Assessment Development Exercise

The purpose of this exercise is to give you an opportunity to think about at least one way in which you will find out what your students are learning. This might be a test, a paper, a speech, class participation, or some other form of assessment. I'd like you to think about it somehow contributing to the students' final grades. In general, to complete this exercise you will need to turn in three sorts of things:

1. A statement of the learning objectives or goals to which your assessment is linked. By the time you attempt this exercise, we will have talked about objectives in class (preliminary lecture notes available). More informaton about writing objectives is available in the resources list below.
2. The actual task you propose to give to students. If you are developing a test, you will include the test itself here. If you are developing a writing assignment, you will include the assignment instructions here.
3. Your plan for responding to the students' efforts. For a multiple choice test, for example, you might tell the students how many items they answered correctly. What will you tell them about how other students did? About the items they answered incorrectly? For a writing assignment, what sorts of response do you plan? What will "count"? How much?

You can see that the particular form your response to this exercise will take depends a lot on what sort of assessment you are planning. If you are in doubt, contact me and we can talk about it.

Resources:

Behavioral Objectives

A brief lesson on goals and objectives (from Sweden!)
A slightly different approach emphasizing ABCD (audience, behavior, condtions and degree)

Quizzes and Exams

Davis, B.G. Tools for Teaching Chapters 28, (available online) 30, and 31.
McKeachie, W.J. Teaching Tips. Chapter 7

(More to come)