Grading and Assessment

Assessment should enable students to demonstrate capacities relative to the learning objectives. Learning objectives are typically effects and competencies we seek to instill in our learners using the course content as the tool. The facts and figures matter greatly. Students cannot demonstrate higher-order thinking before they remember and understand the material to be manipulated. The effects and competencies may be broad and demonstrable in several different types of assessments. When thinking about types of assessments to include in your course, always start by clarifying your learning objectives.

What do I want students to know and be able to do when they leave this course/lesson? (Learning Objectives)
What kinds of tasks/ deliverables will reveal whether students have achieved the learning objectives? (Assessments)

Giving Effective Feedback

Feedback is integral in helping students understand their shortcomings and gauge their understanding and skill level. By being conscious about when and what feedback you offer, you can greatly enhance the learning experience. Watch this video to learn more about what constitutes effective feedback and how you can use it as a powerful teaching tool.

We should not assess what we do not teach. The verbs that lead your learning objectives will be measurable outcomes. Not everything we teach is measurable, but that which we hold the students accountable for should be. How we mark the assessments, the grading process is a challenging aspect of being an educator. Approaching student work with rigor, compassion, and consistency makes for impactful learning.

Online Assessment

The NYU Remote Instruction Support Website, Remote Assessment Methods, and Practices covers in detail technology tools that can help you assess student learning.

One thing to keep in mind when crafting online assessment and discussion prompts is to be as clear and specific as possible.

These tips from Writing Better Questions for Online Assessment can help you with writing better questions for your online assessment.

Writing Better Questions for Online Assessment

Phrase questions precisely and clearly
- Unless learners can understand the question, they cannot answer it.
Ask questions simply and directly
- Simple questions are easier to understand, to answer, and to score.
- Direct questions seem more objective and fair to learners.
Put background information before the question
- Do not supply new information in a question. For complex questions, supply background information in a lead-in to the question. Phrase the lead-in as simple declarative sentences.
Include instructions on how to answer
- If learners might not know how to indicate their answers, put instructions immediately after the question proper.
- Ask yourself whether 95% of your learners will figure out how to answer the question without any instructions. If not, add instructions.

You can also seek guidance from the Writing Center to craft impactful assignment prompts.

Source: Writing Better Questions for Online Assessment. fas-edtech-group@nyu.edu

How to Use Rubrics in Your Assessment

A rubric is an assessment tool that lays out specific components and performance expectations for an assignment. It clearly indicates achievement criteria across all the components of any kind of student work, from written to oral to visual, and can be used for marking assignments, class participation, or overall grades. Rubrics can ease anxiety about the grading process for both faculty and students as they help stay focused and consistent on expectations. Creating rubrics does require a substantial time investment upfront, but this process will result in reduced time spent grading or explaining assignment criteria down the road.

- Criteria: the aspects of performance (e.g., argument, evidence, clarity) that will be assessed
- Descriptors: the characteristics associated with each dimension (e.g., argument is demonstrable and original, evidence is diverse and compelling)
- Performance levels: a rating scale that identifies students’ level of mastery within each criterion
1. Make it distinct - Develop a rubric for each assignment. While this requires some time investment at the beginning it will pay off in the long run as grading and giving feedback will be more streamlined. Consider doing a rubric-development exercise with students during which you identify relevant assignment components and decide together on criteria for grading. This exercise not only enhances students' learning experience, it helps them feel more ownership in the class.
2. Be transparent - Rubrics can be great tools for students to reflect on their own learning process but in order to tap into this possibility they need to understand the purpose of the rubric as well as the significance of its components. Attach the rubric in advance with each related assignment prompt and discuss it with students. You can even consider asking students to use the rubric for self-assessment.
3. Reflect and revise - Evaluating rubric results can help you to refine teaching methods. To document trends in your teaching, keep copies of rubrics that you return to students and review them later on. Analyzing groups of graded rubrics over time can give you a sense of what might be weak in your teaching and what you need to focus on in the future.
- Association of American Colleges and Universities VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) Rubrics include rubrics on written and oral communication, critical and creative thinking
- Rubric for assessing concept maps developed by the Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo
- Rubric for assessing oral exam, group presentations and other discipline-specific examples developed by the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University
- Rubrics for assessing online and blended courses developed by Quality Matters
- iRubric Tool is an online rubric design system to create, adapt, and share rubrics
- Barney, Sebastian, et al. “Improving Students with Rubric-Based Self-Assessment and Oral Feedback.” IEEE Transaction on Education 55, no. 3 (August 2012): 319-25.
  Broad, Brian. What we Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Writing Assessment. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003.
- Huba, M. E., & Freed, J.E. (2000). Using rubrics to provide feedback to students. In Learner-centered assessment on college campuses (pp. 151-200). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
- Leist, Cathy, et al. “The Effects of Using a Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric to Assess Undergraduate Students’ Reading Skills.” Journal of College Reading and Learning 43, no. 1 (Fall 2012): 31-58.
- Lewis, R., Berghoff, P., & Pheeney, P. (1999). Focusing students: Three approaches for learning through evaluation. Innovative Higher Education, 23(3), 181-196.
- Stevens, D. & Levi, A. (2013). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback, and promote student learning (2nd ed.). Virginia: Sylus.

Preparing Prompts and Clear Instructions for Assessment

When crafting assessment descriptions, and discussion prompts you want to be as clear as possible.

What you want the assignment to require the students to do
Consider what kinds of thinking you want students to do
Do you want your students to define, illustrate, compare, analyze, or evaluate
Outline your research requirements
Provide context - the more precise their responses will be
Be clear about the paper/written work requirements: length, flexibility, citation format etc.
Try to write the assignment yourself

Source: Dartmouth College, Writing Center

Quizzes: Good or Bad?

There is not a simple answer to whether quizzes are good or bad. However, quizzing has proven to hold many benefits, and using innovative quiz design can help overcome quiz-related concerns.

Benefits of Quizzing

Cognitive psychology research documents the positive effects of repeated testing on improved academic performance as well as both short-term and long-term retention (Brame & Biel, 2015; Smith & Karpicke 2014). This testing effect is further enhanced by feedback on low-confident correct answers and incorrect answers and can solidify students' understanding of concepts (Butler & Roediger, 2008; Butler et al., 2008). The main advantage of regular quizzes is that they provide ongoing opportunities for retrieval practice.

Concerns and How to Tackle Them

There are concerns regarding repeated testing, including increased test anxiety, reliance on low-level thinking where the right answer is memorized, and the punitive aspect of quizzing. These, however, can be addressed by innovative quiz design. Some ideas include:

Alternative Assessments

Assessment is an important part of teaching and learning where we determine whether students have succeeded in reaching the course’s learning objectives. This video will explore some alternative assessments that you can use in your classroom.

Ungraded quizzes: Ungraded quizzes can reduce test anxiety and lead to higher final test scores than graded quizzes and no quizzes (Khanna, 2015).
Collaborative quizzes: Collaborative testing can reduce test anxiety, increase confidence, and deepen the engagement with course content by generating discussion among students. Similarly, there is evidence that coupled with open-note quizzing, it can increase the final exam scores (Rezaei, 2015).
This article by Dr. Maryellen Weimer describes an innovative collaborative quiz design used in an introductory pharmaceutical science course.
Online pretesting quizzes: Online quizzes completed before the class can help professors identify common points of misunderstanding and frequent incorrect answers. The class time can then be used to address these topics. There are results suggesting that pretesting students’ knowledge may prime them for learning (Little & Bjork, 2011). This could also address the concern of using too much of class time for administering quizzes.

More ideas can be found in this special report: Designing Better Quizzes: Ideas for Rethinking Your Quiz Practices by Faculty Focus.

Additional Resources on Writing Effective Assignments

Debbie Ellis Writing Center. Effective Writing Assignments. Southwestern University.

This webpage presents six different components of an effective prompt, offers seven easy fixes, features an annotated before-and-after example and includes a useful section on language suggestions. The component-wise breakdown allows for a systematic approach to writing assignment prompts and can be a great place to begin.
The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. How to Write an Effective Assignment. Harvard University.

This webpage presents an insightful and interesting analogy between a writing prompt and a magnifying glass, followed by some general characteristics of an effective assignment prompt. This is an amazing resource for a broad view of what a good prompt should achieve. Detailed information about specific assignment types can be accessed by following the hyperlinks at the bottom of the page.
Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. Designing Assignments. Yale University.

This resource presents great information on aligning your assignment with the objectives and overall arc of your course. The examples presented can be useful references.
Boye, A. How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments? Teaching, Learning and Professional Development Center at Texas Tech University.

This webpage provides useful tips on organizing your thoughts before setting an assignment. In addition, it explains what information students need to know from the prompt and includes a list of do’s and don'ts. This is an especially useful resource if one is just beginning to plan a new assignment. Moreover, the do’s and don’ts can be a helpful way to improve prompts by focusing on specific details.
Writing Across Curriculum. Designing Effective Writing Assignments. University of Minnesota.

This resource provides a valuable list of the key features that make an assignment effective with an informative section on setting ‘forward-thinking’ activities. In addition, eight suggestions for designing a writing assignment have been presented that can help guide the prompt writing process.

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