A Midterm Assessment Plan or MAP is a way for instructors to gauge how students are reacting to a course and to discover possible inefficiencies or challenges in course design, access, or delivery that students may be encountering. It is administered at, or around, the midterm mark of a course and allows instructors time to […]

The post A Virtual Method for Delivering a Midterm Assessment Plan (MAP) for Instructors appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

Keeping students engaged in course content is a challenge for all faculty, whether a legacy online teaching pro or a newbie to this space. Perhaps you’re a faculty member who already teaches online and caught a spark of inspiration by the recent redux shift to online learning due to the pandemic. You’d like to re-create […]

The post Keeping Students Engaged: How to Rethink Your Assessments Amidst the Shift to Online Learning appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

As the clock seems to race through the final minutes of an exam, several students frantically scan questions and fill in bubbles to demonstrate their knowledge and content mastery of biology concepts. Elsewhere, a small group of students collaborate on a PowerPoint presentation, preparing to showcase their business management knowledge they’ve acquired. Still elsewhere, students […]

The post Assessments by Design: Rethinking Assessment for Learner Variability appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

Have you considered adding five-minute student interviews to your teaching tool kit? Before you calculate how long it would take to interview all of your students and dismiss this idea out-of-hand, consider how student interviews provide a unique setting and opportunity for you to teach students individually. Extensive research confirms the value of student-teacher interactions. […]

The post Using Interviews to Assess and Mentor Students appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

Multiple-choice questions are not the pariah of all test questions. They can make students think and measure their mastery of material. But they can also do little more than measure mastery of memorization. Memorizing is usually an easier option than thinking and truly understanding.

The post Students, Studying, and Multiple-Choice Questions appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

There are two main forms of assessment often used within the online classroom. Both formative and summative assessments evaluate student learning and assist instructors in guiding instructional planning and delivery. While the purpose of a summative assessment is to check for mastery following the instruction, formative assessment focuses on informing teachers in ways to improve student learning during lesson delivery (Gualden, 2010). Each type of assessment has a specific place and role within education, both traditional and online.

The post Using Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Proactive Approach for Online Learning appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

After going out for tacos, our students can review the restaurant on a website. They watch audiences reach a verdict on talent each season on American Idol. When they play video games—and they play them a lot—their screens are filled with status and reward metrics. And after (and sometimes while) taking our classes, they can go online to www.ratemyprofessors.com.

The post Frequent, Low-Stakes Grading: Assessment for Communication, Confidence appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

We give exams to assess mastery of material—are students learning the course content? With so much emphasis on scores and grades, it’s easy to forget that the process of preparing for, taking, and getting feedback about an exam can also be a learning experience. The learning that results from these processes can be tacit, or teachers can design activities associated with exam events that can result in better content learning and heightened student awareness of the learning skills associated with demonstrating knowledge. The good news is that these activities don’t have to be all that creative and innovative, as Thomas Smith discovered.

The post Making Exams More about Learning appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

From local and external standards to norm-referenced and value-added benchmarks, to name just a few, there is no shortage of educational assessment options to use. The question everyone wants answered, however, is ‘Which one is the best?’

The post Getting a Balanced Picture of Student Learning appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.

Students are very motivated by grades—we all know that. For that reason, it’s useful to consider alternative approaches that might affect not just the motivation to get the grade, but the motivation to learn and develop important skills. Here are highlights from two articles that propose these kinds of intriguing alternatives.

The post Alternative Grading Methods for the College Classroom appeared first on Teach Strats | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning.