eCoaching Tip 28 Designing Assessments that Matter to the Learners

November 18 2006 (Revised July 9, 2012: checked Nov 5 2019)

Tip 28: Designing Assessments that Matter to the Learners

Assessing our learners. This is a task critical to all teaching and learning experiences, but all too often it is a task that we avoid tackling. Too often we equate assessing tasks as judging and tough decision-making with potentially unpleasant consequences if students don’t agree. Assessing can often mean reading lengthy papers, ranging from dreadful to inspiring, or reading hundreds of forum postings.

Is there a better way? We like to think there is. This tip provides two strategies for rethinking how assess learners. One strategy distributes the assessment more continuously throughout the course and involves the learners in the process; the second strategy switches gears from a predictable research paper to assessing via a course project that is more relevant to the learner, and more interesting to you and the other learners as well.

A Three (3) Step Process to Guide the Assessment Plan

It is good to rethink your assessment plan on a regular basis. Learners change, technologies changes and teaching strategies change. Here is a three-step process for rethinking your assessment plan from McTighe & Wiggins (1999) authors of a popular book called The Understanding by Design Handbook. Using this process you can generate a new or revise your current assessment plan. A sample of an assessment is included.

First, return to your course goals and prioritize the results that you want for your learners. These results will probably include “enduring understandings” or core concepts, knowing the framework and vocabulary of a discipline domain and developing knowledge of and use of the “exemplars of a discipline.” The exemplars of a discipline might include the most used or cited representative articles, cases or theories. Your desired results should include the development of some skills in using these understandings as well.
The second step is to determine the “acceptable evidence” by which the learners will demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and integration of each of the top goals and results.
The third step is to design the sequence of course learning experiences to ensure learner accomplishment of these understandings and the processes for demonstrating their learning.

This process can help ensure an assessment plan that supports an integrated course design that links goals with experiences with assessments.

An Assessment Plan that is Distributed and Continuous

Learners find it helpful to see the assessment plan for a course in a table or graphic. A graphic or table provides a birds-eye view of the course experiences and assignment that provide evidence of their learning. Assessment plans generally have at least four (4) types of experiences that count toward evaluation. The generic assessment plan below lists a number of common types of experience.

	Assessment Plan

	Assessment Plan Elements	% of Grade
1	Automated quizzes and tests	10 to 20
2	Discussion forums participation and contribution	10 to 20
3	Discussion wrap/summary/other leadership work	5 to 15
4	Blog, journal or wiki entries	5 to 15
5	Short concept papers, small team review	15 to 20
6	Project Phase 1 (Plan/proposal/concept)	5 to 10
7	Project Phase 2 (Resources, sections)	15 to 20
8	Project Phase 3 (Paper, media, presentation for sharing)	20 to 30
9	Project Phase 4 (Final submission)	20 to 30

The value of using a variety of experiences means that assessing is done over time and in some cases by automated robots- as in automated quizzes and tests and in some cases, in collaboration with peers. Take note of the assessment dealing with a course project. A course project is best designed with a minimum of three milestones. The first is a proposal which can be vetted by a small group and reviewed and approved by the instructor. A second milestone captures some progress point in the project, and a third milestone is a presentation, sharing or session with other learners. In the example above, the last milestone is the submission of the final evidence. You will probably develop an assessment plan with only a subset of the items listed in the table.

A Variation on Research Papers: A Discipline Task Model Project

The second strategy for making assessing learning more relevant is to rethink how we approach a course project. It is often easier just to do what we have always done, such as assign a research paper. You may want to consider a variation on a research paper called a discipline task model approach. A task model engages learners in developing approaches for difficult problems. In other words, rather than searching out and declaiming on a topic, a discipline task model project requires learners to act as a discipline practitioner might act, and develop ideas and strategies for difficult problems.

What is a discipline task model approach? A discipline task model approach describes the required features and characteristics of a project, a learner’s creative response, but leaves the processes, tools and strategies open.

This was the strategy used in an NSF-funded project called “The Global Challenge” (Gibson, 2006). In this project, originally designed for high-schoolers, students are given the raw materials for the project, but working in a team of three — two high-schoolers and an advisor — collaborate with international counterparts from October to May to address global climate change.

This type of project design opens up the assessment project to support wide-ranging discovery, teamwork, and analysis. It can be a project in which learners are not assigned to solve a problem for which we have known answers and ready responses; but rather a project that is of social, economic and global significance for which we need innovative, creative thinking.

How is that different from many other course projects? I suspect that this difference cycles us back closer to the model of apprenticeship. With these types of course projects, faculty are responding, learning and guiding learners in their particular areas of interest within a particular discipline domain. This means that faculty are stretching as well. By the time the learners reach the point at which they are sharing and submitting their projects, the assessment is almost complete as well.

So, in summary, three key features recommend themselves to our assessment practices: First, think in terms of a discipline task model, a way of discipline thinking; secondly, encourage learners to focus on problems that need innovative ideas and solutions, and thirdly, enable work on projects that students like and want to do, rather than projects that are important to faculty.

Notes and References

Global Education Collaborative. (2019). Global Education Conference Center Network Retrieved from https://www.globaleducationconference.org. In the Global Challenge, teams of US high school students collaborate with international counterparts from October to May to address global challenges. Students strengthen skills in math, science, engineering, and critical thinking, while learning about global business practices.

Gibson, D. (2012). David Gibson’s Page at Global Education Conference Retrieved from http://www.globaleducationconference.com/profile/davidgibson

Gibson, D., & Swan, K. (2006). How to know what your students know! 12th Annual ALN International Conference on Asynchronous Learning, Orlando, FL.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design (2 ed.). New York City, Pearson.

Swan, K., & Shih, L. (2005). On the nature and development of social presence in online course discussions. Online Learning Journal, 9(3), 115 – 136. Retrieved from http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/jaln_full_issue/volume-9-issue-3-october-2005/

Note: These eCoaching tips were initially developed for faculty in the School of Leadership & Professional Advancement at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. This library of tips has been organized, expanded and updated in the second edition of the book, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips (2016) coauthored with Rita Marie Conrad. Judith can be reached judith followed by designingforlearning.org.