Examples of Assessment Approaches

Paper & Project Drafting

One method of evaluating the process of creation along with the product is by turning a paper or a project into a more formative assessment with a series of drafts or peer reviews. The idea is that instead of a final paper or project, the learners have a series of milestones they have to meet as they are creating their paper/projects. Practically speaking, this gives the learners more opportunities to get feedback to improve their work, along with accountability in delegating more time to the creation process. On the instructor side, it means the final products are likely to be of better quality requiring less time to grade. Some options for those milestones could be a working draft, peer review, and final version.

Oops Token

This is an approach that does two things: 1) it recognizes that time is not a universal concept, and 2) it recognizes that life happens. This is a no-questions-asked deadline extension for any assignment. You don’t need to know the learner’s business, just when they will have the assignment in. Each learner gets 1 or 2 of these at the beginning of the semester.

• The learner emails you the name of the assignment for which they need the extension and the date they will have it to you, and the instructor accepts it without questions.
• A zero-point assignment column in the grade book is a way to track token use.

Legacy Assessments

These are the assessments that reach beyond the walls (virtual or physical) of the classroom. They go beyond the individual creating work for only the instructor to read, to engaging with the community and connecting their learning to their environment. These kinds of assessments take the purpose of learning beyond the individual, toward the betterment of the community.

• Connect subject matter to needs, realities, challenges, or opportunities in the learner’s community or family.
• Promote community engagement through action research.
• Assign learners the task of identifying and processing real situations about which they are concerned or interested.

Learner Portfolios

A portfolio is a collection of artifacts (writing examples, illustrations, multimedia projects, etc.) that document learning over time. Components of the portfolio are often smaller assignments throughout the course, with the collection and explanation serving as the more cumulative assessment. But a portfolio shouldn’t just be a collection of things. To get the most benefit from the process, learners should be given the opportunity to revise pieces and reflect on the choices they made regarding what was included in the portfolio and why those items fit the purpose.

Much like a teaching portfolio, a portfolio assignment should have a defined purpose and audience. For example:

• A writing portfolio written for the instructor that gives examples of the learner’s writing and explains how their style, process, and skill have evolved throughout the course. This could look like an edited collection of writing examples.
• A professional portfolio designed to give potential employers evidence regarding the skillset a learner can demonstrate along with their philosophy of work. This could look like a website built around a personal branding approach.
• A multimedia portfolio that offers different types of digital products, each with their own constraints and messaging targets for recruiting clients. This could be a short video or a series of videos designed to close the sale.

Instructors will need to give the learners clear criteria for what components (or types of components) need to be included in the portfolio, what types of revisions are expected, and the criteria for evaluating the portfolios.

Peer Review

A peer review is when a learner evaluates another learner’s performance for the purpose of providing constructive criticism aimed at helping their fellow peer improve their work. This also gives learners the opportunity to learn from each other about structure, methodology, and making persuasive arguments.

For this part, instructors can:

• Give reviewers specific criteria or a detailed rubric to help guide peer feedback. Many learners have yet to be taught how to give constructive feedback to a peer, so use this as an opportunity to teach them how to approach this task.
• Setting up reviewers and reviews can be partially automated through Canvas’s Peer Review tool Links to an external site.. 
• For a metacognitive extension, have the learners review the feedback they received and write a quick reflection on what they will and will not change going forward.
• This can be a graded assignment or another complete/incomplete assignment.

Exams with a Twist

What if your learners wrote the exam? What if each of your learners turned in questions, distractors, and answers (with citations) about the topics you have been studying? Everyone turns in 5–10 (depending on the class size), and you do a quick accuracy check and compile those into quiz banks for a collection of questions. That becomes the randomized exam. You give extra time, extra attempts, and if learners work together on the exams, with such a deep question pool the consequences would be minimal. There would be two layers of learning, both in the question answering and the question research/writing. If you need, you could even assign people to specific topics to make sure all the content is covered. It would take a little more time and juggling, but it might end up being an interesting alternative.