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This Professor Likes CATs (classroom assessment techniques)

Spock does mind meld on Nixon

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies I am going to write about measuring teaching effectiveness. There is a lot of buzz about metrics in higher education media, but not until the mind-meld app is released for iOS will teachers know what their students are thinking. One of the challenges of teaching a large-enrollment course is to regularly determine the level of students’ learning. In a recent article on crafting introductory courses, Russell McCutcheon names this “the double-edged sword of engagement and assessment.“ Teachers […]

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Be the Grader that You Wish to See in the World

Teaching Hub

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Final grades are due tomorrow! My colleague mentioned that eating cold cereal thrice daily was the norm over the weekend in order to minimize the time not spent writing comments on essays, verifying spreadsheet formulates, cross-checking assignments with rubrics, and all the other, sometimes mind-numbing tasks that arrive at the end of the term. And this is not to mention the host of final committee meetings that must take place to wrap up end-of-term business. Professors’ […]

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Can Multiple Choice Tests Promote Learning?

In “Multiple Choices,” a post on the blog Practicum: Critical Theory, Religion, and Pedagogy, Russell McCutcheon ponders how multiple choice tests facilitate learning in large introductory courses: But what about the multiple choice tests? Well, like that definition assignment . . . it’s more about how they study for it and how they come to learn, over the course of the semester, that the key is building relationship between the terms, about being able to link one seemingly discrete piece […]

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Giving Quizzes in Blackboard Learn

Student completing homework on a comptuer

by Alecia Chatham, Department of Modern Languages and Classics In my online courses, I often post short, weekly quizzes that are graded immediately by Blackboard. There are a few different quiz types that I use for certain things. Key concept quizzes sometimes take students a little more time to figure out on their own, though they may only have 10 multiple-choice questions. I make this type of quiz available for a week and give students unlimited attempts at retaking it […]

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A Crash Course in Assessment Vocabulary

Hand completing a multiple choice exam

Types of Assessment Formative assessments Formative assessments informally measure a student’s understanding of a concept or concepts and thus have very low stakes or are not graded at all. Formative assessments are used to gauge the effectiveness of teaching, “check in” with students to make sure they are learning the course material and to provide students with immediate, qualitative feedback. Formative assessments usually offer information about the learning environment instead of what is being learned. Examples of formative assessments include Brainstorming activities […]

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Turnitin for Teacher Self-Assessment

by Jessica Kidd, Department of English I’ve become a big fan of grading within Turnitin, so much so that I sometimes forget its additional purpose as a plagiarism prevention tool. The grading is convenient since I don’t have to lug around piles of papers and fast because rubrics can be built into the grading tool. These features are also useful from an assessment standpoint. Because I’ve been using Turnitin for a few semesters now, I have access to all these […]

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Think-Pair-Share with Clickers

robot in a puddle

by Patrick Frantom, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Collaborative learning is usually interpreted as ed-speak for working in small groups outside of class to accomplish a project of some significance. These types of exercises require that instructors assign groups, determine how to grade the group if members contribute unevenly, and commit significant time to a single project. However, collaborative learning exercises can be efficiently employed as in-class exercises, even in large lecture sections, with the help of clickers. Think-Pair-Share One […]

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