Assessment Checklist for Course Developers

• We examined prior course evaluations by students (for this or similar courses)
  • Note: Prior student evaluations for this or related courses/programs may be available through UWC² Program Managers or Instructional Designers.  Be sure to access/request these materials before starting to develop your course.

• We noted issues or problems they encountered in those courses and planned ways to address those in our course
  • Reference: How to think about and use information from student course evaluations (refer to “Four Horsemen of the Teaching Apocalypse”)

• We know our students and what they need
  • Our students have the requisite level of knowledge to deal with the content and expectations of our course.
    • Reference: Example of pre-course assessment sequence for a college biology course
  • Where needed, we created pre-course assessment tools to check in-coming students’ knowledge and understanding.
    • Reference: Guide to using pre-assessments in professional e-learning
  • Assessments in our course align with and prepare students for external standards (boards, certificates, etc.)
    • Reference: Example of preparation resources for ArcGIS technical exam

• Our course assessments align with program and lesson objectives
  • We know what counts as quality performance in our field, and we incorporate those standards in our course map and course assignments
    • Reference: An introduction to Learning Needs Assessment and related concepts
  • Our course map represents how course concepts and assessment items are connected and weighted
    • Note: A course map is a valuable way to check the alignment among course objectives, learning materials, and assignments.
    • Reference: Information about Course Maps
  • Our course asks students to deal with specific real-world tasks they will meet in their work
    • Reference: “Learning for the Future,” in Innovating Pedagogy 2016
  • Our assignments ask students to learn meaningful information
    • Reference: Three Strategies for Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences
  • Our assignments require students to use course concepts and information to solve novel kinds of problems
    • Reference: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (2000); Chapter: 3 Learning and Transfer

A. [NORM-REFERENCED APPROACH TO GRADING]

Course assumes that students will finish at varying levels of proficiency, so we will grade them “on the curve” (a few get “A”s, more get “B”s, most get “C”s, etc.)

• We know what skills our students need to be successful in their new roles, and our grading standards recognize distinctions among those skills.
  • Reference: A variation on the traditional “grading on a curve” model
• Our norm-referenced course presents students with assessment items at a range of difficulty levels that represent the range of possible student comprehension.  These levels match meaningful distinctions that students will encounter in the real world.
  • Reference: Rationale for and discussion of grading on a curve
  • Reference: Curve Grading – “How to” information

B. [CRITERION-REFERENCED APPROACH TO GRADING]

Course assumes that all students have achieved a common level of proficiency that accords with business/industry norms, so we will grade them with “pass” or “satisfactory” on completion of the course (provided that they reach our pre-defined level of proficiency).

• We know what skills our students need to be successful in their new roles, and our standard for granting a satisfactory grade recognizes which skills are essential.
  • Reference: Write Test Questions That Actually Measure Something.
  • Reference: Examples of authentic assessment items and approaches
• Our criterion-referenced course gives students multiple chances to attempt assessment items to ensure that they are proficient in the material.
  • Reference: Rationale for giving students multiple opportunities on assessment tasks

• We inform our students about what they should be able to do as a result of taking the course
  • Our course provides clear statements about what students should know or be able to do at the end of each lesson.
    • Reference: “Helping Students Recognize Quality Work, Fix What Isn’t Good”
  • When we ask students to demonstrate that they have learned complex ideas or procedures, we provide examples, guides or rubrics to show what elements we want them to demonstrate and how we’ll assess the assignment.
    • Reference: A rationale for using rubrics
  • When an assignment has multiple parts, or when one part is more important than others, we show how each part will be assessed and weighted.
    • Reference: Examples of how to weight assessments within a course
  • When we ask students to work in pairs/groups, we are clear about how each person’s contribution will be identified/weighted.
    • Reference: Examples of grading student work done in groups
  • We understand and are able to define/give examples of what we will accept as evidence of student learning, and (if we are using norm-referenced grading) how we will differentiate among levels of achievement.
    • Reference: Examples of various approaches to student grading, criteria, etc.

• We confirm that our students understand basic ideas as they move along
  • Note: Knowledge Checks are not the same as quiz or exam questions – they should be fairly easy for students to answer correctly if they have been following course material. Knowledge checks are a type of formative assessment, and are useful for students and instructors (in confirming that the concepts have been well presented).
    • Reference: Best practices for use of knowledge-check questions
  • Each major concept in our course is accompanied by at least one short (and relatively easy) knowledge check question to provide confirming feedback to students that they have understood the material.
    • Reference: “Keep your knowledge check questions simple”
  • When we present complex concepts, they are accompanied by multiple knowledge check questions to confirm that students understand component parts the material.

• We build students’ skills progressively
  • Our course gives students opportunities to apply what they’ve learned to new settings and/or to novel kinds of problems.
  • Where we want students to apply ideas and concepts to a specific kind of task, we model that as a part of the course.
  • Where we want students to apply course concepts to solve new kinds of problems, we give them prompts so they can understand what sort of application we expect.
    • Reference: Using prompts to encourage student reflection and analysis

• We use assessment to strengthen student understanding
  • We use a variety of assessment formats (multiple choice, short answer, papers and projects, etc.) and we match the format to the complexity of the learning we want to assess.
    • Reference: Best Practices for Designing and Grading Exams
  • When we use True-False questions, we avoid question formats that give away the answer (length of statements, categorical statements, use of negative statements, etc.)
    • Reference: Guidelines for constructing true-false questions
  • When we use multiple choice questions, we focus on supplying distractors (alternatives to the correct answer) that test common student misconceptions; we don’t use “throw away” distractors that are obviously incorrect.
    • Reference: Guidelines for constructing good multiple choice questions
    •  Reference: Rules for Great Multiple Choice Questions
  • When we expect students to do complex tasks like evaluating evidence or solving problems, we use formats like projects and papers that allow them to demonstrate those skills (and we avoid using multiple choice or true-false questions)
    • Reference: Quality Metrics and Rubrics for evaluating project-based learning
  • When we ask students to work on projects as part of a group, we provide a clear rubric to assure that all students participate and that all students’ work is represented in the final product.
    • Reference: How to assess student work done collaboratively by a group
  • When we use case methods of teaching, we know how to prepare a good case, how to teach it, and how to assess students’ participation in resulting discussion and analysis of issues raised in the case.
    • Reference: Resources on Teaching a Case

• We are clear about how we expect students to satisfy course requirements
  • We announce clearly how we will assess students’ work and what factors will be included (including all assignments, projects, meeting deadlines, English grammar and usage, etc.)
  • We give practice questions, examples of good answers/solutions, models of past successful projects, etc.

• We do our best to reduce subjectivity
  • We reduce variation in how student work is assessed by using a rubric to make sure we are considering comparable aspects of each student’s work.
  • If students wish to contest a grade or evaluation, we have given clear instructions for how they can do so

• We encourage students to link their learning to what they’ve learned in prior courses, and we build a foundation for what they’ll learn in following courses
  • We provide reviews of the content of prior course(s) as needed.
  • We provide a summary at the end of our course.
  • We give an overview of following course(s), and suggest how students can prepare.

• We align our course content and assessment approaches with external standards
  • We have checked sources of external (board, certificate, etc.) exams and provided links to their practice questions, sample exams, etc., for our students.
  • We help students prepare for external (board, certificate, etc.) exams by matching as closely as possible our assessment items and performance expectations with those used in the external exam.

• We weight our assessments to match what we cover in our course
  • Our course content matches our Course Map/Table of Specifications.
  • The number and weight of assessment items matches what we intended at the start of this course development process.