How do you know if your assessments are inclusive? How can you reconsider your assessments to make them more inclusive? Last week, we learned from K. Supriya, Ph.D. , Postdoctoral Researcher in the ASU School of Life Sciences , on ways we can assess our assessments for inclusiveness.  During the webinar we discussed the purpose of assessments in class, examined the various assessment practices we have experienced as students or teachers in various STEM courses with a critical lens, and then came up with an assessment plan for a course we will/might teach in the future.  Watch the discussion here . Purpose of Assessment Let's consider the differences between assessment and evaluation. The purpose of assessment is to increase quality, as seen in formative quizzes, building upon each other. The purpose of evaluation is to judge quality, which is seen more as summative or at the end of the unit or course.  Define Inclusive Assessment Two definitions that Dr. K. Supriya shared...

What  makes a good question? How do you write effective answer distractors? Is feedback really used on exams? What tools can be used  to engage students with questions and answers? These questions and more were addressed in this week's Teach Talk Webinar, presented by Katrina Fogelson and Sarah Prosory .  What Makes a Good Question? We need better questions to go beyond simply assessing a student's understanding. As instructors, we should be checking a student's ability to apply the material in a meaningful way.  Starting with Bloom's Hopefully you’ve learned about objectives by now, but in brief: learning objectives help answer the question, "what do I want students to be able to do upon completion of this lesson/topic/module?" Learning objectives are one of the foundational pieces to designing and developing a learning experience. Everything in the course should tie back to them, especially assessments. So, why do we need to think about objectives when we a...

As instructors, we’re all looking to help our students deepen their learning in ways that make the content “stick,” or in other words, make it memorable and meaningful. Cognitive and educational scientists have discovered that strategies such as reflection, retrieval practice (opportunities to recall content), making predictions/hypotheses, and other active learning strategies can have a significant impact on the depth and durability of student learning (Lang, 2016 and Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014) but there are practical barriers to implementing these strategies. For instance, how can you confirm which students completed the activities? How can you find time in-class or out-of-class to collect and grade these activities? How can you get students to do these activities ? Fortunately, ASU faculty already have a free and easy-to-use tool to promote these types of non-punitive learning activities that requires no grading time or class time by instructors, and as an added...

While it is important to test your students' knowledge in a course, it is even more important to do formative, or low stakes, assessments. Formative assessments assist you in gauging student comprehension and identifying those areas that need re-teaching. And they don't have to be complicated or time-consuming for you as the instructor, or for your students! This week's TeachTalk webinar was presented by Mark Fogelson and Katrina Fogelson , Instructional Designers from Arizona State University's College of Health Solutions. In addition to discussing best practices for incorporating formative assessments into courses, Mark and Katrina shared a helpful guide that rated the effort needed by the instructor and the potential reward for the students for each type of formative assessment. Specifically they provided ratings that considered: creation time, ease of delivery, turnaround time, level of engagement, and utility. Mark and Katrina also showcased a too...

Our webinar today was facilitated by Joshua Caulkins from the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. The agenda included: Defining metacognition;   Identifying components of the process for metacognition;   Exploring strategies that promote metacognition Josh showed participants the Cycle of Self-Directed Learning, and had them discuss how they learned to learn. He shared multiple activities from "Promoting student metacognition" by Kimberly Tanner, PhD, that would help students learn to think about their learning. He also showed examples of how to do an "exam wrapper", that could start with a Pre-survey asking students to assess their studying and preparation for the exam. Then afterwards, a Post-survey would ask them if they received the grade they expected, and ask how they might to change the way they study for the next exam. For more information, browse the resources below: Slide Deck   Recording link Key Articles: (...

In our latest Teach T@lk webinar, we focused on student-centered Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs). These popular and quick activities allow instructors to receive feedback about lesson effectiveness and student understanding. While CATs were developed by Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross (1993) with face-to-face teaching in mind, these easy-to-use and often non-graded techniques can be easily adapted to the online or hybrid setting. You might have heard about CATs, such as Minute-Paper, Muddiest Point, or Pro-Con Grids, but did you know these are just three of 50 CATs which instructors can use to gauge student understanding? Check out the following helpful resources to get started with CATs. Please do not hesitate to contact us for . Webinar Materials: recording (56 min.) webinar slides (PDF) ASU TeachOnline Blog: Gauging Student Understanding: CATs are puuuuur-fect Are my students really getting it? CATs will show you the way . Books: Angelo, T. A., & C...