set of ques­tions about how they under­took the assign­ment, what went well, what they learned etc. This is called a learn­ing wrap­per and it can be used for an assign­ment, les­son, or exam. Give stu­dents marks for com­plet­ing the learn­ing wrap­per. Learn­ing wrap­pers build metacog­ni­tion and self-reg­u­lat­ed learn­ing in stu­dents by forc­ing them to think about not just the out­come but the process of learn­ing.

A pro­fes­sion­al­ism (or aca­d­e­m­ic behav­iour) rubric out­lines a col­lec­tion of actions and activ­i­ties of an aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly hon­est and engaged stu­dent. It is like a check­list with descrip­tive phras­es. Build with stu­dents. Dis­cuss as a class. 1/3 through course have stu­dents self-reflect on the com­po­nents. 2/3 through course have them self-reflect again on their first com­ments and pro­vide updat­ed thoughts. Near end of course have stu­dents review pre­vi­ous two reflec­tions and assign them­selves a grade or lev­el or some final assess­ment about their work through­out the term in being pre­pared and engaged in the learn­ing. Instruc­tor reviews and gives a final mark or assess­ment.

Assess­ment is best when there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to demon­strate their learn­ing and receive imme­di­ate feed­back. This could be a short quiz, a writ­ten para­graph, a post in a dis­cus­sion forum, an out­line for a project, a 2‑minute video sum­ma­ry – with both self-reflec­tive feed­back, along with peer or teacher feed­back. These assess­ments do not have to be for marks or if they are for marks, they are low-stakes val­ues (5%, 10% etc.) Con­sid­er a bal­ance of low stakes assess­ments to for­mal assess­ments along with course work­load – aim for a good com­bi­na­tion for opti­mal stu­dent learn­ing.

Count­ing the num­ber of posts or the num­ber of replies to a post will dri­ve you nuts when try­ing to assess – and is not a true indi­ca­tion of learn­ing. This is an out­dat­ed prac­tice. How about hav­ing stu­dents self-assess their con­tri­bu­tions and pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of what they learned from an online dis­cus­sion? Ask­ing stu­dents to con­tribute to dis­cus­sions every week is not always good learn­ing and results in over­load and stress. Try doing dis­cus­sions every oth­er week or only 4–5X through­out a course.

Think about how you man­age group pre­sen­ta­tions in the online for­mat. Stu­dents fre­quent­ly rate the expe­ri­ence as less than ide­al and live class times might be bet­ter used. Con­struct a wor­thy project for online groups and ensure pre­sen­ta­tions have a com­po­nent of dig­i­tal engage­ment or peer assess­ment. Maybe have stu­dents sum­ma­rize their learn­ing via a short video, share the link and sub­mit a self-reflec­tive sum­ma­ry instead of live pre­sen­ta­tions.

Most stu­dents do not like group assign­ments most­ly because they are not with the skills and abil­i­ties to man­age group work or they have had poor expe­ri­ences in the past. They espe­cial­ly dis­like group assign­ments in the online learn­ing envi­ron­ment. They are hard to sched­ule and find time for all group mem­bers to work togeth­er. If you want to have a group assign­ment, cre­ate one that has both indi­vid­ual account­abil­i­ty pieces worth 70–80% of the mark and a small (10% or so) mark for some­thing tru­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive they only do as a group. Pro­vide space and sug­ges­tions for com­ing togeth­er to work effec­tive­ly in a dig­i­tal for­mat.

Asyn­chro­nous class­es need flex­i­bil­i­ty in test and quiz sched­ul­ing. Pre-sched­uled and lim­it­ed-time quizzes cre­ate more stress and anx­i­ety for stu­dents and do not align with the intent of the for­mat. Give stu­dents a day or two or three to take the quiz so they can work around their sched­ules. Once they start the quiz you can con­strain the time.

Cheat­ing often hap­pens when ques­tions or com­po­nents of an assign­ment are eas­i­ly “Googled” or found on web­sites like Course Hero or Chegg. Aca­d­e­m­ic sur­veil­lance soft­ware is not the solu­tion and is harm­ful to stu­dents in terms of pri­va­cy, stress, anx­i­ety, and mon­i­tor­ing activ­i­ties. Cre­ate ques­tions that require high­er order think­ing, use var­ied ques­tion types, have stu­dents sign an hon­esty con­tract, refrain from using pub­lish­er test banks etc.

If you teach in a cohort pro­gram, check in with oth­er instruc­tors of cours­es your stu­dents will most like­ly be tak­ing. Find out their due dates and times when stu­dents might be busiest and work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to find dates that will not result in too many items due at the same time. Even if you do not teach in a cohort-based pro­gram, ask your stu­dents when oth­er assess­ments are due and pos­si­bly adjust your course due dates. Stu­dents will appre­ci­ate you work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to build a bal­anced sched­ule of assess­ment dates.

If stu­dents are sub­mit­ting assign­ments or tak­ing tests in the evenings or on the week­ends, Stu­dent Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices is not avail­able to help – and, most like­ly you also are not avail­able for help. Have assign­ments and tests due/be sub­mit­ted dur­ing times when NIC sup­port staff are avail­able to help them with upload­ing issues, tech­ni­cal prob­lems etc. Remind them of the hours and con­tact details for NIC’s Stu­dent Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices.

Exams are often giv­en to assess mem­o­ry of key con­cepts and com­po­nents, along with stu­dent abil­i­ties to apply learn­ing to new sit­u­a­tions. Whether online or in per­son, exams also cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant stress and anx­i­ety in stu­dents and may not pro­duce accu­rate results of stu­dent learn­ing. If you are not with artic­u­la­tion or reg­u­la­to­ry body expec­ta­tions, con­sid­er ditch­ing the exam for anoth­er way of allow­ing stu­dents to con­sol­i­date and apply their learn­ing.

Giv­ing feed­back that is prop­er­ly received and act­ed upon is how stu­dents learn best. Focus your efforts on giv­ing time­ly and rich feed­back, but also on how stu­dents receive, inter­pret and act upon the feed­back. Pro­vide audio feed­back, writ­ten feed­back, peer feed­back, expert feed­back, self-reflec­tive feed­back etc. – and then fol­low up with their inter­pre­ta­tion, under­stand­ing and appli­ca­tion of that feed­back.

Sep­a­rat­ing grades (val­ues, num­bers, per­cent­ages, lev­els, let­ters) from feed­back (ver­bal or writ­ten com­ments, direc­tions on where to improve, out­lin­ing strengths, sug­ges­tions for next steps) is the first step in ‘ungrad­ing’ a course. Once stu­dents see how grades (putting a val­ue on learn­ing) does not aid in the learn­ing process, ungrad­ing prac­tices and ped­a­go­gies will become clear­er. The ungrad­ing move­ment is gain­ing momen­tum in cre­at­ing a more com­pas­sion­ate learn­ing envi­ron­ment for all.

Con­sid­er ask­ing your stu­dents to help design the for­mal and infor­mal assess­ment com­po­nents. Often called ‘co-con­struct­ing learn­ing’ or ‘stu­dents as part­ners’, involve stu­dents in the design and devel­op­ment of a cours­es’ assess­ment (or pieces of it). Work­ing togeth­er will build greater stu­dent engage­ment and their under­stand­ing of the learn­ing process.

Non-Disposable Assignments

“If you’ve heard me speak in the last sev­er­al months, you’ve prob­a­bly heard me rail against “dis­pos­able assign­ments.” These are assign­ments that stu­dents com­plain about doing and fac­ul­ty com­plain about grad­ing. They’re assign­ments that add no val­ue to the world – after a stu­dent spends three hours cre­at­ing it, a teacher spends 30 min­utes grad­ing it, and then the stu­dent throws it away. Not only do these assign­ments add no val­ue to the world, they actu­al­ly suck val­ue out of the world. Talk about an incred­i­ble waste of time and brain pow­er (an a poten­tial­ly huge source of cog­ni­tive sur­plus)!

What if we changed these “dis­pos­able assign­ments” into activ­i­ties which actu­al­ly added val­ue to the world? Then stu­dents and fac­ul­ty might feel dif­fer­ent about the time and effort they invest­ed in them. I have seen time and again that they do feel dif­fer­ent about the efforts they make under these cir­cum­stances.”

David Wiley, Killing the Dis­pos­able Assign­ment

Key Readings and Examples

Here are some key read­ings and exam­ples of non-dis­pos­able assign­ments (also called renew­able assign­ments or some­times called open ped­a­go­gies). Feel free to check them out.

Read­ings

  • Paske­vi­cius, M. & Knaack, L. (2017). The Non-Dis­pos­able Assign­ment: Enhanc­ing Per­son­al­ized Learn­ing | Slideshare Deck
  • Wiley, D. (2013). What is Open Ped­a­gogy? Iter­at­ing Towards Open­ness | Blog Post
  • DeRosa, R. (n.d.). Reduced Dis­pos­abil­i­ty | Web­site
  • Ragad Anwar; Jes­si­ca Kalra; Mag­gie Ross; Daryl Smith; and Vic­ki Vogel (n.d.). Renew­able Assess­ments Chap­ter in Encour­ag­ing Aca­d­e­m­ic Integri­ty Through a Pre­ven­ta­tive Frame­work | Book
  • Hen­dricks, C. (2015). Non-Dis­pos­able Assign­ments in Intro to Phi­los­o­phy | Blog Post
  • Hen­dricks, C.  (Octo­ber 29, 2015). Renew­able assignem­nts: Stu­dent work adding val­ue to the world | UBC Blog Post
  • Levine, A. (Feb­ru­ary 21, 2017). The Chal­lenge of Non-Dis­pos­able Assign­ments | Blog Post
  • eCam­pus Ontario (Jan­u­ary 16, 2018). An Era of Dis­pos­able Assign­ments? | News Post
  • Seraphin, S. B., et al. (2019). A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Non-Dis­pos­able Assigsn­ments: Inspir­ing Imple­men­ta­tion, Inno­va­tion, and Research | Pub­lished Jour­nal Arti­cle 
  • Katz, S. and Van Allen, J. (2020). Evolv­ing Into the Open: A Frame­work for Col­lab­o­ra­tive Design of Renew­able Assign­ments | Pub­lished Jour­nal Arti­cle

Exam­ples of Non-Dis­pos­able Assign­ments

  • NOBA Project — 2016–17 Stu­dent Video Award Win­ners — Stu­dents cre­at­ing resources as assign­ments | Web­site
  • Jhangiani, R. and DeRosa, R. (2018). Open Ped­a­gogy Note­book: Shar­ing Prac­tices, Build­ing Com­mu­ni­ty | Assign­ment Exam­ples  | Web­site
  • Open Edu­ca­tion Group (2017–2018) Renew­able Assign­ments | Web­site
  • Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tral Flori­da | Fos­ter Mean­ing­ful Learn­ing with Renew­able Assign­ments | Web­site
  • Hen­dricks — Open Ped­a­gogy Exam­ples of Class Activ­i­ties | Web­site
  • Project Man­age­ment for Instruc­tor Design­ers | Open Book (Press­books plat­form) by stu­dents and fac­ul­ty at Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty which now includes mul­ti­ple video case stud­ies; com­plete­ly rewrit­ten exam­ples in-text; align­ment with the Project Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exam; an expand­ed glos­sary; and down­load­able HTML, PDF, ePub, MOBI, and MP3 ver­sions of the book (among oth­er improve­ments). The book is also used as the offi­cial course text at least one oth­er uni­ver­si­ty.
  • Open Ped­a­gogy Exam­ples | Bcam­pus Google Doc List
  • Chem Wiki which lat­er became a Libre­Text is one of the largests non-dis­pos­able assign­ments through a col­lab­o­ra­tion of stu­dents and fac­ul­ty doing a non-dis­pos­able assign­ment | Chem­istry Libre­Text
  • From Con­sumer to cre­ator: Stu­dents as pro­duc­ters of con­tent | Simon Bates’ Class Cre­at­ing learn­ing objects | Assign­ment Steps | Web­site
  • Beasley-Mur­ray, Jon. (n.d.) Wikipro­ject: Mur­der, Mad­ness, and May­hem. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Murder_Madness_and_Mayhem

20 Tips for Creating Multiple-Choice Questions

This page lists the essen­tial tips for writ­ing effec­tive mul­ti­ple-choice ques­tions.

  1. Each ques­tion should only be designed to assess one sin­gle objective/purpose. Do not aim to assess more than one con­cept or con­tent item per ques­tion.
  2. Each ques­tion should include one and only one cor­rect or clear­ly best answer. One alter­na­tive is the cor­rect answer.
  3. Put each choice on a dif­fer­ent line with a let­ter choice. Don’t put all on one line.
  4. Place the stu­dent tasks in the item stem (stem is the question/problem). The item stem should clear­ly state the ques­tion to be answered e.g., select the best response, select the most accu­rate response, select the most appro­pri­ate answer etc. Stu­dents need to know their actions with­out hav­ing to read the response options.
  5. Put repeat­ed terms in the item stem. (e.g., arti­cles, words that start each answer)
  6. The stem may be in the form of either a ques­tion (best) or an incom­plete state­ment (okay) – but should be word­ed pos­i­tive­ly if pos­si­ble. For exam­ple: The cap­i­tal of British Colum­bia is and then a list­ing of 4 choices…should be bet­ter words at “Which of the fol­low­ing cities is the cap­i­tal of British Colum­bia?” and then the list­ing of choic­es.
  7. Con­struct four sug­gest­ed solu­tions (alter­na­tives). Research indi­cates 4 is a good num­ber. Ensure each alter­na­tive is word­ed clear­ly and con­cise­ly. Irrel­e­vant mate­r­i­al should be avoid­ed.
  8. Three alter­na­tives are incor­rect or infe­ri­or alter­na­tives (dis­trac­tors). The pur­pose of the dis­trac­tors is to appear as plau­si­ble solu­tions for those stu­dents who have not achieved the objec­tive being mea­sured by the test item. Do not use absurd or unbe­liev­able dis­trac­tors because that just gives away the answer or makes it far eas­i­er to guess from few­er plau­si­ble choic­es. Try to make all the dis­trac­tors as homoge­nous as pos­si­ble so only the stu­dent who has ful­ly under­stood the ques­tion can eas­i­ly select the cor­rect answer.
  9. Make sure all respons­es are rel­a­tive­ly equal in length. Avoid mak­ing the cor­rect response either the longest or the short­est in length. Often the cor­rect respons­es are the longest.
  10. Put options in a log­i­cal order, if pos­si­ble. (e.g., alpha­bet­i­cal, chrono­log­i­cal so no bias and so stu­dents don’t try to guess because or the order they are list­ed)
  11. Make sure all the gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and spelling are cor­rect. Use sim­ple, pre­cise, and unam­bigu­ous word­ing. Stu­dents will be more like­ly to select the cor­rect answer by find­ing the gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect option.
  12. Avoid gram­mat­i­cal clues to the answer. (e.g., an, a – which indi­cate a vow­el/non-vow­el word).Ensure items are not inter­de­pen­dent mean­ing the infor­ma­tion in one ques­tion should not sup­ply the answer to anoth­er or the next ques­tion.
  13. Do not include unneed­ed words. Keep sim­ple.
  14. If “no” or “not” is used, bold the word. Try to avoid using neg­a­tive con­struc­tions in the stem. Stu­dents may not be able to find an incor­rect answer with­out know­ing the cor­rect answer.
  15. Try to avoid use of “all of the above” – use reduces effec­tive­ness of ques­tion and test score reli­a­bil­i­ty. Stu­dents mere­ly need to rec­og­nize two cor­rect options to get the answer cor­rect.
  16. Try to avoid the use of “none of the above” as you’ll nev­er know if stu­dents know the cor­rect answer.
  17. Avoid using (a) no-excep­tion words such as nev­er, all, none and always (they sig­nal an incor­rect response) and (b) qual­i­fy­ing words such as often, sel­dom, some­times (sig­nal cor­rect respons­es).
  18. Place the cor­rect answer in each pos­si­ble posi­tion equal­ly often or align with an answer key.
  19. Use cap­i­tal let­ters (A. B. C. D.) rather than low­er case let­ters (e.g., “a” gets con­fused with “d” and “c” with “a” if the pho­to­copy­ing isn’t clear)
  20. Empha­size high­er lev­el think­ing where you can by ask­ing stu­dents to ana­lyze, com­pare, con­trast etc. High­er lev­el ques­tions do not nec­es­sar­i­ly take more time to devel­op. Stu­dents will appre­ci­ate ques­tions that make them think than just sim­ply recall on mem­o­ry.

More Help? Writ­ing Good Mul­ti­ple Choice Ques­tions by Cyn­thia J. Brame

Two-Stage Assessment

Promoting Collaboration and Feedback for Students

Two-stage assess­ments can pro­vide stu­dents with an engag­ing alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al assess­ment. The first stage of the assess­ment is com­plet­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly and in the sec­ond stage stu­dents com­plete the same assess­ment in groups of 3 or 4. This assess­ment method incor­po­rates col­lab­o­ra­tive group work in a test or exam set­ting. Dur­ing a test stu­dent moti­va­tion is high and instruc­tors can use this high incen­tive to pro­mote and enhance learn­ing and con­tent reten­tion.

Implementation

Stage 1: A stan­dard indi­vid­ual test writ­ten for a dura­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2/3 of the total time.

Stage 2: In the sec­ond stage, stu­dents will com­plete the same test in small groups for the remain­ing 1/3 of the time. The stu­dents have already worked on each ques­tion dur­ing stage 1 so com­plet­ing the same exam in stage 2 takes less time and allows the group to focus on dis­cus­sions and find­ing a con­sen­sus for the best solu­tions.

Best Practices for Implementation

At the start of the course and through­out the semes­ter describe the struc­ture for two-stage assess­ments. Inform stu­dents about the ben­e­fits and ref­er­ence evi­dence from pre­vi­ous class­es and research.

Empha­size the impor­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion by cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties dur­ing each class for stu­dents to work with var­i­ous small groups (group prob­lem solv­ing, think-pair-share, sage and scribe, team-based learn­ing and oth­er small group dis­cus­sions and activ­i­ties). Ensure stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with a vari­ety of oth­er stu­dents.

A com­mon split is approx­i­mate­ly 85% for indi­vid­ual (stage 1) and 15% for group (stage 2). This main­tains the impor­tance of indi­vid­ual prepa­ra­tion while pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to improve upon their grade from the group por­tion.

This allows for a large enough group to obtain mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives and ideas while remain­ing small enough for each stu­dent to be able to con­tribute and find a group con­sen­sus. Groups can be ran­dom­ly assigned using an online team gen­er­a­tor.

Stu­dents write all their names and must work togeth­er to agree on solu­tions to hand in one test. If more than one test is hand­ed out, stu­dents tend to work alone more and with­draw from the dis­cus­sion.

A pol­i­cy where test mark will be the high­er of either 85% x (indi­vid­ual grade) + 15% x (group grade) or 100% x (indi­vid­ual grade). In prac­tice, the group grade will be high­er than the indi­vid­ual grade for most stu­dents and there­fore pro­vides a boost for the over­all test grade.

A vari­ety of ques­tion types can be incor­po­rat­ed into the exam, how­ev­er, longer essay type ques­tions should be avoid­ed as these can be dif­fi­cult to com­plete as a group. Try to cre­ate ques­tions that will ben­e­fit from group dis­cus­sion.

The stage 2 por­tion can be the exact same test as stage 1 or it could be a sub­set of the ques­tions from stage 1 (such as the most challenging/conceptual ques­tions).

References

Classroom Assessment Techniques

The fol­low­ing are some exam­ples of for­ma­tive assess­ment tech­niques that take a short peri­od of time to do but add a lot of val­ue to the learn­ing expe­ri­ence for stu­dents. Some­times called CATs, these were orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by Ange­lo and Cross in 1993 via their book by the same name.

Method
Description
How To Use
Tick­et-Out-The-Door   Dur­ing last few min­utes of class, stu­dents write response to a ques­tion or two about class con­cepts. Hand in as exit class. Review/read all before next class and use to clar­i­fy, cor­rect or elab­o­rate more for stu­dents.
One Minute Paper                                        Dur­ing the last few minute of class, stu­dents write response to “Most impor­tant thing I learned today” and “What I under­stood the least today”. Review/read all before next class and use to clar­i­fy, cor­rect or elab­o­rate more for stu­dents.
Mud­di­est Point Sim­i­lar to One-Minute Paper – but only ask stu­dents to describe what they didn’t under­stand dur­ing class and what they think might help them. Same as One-Minute Paper but if many stu­dents have same prob­lem, reteach con­cept anoth­er way.
Stu­dent-Gen­er­at­ed Test Ques­tions Divide the class into groups and assign each group a top­ic on which they are to each write a ques­tion and answer for next test. Use as many of the ques­tions as pos­si­ble on next test.
Mem­o­ry Matrix   Stu­dents fill in cells of a two-dimen­sion­al dia­gram with instruc­tor-pro­vid­ed labels such as a com­par­i­son chart out­lin­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in two columns against a vari­ety of con­cepts in the dis­ci­pline. Tal­ly the num­ber of cor­rect and incor­rect respons­es. Look for pat­terns amongst the incor­rect respons­es. Address in class.
K‑W-L Chart                           Label three charts K (What I KNOW Already), W (What I WANT to Know) and L (What I have LEARNED). Com­plete the first two before a unit/topic and the last one at end. Dis­cuss with stu­dents per­cep­tions of what they thought they knew, what they have come to know etc.
Direct­ed Para­phras­ing   Ask stu­dents to write a layperson’s “trans­la­tion” of some­thing they have just learned (geared for a non-expert audi­ence) to assess their abil­i­ty to comprehend/transfer con­cepts. Cat­e­go­rize stu­dent respons­es accord­ing to char­ac­ter­is­tics you feel are impor­tant. Address in class.
One Sen­tence Sum­ma­ry Stu­dents sum­ma­rize knowl­edge of a top­ic by con­struct­ing a sin­gle sen­tence to cov­er the core con­cept. The pur­pose is to require stu­dents to select only the defin­ing fea­tures of an idea. Eval­u­ate the qual­i­ty of each sum­ma­ry in brief fash­ion. Note if stu­dents have iden­ti­fied the core con­cepts of the class top­ic. Share with stu­dents.
Pri­or Knowl­edge Sur­vey                             Short sur­vey you give stu­dents at begin­ning of course or any new unit/topic on con­cepts to be stud­ied. Review imme­di­ate­ly and make adjust­ments to class­es based on what class knows/doesn’t know.
Think-Pair-Share   Give the class a ques­tion. Allow every­one to think on own for a few min­utes jot­ting down some thoughts. Then ask stu­dents to pair up with a peer and dis­cuss thoughts for anoth­er few min­utes. Can do groups of 4 as well. Ask to share with whole class. Use when you want to have a bet­ter dis­cus­sion by a greater num­ber of stu­dents. By think­ing alone first and with small groups of peers, shared respons­es should be rich­er and more var­ied.
Appli­ca­tion Cards After teach­ing a the­o­ry, prin­ci­ple or pro­ce­dure, ask stu­dents to write down at least one real-world appli­ca­tion for what they have just learned to deter­mine if they can see the trans­fer of their recent learn­ing. Quick­ly read through once and cat­e­go­rize them accord­ing to qual­i­ty. Pick out a broad range of exam­ples to share with the class the next day.
Week­ly Report Writ­ten by stu­dents each week in which they address three ques­tions: What did I learn this week? What ques­tions remain unclear? And What ques­tions would you ask your stu­dents if you were the instruc­tor to find out if they under­stood the mate­r­i­al? Read at end of each week, cat­e­go­rize respons­es and share with class. Fol­low up on unclear ques­tions with class or small group of stu­dents.
Con­cepTests Instruc­tor presents one or more ques­tions dur­ing class involv­ing key con­cepts, along with sev­er­al pos­si­ble answers (mul­ti­ple choice). Stu­dents indi­cate (by show of hands, or poll vot­ing) which answer they think is cor­rect. If most of the class has not iden­ti­fied cor­rect answer, stu­dents are giv­en a short time to per­suade their neighbor(s) that their answer is cor­rect. The ques­tion is asked a sec­ond time to gauge class mas­tery. Often lasts a few min­utes but uncov­ers mis­un­der­stand­ings, and great con­ver­sa­tion amongst stu­dents. Share answer after sec­ond vot­ing ses­sion to see how the class respons­es changed or didn’t change.
Instruc­tor Meet­ings Instruc­tor meets infor­mal­ly with stu­dents either in class or after class to answer ques­tions, inquire about con­cep­tu­al under­stand­ing or pro­vide feed­back on stu­dent learn­ing. Design spe­cif­ic ques­tions to help guide the meet­ing and address con­cepts and under­stand­ings you want to know more about.
Ques­tion-And-Answer / Class Dis­cus­sion Instruc­tor cre­ates a series of ques­tions to pose to the class or small­er groups for dis­cus­sion. Stu­dents may pre­pare through home­work or in class with respons­es. Pro­vide feed­back to stu­dents on how well they engaged in dis­cus­sion. Ensure all stu­dents had a chance to par­tic­i­pate and fol­low up next class with areas for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.