Choosing from a variety of evaluation types
Assessing student learning in higher education serves multiple goals:
- if you want students to do a particular activity, then assessing it can motivate them to take it seriously.
- if you want feedback as to how well students have learned in your course, or if you want to give feedback to students on their learning, then assessment provides you with data.
- for students, other teachers and employers, validating that students have learned certain skills or attained certain standards is valuable.
Assessment can be a major source of stress and frustration for both teachers and students. Students may well feel that a grade received doesn’t really reflect the quality of their learning in a course (and may blame the assessment method for that). Teachers often argue that some students are focussed only on getting grades and not on learning. Like students, teachers can be frustrated because the types of assessment that seem feasible, allow them to test only a narrow range of skills (such as the skill of completing pencil-and-paper problems under exam conditions).
When designing assessments, it is useful to remember that you have a wide variety of options at your disposal:
Different types of exam questions include (among others):
- Problem sets in a written exam
- Oral exams
- Performance tests (which can, for example, be integrated into an oral exam)
- Extended response (essay-type) tests
- Short-answer tests
- Multiple choice tests
- Open book tests
Course work options include (among others):
- Individual or group projects
- Modelling
- Article reviews
- Assessment of lab or practical work
- Documenting real-world application of concepts discussed in a course
- Presentations
- Portfolios
- Collaborative development of a course wiki
Remember too that students have got where they are because they are very good at doing certain types of assessment. While alternative forms of assessment will allow you to test different types of skills, they may also give rise to anxiety among students who are nervous about moving too far from their comfort zone when the stakes are high. If you do chose a non-traditional form of assessment, it is important to make sure students understand what is involved and have a chance to practice or get feedback (such as in a mock test or in a preliminary report).