Creating Effective Assessments
In my opinion, effective assessments are pillars in what we do to assess comprehension and understanding. Not only it can help “check” students’ progression but also can reflect on how the information was presented.
I do practical assessments daily and find that in very short order I can hone a students skill into what it needs to be.
I always struggle with testing. My “solution” has been to use more than one method in order to give the students more than one opportunity to prove their abilities and also determine if I have accomplished my goals. Typically I break my testing up into weekly quizzes, graded forums, and a final project/presentation. Additionally on certain exams I may give them 15 short answer questions and allow them to choose 5 to answer. This strategy has worked well.
HI Mark - Welcome to ED 103! I completly agree - a pattern of assessment failure totally warrants a review of the delivery and perhaps also the course itself. Thanks for your post and best wishes for continued success in your teaching career! Susan
I agree. Tests don't only test the student's comprehension and knowledge of a subject, it also tests our delivery of the information. If a large number of students miss the same concept, question, our teaching method should be reassessed.
HI Toufik - Welcome to ED 103! You bring up a good point; if we correlate our assessment results with our delivery techniques we may indeed see a correlation between delivery/learning styles/student success. Best wishes - Susan
