Collecting feedback throughout the semester and gauging student engagement is important for facilitating better learning outcomes by the end of the semester. As the semester comes to a close, your students will have the option to take formal, end-of-term evaluations that are generated by the university. These final evaluations will reflect how well you created […]
Assessments And Grades
Alternative Assessments
In recent years, there has been ballooning interest in developing more authentic and effective ways to measure student learning. Advocates of these alternative assessments, sometimes referred to as “authentic” or “genuine” assessment, argue that their approach focuses more on student learning rather than teaching techniques. Some common types of alternative assessments include performance-based assessments (such as creating […]
What Makes a Good Assessment?
Assessments refer to a “wide variety of methods that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, and skill acquisition of students.” Simply put, assessments are how instructors and teachers evaluate whether or not students have learned the taught material. Assessments can range from pop quizzes to final exams to midterm […]
Writing the Right Rubric: Tips and Tricks
As an adjunct professor you may be confused about how to assess your students’ work. You want a process that ensures fairness, objectivity, and clarity and results in students’ learning from the assignment and your assessment. One tool that you may want to use to achieve these goals is a rubric. What are rubrics? Rubrics […]
Rubrics: A Tool to Assess Students’ Work
As an adjunct professor you may be confused about how to assess your students’ work. You want a process that ensures fairness, objectivity, and clarity and results in students’ learning from the assignment and your assessment. One tool that you may want to use to achieve these goals is a rubric. What are rubrics? Rubrics […]
Tips for Creating Effective Exams
One of the biggest tasks of an adjunct professor is creating effective examinations to administer in courses. Examinations should follow the rules of reliability, validity, and fairness (for more on these qualities of effective assessments, check out our blog post here). In the jargon of assessment experts, what we frequently refer to as “questions” are […]
