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Good to Know! Helpful Resources for Designing Assessments of Student Learning

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The Teaching Professor recently sent a call for contributions for upcoming articles. This call focused on the humble quiz. The purpose of quizzes, advice on using this assessment technique, giving online quizzes, and designing quizzes that deal with learning issues. In addition to the collection of best practices used by guest contributors the editor also featured several 20-Minute Mentor videos including a video from Dr. Christy Price who was on campus in 2018 presenting the keynote at the Showcase on Teaching and Learning. Dr. Price’s video is titled, “How do I Create Ideal Assessments for Modern Learners?”

How can you find these resources? MSU has a subscription for Magna’s The Teaching Professor and the 20-Minute Mentor Commons: go to the Academic Community in Blackboard and under Magna Subscriptions you will find instructions for how to activate your account and access these resources.

A standard reference on classroom assessment techniques, or CATs is Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross (1993) Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. This book includes 50 CATs that are meant to provide immediate feedback of students’ understanding. These can be used as a formative assessment strategy and as a way of informing instructional changes. The CATs book is available in Meyer Library as well as the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. The K. Patricia Cross Academy Video Library contains examples of many of these techniques and is organized by teaching modality, type of activity, and teaching problem addressed.

Contact the fctl@missouristate.edu if you would like additional information on designing assessments of student learning.

Good to Know! Helping Students Learn with Exam Feedback

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A post-exam activity used in the face-to-face classroom is to return students’ tests and then lead a discussion on the most missed questions or demonstrate solving problems so students can improve their scores on the next exam. Does the Show Test Results and Feedback feature in Blackboard accomplish the same thing? A student’s test will be “returned” allowing them to see the feedback options you have chosen but doing this alone is not the same activity that was done in the face-to-face classroom. Some faculty are even concerned that showing students what questions they missed by displaying them on the computer screen will allow them to take a screenshot of that question.

Exam wrappers, post-exam reflections, and grade statistics available to you through Blackboard are useful tools in helping students perform better on future exams.

“All too often when students receive back a graded exam, they focus on a single feature — the score they earned. Although this focus on ‘the grade’ is understandable, it can lead students to miss out on several learning opportunities that such an assessment can provide” (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 251).

Grade statistics in Blackboard Grade Center will allow you to identify the most missed questions and where students are having problems understanding new knowledge. Based on these analytics it is easy to put together a learning review for students. This does not need to be a lengthy review, one way of doing this is sitting down at your computer and recording a 10 minute recap of the most missed questions and what course materials or other readings students need to back and review.

The online classroom provides communication tools that make it easy to meet with students. Allow students to schedule a quick Zoom call to talk about their grade and where they may be having problems. During this wrapper meeting you can have the student’s test attempt on your computer screen and discuss specific questions or problems. Ask the student to demonstrate how to work the problem to check their understanding, Collaborate Ultra provides an easy tool for doing this but it can be accomplished through Zoom as well. Lovett (2013) recommends that three types of questions are included in exam wrappers:

1) How did you prepare for this exam?
2) What test questions were the most challenging for you?
3) What can you do differently to prepare for the next test?

All of these are good reflection questions to ask during an intervention or wrapper meeting or they can be used as a post-exam survey as a metacognitive strategy to help students develop self-regulated learning skills.

Resources:

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works:
“Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Lovett, M. C. (2013). Make exams worth more than the grade. In Kaplan et al. (Eds.), Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning: Across the disciplines, across the academy (pp. 18–52). Stylus.