Assessment of Student Learning

Assessing students when they are remote from you can be challenging, whether it's because students can't easily clarify instructions, or you have concerns about academic integrity. 

Assessing work from remote students

When students are largely working on their own, physically separated from their instructor and their classmates, assignment and quiz instructions need to be crystal clear. Students can't ask the person sitting next to them if they understand what they're supposed to do on an assignment. Students can't ask their instructor about a quiz question during class. 

The clearer your instructions are, the greater the chances that your students will successfully complete your assignments and quizzes without bombarding you with email  messages asking for clarification in the process. 

Provide students with feedback they can use, and then use a "wrapper" to help students reflect on what worked and what didn't--and to give you insight into how the student is working on your assignments and preparing for your quizzes.

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Assignment checklist

  • TiLT your assignments
    • State the purpose of the assignment
    • Describe the task to be completed
    • Explain the criteria used for scoring
  • Ask a friend, family member, colleague, student, Ed Tech Faculty-in-Residence, or complete stranger to review your assignment instructions
  • Have a plan for providing feedback

TiLT your assignments

The Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) framework asks instructors to be clear about what the purpose of each assignment is, what task the students are to engage in, and the criteria that will be used to evaluate student work. 

Review your assignments

With any writing you do, you know what you are trying to convey, so it can be hard to read your own writing from the perspective of someone else. That's why the best writers have excellent editors standing over their shoulders reading--and commenting on--everything they write. While you may not have an excellent editor, you have the next best thing: people who are willing to critique your work.

Here are some questions your reviewers can address:

  • If you were a student
    • Do you know why you are being asked to do this assignment?
    • Do you know what you need to do first? Next? After that?
    • Do you know how this assignment will be scored? 
  • Did you see anything that didn't make sense to you? Or where I could be clearer?
  • What is the most confusing part of this assignment?

Provide substantive feedback

As soon as possible, provide specific feedback about what the student did well and about what the student can improve. Focus on how your feedback can help students do better on the next assignment. (Read more here. Links to an external site.) While good rubrics can help structure your feedback, written feedback needs to move beyond "Great job!" What about the job made it great? 

Academic honesty and assignments

Be explicit with students about the resources they may use when completing assignments.

It's important that all instructors be aware of "study" sites, like Coursehero Links to an external site. and Chegg Links to an external site.. Students with a paid subscription can post assignment questions to the site, and the site's hired "experts" will answer the question, often within a couple hours. The question and answer are then available for other paid subscribers to see. If you have reason to believe that one of your questions has been posted on such a site, search for your question, not the answer. Those without a paid subscription can view the entire question and the first few lines of the answer. If you wrote the question, you may request that these sites remove your question (and, by extension, the answer) as a copyright violation. 

See the advice on academic integrity and remote learning for more approaches, especially if you're using a lot of quizzes. 

Report academic dishonesty incidents to Highline's Office of Student Conduct by submitting this form Links to an external site..

Learn more about using Canvas assignments

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Learn more about using rubrics

Rubrics - Why use rubrics?

Rubrics - How do you build rubrics?

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