Tips marked with an * indicates that the tip is consistent with learnng-centered teaching

*Test Administration

1. Write explicit directions for a test. If possible distribute these in advance of the test administration, especially if there is anything different about the directions.

3. Remember it is easier to prevent cheating than to deal with the consequences later.

Preventing Cheating

Cheating seems to be a big problem on this campus (and everywhere). Here are a few tips to minimize cheating.

We need to check to see if this idea could work here - have 2 versions of the answer sheet - one that lists the numbers vertically and one that lists the answers horizontally. If anyone knows if we can get these 2 different formats and if our machines can read them, please pass it along to others.

Suggested Standard for Academic Integrity

Michele Mulhall passed this suggested standard on to me. She thinks that Bill Inverso drafted it. Although it is written for PT's, it can easily be applied to all majors and professions:

*Academic Integrity: Physical therapy students are expected to demonstrate behaviors that are compatible with those of their chosen career as well as those of any civilized community. To that end, the highest standards of academic integrity are expected. Therefore,

Assigned work is to be completed by the individual student or, when appropriate, by an identified/organized group of students.

Theft, cheating, assisting another student to cheat, and plagiarism are considered behaviors that are inconsistent with academic integrity.

Evidence of behaviors that are inconsistent with academic integrity will be considered appropriate ground for the Department of Physical Therapy to recommend formal disciplinary action to the Committee on Student Discipline that may include expulsion from the University.

Preventing Plagiarism

John Harwood, the Director of Computer Information Systems at Penn State provided these tips on preventing plagiarism. Ask your students to provide copies of their references, rough drafts, etc. You may use them to check for plagiarism, but more likely it may prevent a few cases from occurring. When the students hand in a big paper ask them to write in class a summary of their search strategies, or how they validated their ideas, or have them write a short summary of one citation, etc. Any of these type of assignments will be a quick check that they did the work. If you rotate these assignments and word gets out that you ask for this type of documentation in class, you may prevent future students from plagiarizing in your class.

Insuring the students did the work on out of class papers and projects

With term papers so available to purchase or content so easy to download from the web, it is more important to insure that our students actually did the work they are claiming they did. Here are a few suggestions to be sure the students did the work and actually learned something from the paper or project:

Explaining your grading system on the first day of class

Once you get your evaluations of your students, share the evaluations with a trusted colleague. Your colleague will help you see the balance among the comments, help you gain a different perspective and probably give you praise for the things you did well. Together formulate a plan for improvement.

Letting students know how they are doing in the class throughout the semester

As you plan your courses, make sure you schedule some assessments early enough in the semester and that you get the assessments graded and returned before mid-way through the semester. Students should not go through a course without having a clue as to how well they are doing. For example, without getting feedback on a written paper in a writing intensive course, students might think that they are getting an A in the course, but end up getting a C or lower because they also had no idea of how well they were meeting your expectations.

Helping students to realize that they earn their grades

Just prior to when you are about to go over your grading scheme for your courses, ask your students to note what grade they expect or hope to make in this course. Then tell them what you expect that they will do to earn an A,B,C. etc. This is especially important if you have different work or additional work to earn a higher grade. Some students think that doing all the assignments earns them an A. You might talk about the quality of assignments or writing expected and how if an A paper exceeds the quality of a B paper. If you allow students to redo an assignment but then can only earn a grade less than full credit on the second try, make sure you tell them that point.

Checking to see that your students did work they handed in for group projects, term papers, etc.

To insure that your students did their work that they handed in with their names on it for group projects or term papers, ask a question on the final exam that relates to their projects or papers. For example, you might ask them to relate what they learned from the project/paper to a theme or major topic of the course. You could ask them to site either the author or approximate title or sites of 2 resources they consulted to work on the paper. Why were these resources so helpful for the project or paper? This type of questions can be worth 5-10 points on the final, so it should not take to much time.

Showing concern for students might reduce the amount of cheating in your course

When you express concern or show you care about your students, the incidence of cheating in your classroom may go down. Cheating tends to occur more in impersonal classes where students think the professor does not care about them.

Getting students to self-assess on their preparation and performance on tests

Students often lack insight into their own preparation and performance on tests. They usually don't think about their own preparation or performance and blame the instructor before reflecting on their own efforts. To help students more accurately assess their preparation and performance, ask them to reflect with questions like these:

Student Assessment and Feedback

Planning Constructing Assessments

*Planning student evaluation that promote a variety of skills

If you want your students to develop a variety of skills, including the ability to reflect on their own learning and improve on previous performance, you might consider asking your students to prepare a course portfolio. They should include a variety of different samples of their work especially showing different skills developed during the course and not just content learned. For some of their work, they should include the original paper or report they wrote and a revised copy done recently. Part of the portfolio might be asking the students to take a look of the whole picture of the course, write how well did they meet the course objectives, and reflect on how this course will apply or be used later. If you plan on such a portfolio, the whole course needs to be planned with this in mind. It should also count a significant amount of their final grade.

Making up exams

Fit these 2 criteria together into a matrix-now you have an exam blueprint to start making the questions.

As you develop the questions, mark the weight of the item on the exam> Be very explicit in your directions. Think of all of the bad experiences you had in the past in taking an exam yourself, or as an instructor - deal with how you will handle it - e.g. what is cheating, lateness, extra time, unclear writing, etc. These may be distributed in advance to get the students more prepared.

Constructing multiple choice tests

*Showing Students that exam was connected to course material

If you give an essay or non-multiple choice exam that requires students to go beyond what they learned or went over in class, you might consider doing a post-mordem on the exam to show students how they need to apply what they were responsible for in all parts of the course or previous courses. You might ask students to identify where they learned something that was useful to answer a particular question. This might teach some students that they need to read the assigned materials more carefully or listen to class discussions.

Dennis Jacobs, our visiting scholar from the faculty enrichment workshop this past week suggested this tip.

*Returning student's work after the school year

Do you get frustrated when you have spent time correcting a final exam or paper only to find that many of your students never picked it up? This is a common occurrence. Some students check out of the class as soon as they finish the last requirement, others only want to see their grade. However, there are a good number of students who want to learn from this last paper or exam. These are the students that we need to be directing our feedback attention to. When students hand in their last paper or exam, ask them to indicate if they want feedback on this work. If they want to see how and why you graded it the way you did, ask them to indicate a email address or home address that you can send their work to. These papers can be separate from the exams if they are done without names. If you only have to give feedback to some of the students, provided you have them identify themselves on their work itself, it might save you some time in your correcting.

*Making your time to grade papers more efficient and helping the students learn more

Research shows that students read and attend to feedback when it is given on drafts of papers far more than on the final copy. This is especially true at the end of a semester. Therefore, if your students are handing in papers for which you have not seen earlier drafts, do not spend a lot of time writing out comments and feedback to them.

You could grade them globally, by determining criteria or a rubric for an A,B,C,D or F papers. Then read them quickly to see if your criteria make sense. Read them again, without a pen in hand and sort them into grade piles. Do a final random check of a few from each pile. Without writing comments, you will cut your time for grading. Then attach the same copy of your criteria to the papers as your feedback to them. If you can, hand out your criteria to the students in advance and ask them to self-assess.

Next semester ask the students to hand in parts of the paper, or steps-such as the problem or thesis statement, key resources consulted, etc. or drafts in advance. Your final papers will be a higher quality.

*Build in Self Assessments as you are planning your course

Plan wasy to foster students' self assessment throughout your courses. For example:

*Making Exams a Learning Experience

Use the old adage, "we learn from our mistakes" to help students to learn through exams. On essay or calculation types of exams, grade the exams, return them without going over the answers, and then allow the students a few days to redo their answers. The students should write their rationale for their new answer and the source if they looked something up. The students will be very motivated to get the correct answer now. You may assign up to 50% of the points missed for the students' work after the exam. Do not allow students to copy for each other, so for calculations you need more than just the final answer, but need to show the process used and the work.

*Helping your students to get over their anxiety over exams

You can reduce student anxiety on exams and increase their productive studying by giving the students your grading criteria in advance. If you use a grading checklist or a rubric, give these sheets to the students a few days or weeks in advance of the test. Spend a little time in class going over your criteria, what they mean and why they are important. If you are giving a multiple choice exam, you could tell them about your exam blueprint - or about how many questions will come from each topic, or how many are factual and how many are problem solving. This suggestion comes to us from Alan Wright from his presentation on assessing students in learner-centered environments.

Gaining useful feedback from your students at mid-semester

Tom Angelo, the author of the well read book on classroom assessment techniques makes the following recommendations for gathering mid-semester feedback. Try it alone with the students in charge of the process, pair with a colleague and do it for each other, or you may request that I help you do it.

One long-used, useful approach to getting meaningful, useful mid-course feedback is called Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID), or the "GIFT," for Group Informal Feedback on Teaching. Ask the students to do the following:

Directions: Please write brief, honest -- and legible -- answers to the questions below.
(Do not write your name on this paper.)

If you want more information about getting feedback, here are some further suggestions from Tom Angelo

Arrange to work with a faculty colleague or faculty development specialist whom you trust. When working with another faculty member, it's usually a good idea to agree to trade visits. Schedule a date and time to visit each other's classes to collect feedback. Set aside at least 15 minutes of class time for this exercise. Let your students know what is going to happen, when, and why. Stress the value of honest, constructive feedback for improvement.

Before you visit the class: Schedule two meetings with your partner. Plan to meet for at least 15-20 minutes soon before and 45-60 minutes soon after the date of your classroom visit to go over the procedure.

When you visit the class: Your partner should introduce you to his or her class, and then leave. Remind students of what you are doing and why -- that is, gathering information to help their professor improve learning -- and assure them that their responses will remain anonymous. Let them know that you will summarize their responses and discuss them with their teacher. Review this procedure. Give students 10 minutes or so to respond then collect the responses. Thank them and let them know when, more or less, they can expect to discuss the results.

After you visit the class: Read through the responses, looking for broad categories. Group similar responses together and list them, verbatim, under descriptive heading. If possible, type up a summary of the responses to give to your partner.

When you meet withy your partner: Start by discussing the responses to the quetion on what interferes with or hinders learning. Then, discuss student responses to what helps them learn. Third, talk about the students' suggestions for improving teaching and learning. Before you end, make sure your partner has a plan for responding to the class.

Ways to improve peer assessment

Faculty often feel the qualify of student peer assessment is not very good. However, if we ask more directed questions we often get better quality feedback. Here are some specific questions to ask students to answer when they are giving peer feedback:

Notice most are not related to whether or not they liked the paper, nor to assign a grade. These are formative feedback for improvement or to show how well the writer got a point across. These ideas come from Linda Nilson of Clemson University.

To create an effective exam or assessment task ask yourself the following questions prior to developing the questions:

These questions come from Huba, ME & Freed, JE. Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses. Needham Heights, MASS: Allyn & Backon, 2000

Helping students to do better on exams

Students do better on exams if they are not anxious and if they feel more confident about the material and their ability to succeed in this course. Here are some suggestions on how to achieve the above:

These suggestions were part of the workshops given by Maryellen Weimer and Marilla Svinicki.

*Making returning exams a learning experience for the students

When you return exams, especially multiple choice or short answer, don't go over the answers yourself. Once you return the graded exam to the students ask the students to work in small groups to go over the answers. Ask the students to go over the content with each other and the rationale for why they selected the answer they did. If they got it right they will be happy to share with others. If none of them got it right they might be able to determine the right answer by a process of elimination. They can ask you questions during these small group discussions. This might make the session a little less stressful for you.

*Managing Large Classes

Here is a tip from a colleague who teaches classes of 300. It involves how to take attendance and gather formative feedback at the same time. He gives 12 quizzes a semester. The question is usually directly from the reading or from the classroom discussion that particular day. The students do not know if the quiz will occur at the end or at the beginning of the class. There are no makeups. Each quiz is usually one question with a very short phrase as the answer. I give the students a 0 for missing, a 1 for taking the quiz, and a 2 for getting it correct. What does this accomplish?

*Giving students as many opportunities for on-going formative feedback

Research shows that multiple and varied opportunities for on-going formative feedback significantly increases student learning. Try to think of as many ways the students can get on-going feedback on their mastery of the material as possible. Classroom assessment techniques (like a quick quiz at the end of class asking for the main point from the class or a few multiple choice questions) area very successful ways to give students feedback on how well they are doing. Using the materials developed by the textbook publishers can be a great way to get students to self-assess without a great deal of class time or your energy. Requiring studenets to do on-line quizzes provided by the publishers and the results of the quizzes can be fed into your Blackboard grade book without any effort on your part.

How to level the playing field if you allow students to have access to old exams

If you allow students to keep their own exams, or if you put old exams in the library, some students may have access to these old exams whereas others may not. Reasons for uneven access include that some students do not have friends who took your course in the past or some students may steal the library copies to give themelves an advantage over others. John Connors suggests that we put these old exams on the Blackboard site for your course and that way everyone has equal access to them. This might even motivate some students to look at the Blackboard site more often.

*Getting better term papers and giving students experience with peer assessment

Here's a win-win way for you to read better term papers and for the students to get some experience with peer assessment at the same time:

The presenters, Ike Shibley, Tami Mysliwiec, and Maureen Dunbar, from Penn State-Berks College at the workshop on teaching content rich courses had this wonderful idea.

*Helping students to see how much they progressed during the semester

Some times students get so caught up in the day to day work of a class that they forget how much they progressed over a semester or a year. Giving students feedback on how much they prgressed is very empowering for further learning skills, etc. If at all possible try to individualize what students have made the most progress on either through individual or group communications.

*Having the audience be more involved with student presentations

When students are making presentations, have the other students offer feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation and other constructive criticism. The students in the audience receive points based upon the quality of the feedback and comments they make. The audience does not evaluate the presenters and do assign points or a grade for the presentation.

*Evaluating students on class participation

Most faculty like to include class participation in their grading, but find it difficult to grade for it. Develop a scoring rubric using 2-3 criteria and 3 levels of participation for each rubric. Suggested criteria might be what new ideas did the student contribute, how much did the student apply content/reading, etc. to what he/she said, and evidence of critical thinking. You might grade students using these rubrics every month so they can see patterns. Then class participation can be graded and it should count around 20% of the final grade.

*Another way to make exams a time for learning

When you give out an exam attach a marked (could be stamped in a color that cannot photocopy well) colored piece of paper to it. Tell the students that can make a note of the concepts they did not understand and hand in the paper the next class listing the concepts and their new understanding of them. If you are concerned about them copying the questions, making them hand in the exact paper they took out of the exam room might help alievate this worry. If students adequately demonstrate a greater understanding on the take home aspect, they can earn up to 1/2 of the points for the concepts they covered on the paper.

Getting a quick read on how students are doing while checking for who is enrolled

Once the add-drop period ends, the registrar's office always asks us to verify student enrollment of each individual. Instead of taking roll in class or checking if all students have handed in at least one assignment, give the students a very brief formative assessment (i.e., 1 questions on the major idea they have learned so far in the class, or their most confusing aspect of the content thus far), ask the questions in several venues and request that each student complete the activity once with their name on their work. You can first give them a few minutes in class to complete the assessment, you can post it on your Blackboard site for your class and email your students (can be done quickly from your Blackboard page, if you created one) the same assessment assignment. You can also tell your students to tell their friends to complete the assignment if they still want to be considered enrolled in the class. A complete record from all your students will give you the information requested by the registrar's office and some insights as to how much the students are learning or how confused they are.

Some guidance to decide if you want to allow for extra credit

About 3/4 way through the semester many students realize that they are not earning the grades they wanted or needed to earn. Many ask for extra credit opportunities. Faculty have different views of extra credit. I would like to suggest a guideline for you to decide if you want to allow for extra credit. You can set a policy that you will not allow students to earn extra credit if they did not complete a major assignment, have not participated adequately in class, or who violated any academic integrity or honesty policies in your course. This policy means that students who have blown off your course are not eligible to earn extra credit, but you can decide if the rest who have been trying but not always mastering might be eligible. Be sure the policy is announced to all and enforced uniformly.

Extra credit that focuses on learning from previuos shortcomings

If you want to allow your students to earn from their previous shortcomings, you can assign an extra credit, learning portfolio. Students resubmit some or all of their previous graded work along with revisions of papers, explanations and sources where they found the correct answer or new insights into their understanding of the material. This will work better for essay type of assignments. Students should not be able to earn full credit to make up for previous low grades. You can grade on quality and quantity of work revised. Students can only get credit if they submit their previous work that has been graded. This is not meant to be a make-up for work not done rather as a way to learn previous work better.

Using self-assessments in your courses and having them count toward the grade

On-line platforms, such as BlackBoard, offer opportunities for your students to do self-assessments and for you to have them count toward the g grade. Cathy Poon suggests that you give students many more possible points (or questions) than will count for the grade. This places the emphasis on learning and not on getting the answer right or on the grade. She suggest that you count the total self assessments during the course for between 5-20% of the course grade. Feedback on the accuracy of the answers can be given after the deadline for submitting the student work (also a nice feature on BlackBoard). Cathy further suggests that you use self-assessments for problem solving or analysis and not just for factual work. Your feedback can include a model answer, and why other kinds of reasoning are not right, can be made up in advance or once you see students' errors and then placed on BlackBoard as feedback to all students at once.

Giving timely and quality feedback to students

Students expect immediate feedback on their performance on graded assignments, perhaps because of scantron exams or the immediate world they live in. However, if faculty are grading essay answers or papers, such grading takes a long time especially if you are going to give students real feedback on their performance and constructive comments for improvement. Let students know when you expect to get their assignments or tests back and why if is taking so long. Try to give students individualized and constructive feedback in a streamlined way. Possibilities include: keep a list of your most common comments and check off the comments and return the checklist to the students when you return the assignments, use scoring rubrics, grade on-line so you can cut and past the same comments, rewrite the first paragraph as an example and then ask the students to redo the rest. Cathy Poon and Anne Marie Flanagan will be offering other ideas on this topic at their TableTalk on Tuesday March 1 at noon in the woman's club room.

*Using a bingo card concept to increase student interacton with the content and decrease procastination

Create a bingo card with cells giving the types of additional activities you want the student to do to help them engage in the regular and consistent interaction with the content necessary to really retain it. Examples for the cells might include:

Distribute the bingo card at the beginning of the semester and let the students know that this is an optional assignment.

When a student shows proof that (s)he completes the activity the instructor marks the box. Prizes are given when people complete a line or several lines. Prizes can be to drop the lowest quiz grade, can bring a study sheet with information to the final exam or adding 5 points to the final exam score. The irony is that students who get the most lines probably will not need the prizes because the extra work they did helped them to master the material. However, the motivation to earn the prize may have helped them to engage in the content more and to decrease their procrastination.

This tip was adapted from Amy Jo Sutterluety, Bingo Game Decreases Procrastination, Increases Interaction with Content. The Teaching Professor, Nov. 2002: 16 (9) 5-6.

How you can help all of you students next semester to get an A in your class

If you do not grade on a curve (a certain number of students get an A, a certain number fail, etc.), then theoretically all of your students can get an A in your class. If you are comfortable with all students potentially getting an A in your class, you might point that out to the students in the syllabus or the first day. Then it is essential to state what the students must do to earn an A in your class and what the grade they will earn if they do lower qualify work or fewer assignments. Spelling out your grading policies this way can encourage all students to strive for an A and not just those who normally work for them.

Students helping peers to learn better

Students take advice much better from peers than from us. Why not incorporate student study strategies from previous years in the help you give current students. Sara Spinler wrote her students after they got back the results on her exam and asked those who did well on specific questions (the harder concept, I assume) to volunteer to write down very specific strategies and tips they used for studying. She would also like to share specific examples of things they made up. This type of help can be posted on Blackboard for all students to have access and you might want to spend some class time going over some of the strategies, tips and examples as a way of helping students to learn how to learn your material.

Asking students to assess themselves on exams or papers

If you ask students to hand in a written assessment of their own performance on an exam or a paper, they may accept more responsibility for their grade, and not think the grade was arbitrarily determined. A few suggestions for self-assessments are:

*Using a special answer sheet to allow students to see immediately how they did on an exam

I have purchased a package of answer sheets that allow students to see if they got a multiple choice answer correct (immediate feedback assessment technique). If not they can scratch off a second, or third or 4th answer (and you can give partial credit for second or third attempts). These answer sheets are great for group quizzes as they can continue discussing the alternatives until they get the answer right or to show dominant members that they are always correct and shy members that they may be more correct than they thought. If you would like to try them, contact me. Each sheet has 50 items and can be used for several shorter quizzes. If you want to use them on a more regular basis, contact me for ordering information, Phyllis Blumberg, Ph.D., Director of the Teaching and Learning Center University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, 60 S. 43rd Street, Box 68, Philadelphia, Pa 19104 - 215-895-1167, fax 215-895-1112 email p.blumber@usip.edu

Essential components of assigning grades for your students

Even if you use scantron grading, you still need to take time to do the last two steps. Look carefully at the item analysis in case you have to throw out a question or allow for two answers.

As you look at the results, decide if the scores seem valid and true to you. Does the distribution look right? recheck a few papers or student final averages appear correct - in other words is this a C student?

Finally the grades should serve as a stimulus for self-feedback. What can you do to improve your teaching of this course next time?

Helping students to prepare for tests

When you make up an exam, calculate the percentage that the critical thinking or higher level problem solving counts on this exam. Then let your students know how much the higher level thinking skills will count on the exam prior to the exam. This might help them to study differently.

Helping exams in large rooms to go smoothly

If you are giving an exam in a large room, particularly if you are using several rooms or the testing center, please assign students seats in advance. These assignments should be given to the students in advance also. Please tell the students that they need to be in their correct seats to get credit for the exam. Ask the students to display their student ID beside them, that way you can easily check if they are in the right seats, and note by name students you need to talk to or observe closely.

Elisabeth Morlino has developed a best arrangement seating chart for the large classrooms.

One faculty reported that his/her class was supposed to be taking an exam in the testing center and another class had taken seats that were not assigned to that class. This meant that the students entering to take their exams could not sit where they were assigned, led to major confusion and poor exam taking conditions. Please encourage your students to be considerate of others in testing situations.

Making returning tests a learning experience for the students and not a defensive experience for you

When you return tests, instead of going over the answers yourself, ask the students to work in small groups to go over the test. Ask them to discuss the questions they found confusing or difficult and record in a list those questions that the entire group found confusing or difficult. This will give you worthwhile feedback and should eliminate much of the students trying to put you on the defensive end of their statements.

Assessing group performance

Let your small groups determine how they want to assess themselves in terms of group performance, or let them establish their own criteria for group functioning. Then you can show them how you would like to assess themselves in terms of group performance.

Participants at a workshop this past week suggested this tip. These participants were Steven Neau, Shawn Boyle, Maria Brown, Peter Harvison and Natalie Coleman.

Allowing students a chance to correct themselves when they do not make a good presentation

For many students making a presentation is a very stressful event. We may see the presentation as low risk compared to a job related presentation, but the students do not have the same perspective. If we take the wind out of students' presentation by asking them a question they cannot answer, telling them their thinking is off base or having a completely different perspective on an issue, the students may not be able to recover and continue with the presentation. In fact they may freeze, or just continue with what they planned because they do not have any prepared alternatives. To help students to succeed in presentation, we may want to ask them key questions to think about in advance, ask for an outline or their Power Point in advance, or even allow them an opportunity to redo a presentation. Most important, we need to help the students to feel comfortable making the presentation and to let them know that we expect this to be a learning experience and not an Academy award winning performance.

Giving quizzes as a learning experience

If you give difficult quizzes on-line, give feedback if the answer is correct or incorrect but not give the correct answer, and allow students to take the quiz 3 times within a week, many students will use this as a way to review the material and to learn better. Getting an answer wrong may motivate students to reread their notes or the readings. It will also give the students a feel for the type of difficult questions you will ask on an examination. These quizzes can be multiple choice problems solving or synthesis questions. These quizzes should count a small percentage of the final grade since they are more formative assessments than formative ones. Students may think they are cheating by taking the quizzes as a group, but in fact they are actually learning from each other and discussing the work.

This type of quiz can be started mid-semester as a way of piloting the ideas for the next time you teach the course or gradually as you build up the question bank.

This idea was modified from Jan Anderson at CA State University.

Avoiding the student perception that you are not fair, or not doing your job right

Students think instructors are unfair if they give inconsistent messages. For example, if you tell your students that you will develop their knowledge, skills and critical thinking, but only test them on the first 2 and not critical thinking, they might perceive you as unfair. Further if you tell them that you value the process and the product and only grade them on the product, they might also think that you are not fair. The converse also is true. If you do not tell students that you want to see their thinking process, their intermediate steps or they work, they will be annoyed if you grade them down for not showing them.

What to include about assessment on your syllabi

Try to explain your rationale and create a supportive environment for student learning and student success on your syllabi.

Multiple Choice Questions

*Helping students prepare for multiple choice questions

If you return your tests during the semester, you can help students to prepare for your next multiple choice question test. This especially works if your final is cumulative. Tell the students about levels of questions - low being factual or definitions, middle being application and higher involving problem solving. Suggest to the students that they go through their old tests and code the questions they got wrong by level. Give students different strategies to study low, middle and high level questions. Perhaps they are not preparing enough for the higher level questions. This exercise might help them to see what types of questions you ask and to realize that they need to do more than just memorize facts.

Multiple Choice Testing

Some perceptive students read into alternatives on multiple choice tests what was not intended by the instructor. This leads to student frustration. To help this problem:

*Returning Multiple Choice Tests Without Getting Defensive

Here are a few suggestions on how to defuse students' affect when you return Multiple Choice Questions tests and keep you from getting defensive:

These suggestions come from a great book by Maryellen Weimer called, "Learner-Cented Teaching" that we have in the center.

Returning multiple choice tests or grades on multiple choice exams

When you give a multiple choice exam, do not post the answers or the student grades right away. Instead, first take a look at the item statistics provided by the scantron analysis. See if you need to restore, double score or throw out any items. After you have made the adjustments and rerun the tests, then you can give students feedback on how they did. This will keep a lot of angry students away from your door.

Essay, papers

Efficient grading of essays

If you are giving the students essay questions or a term paper, or even a shorter paper, ask the students to submit a blank audio tape along the their paper or exam. You can give oral feedback much quicker and therefore can give more detail if you dictate the feedback into a tape recorder. Put a number beside the paragraph or section you are responding to and start your response to the student regarding #1.

You might consider having the students submit an electronic copy. Then you can make comments right on the paper and give much easier to read feedback.

Here's another idea from Stan Zietz, the chair of Math, Physics, Statistics and Computer sciences. If you are giving the students essay questions or a term paper, or even a shorter paper, ask the students to submit a blank audio tape along with their paper or exam. You can give oral feedback much quicker and therefore can give more if you dictate the feedback into a tape recorder. Put a number beside the paragraph or section you are responding to and start your response to the student regarding #1.

*Grading Papers, Essays Efficiently

Christine Flanagan developed this tip. If you get a paper or short essay that is poorly written, poorly organized, repetitious, does not give enough evidence to support the thesis, etc. do not continuously make the same comments throughout. Instead, choose 1 paragraph or 1 short essay that reflects the problems of the larger work. Thoroughly mark up that sample, show how it could be rewritten, give examples, etc. to show how the answer or paper could be improved. If you are willing, give the student the chance to rewrite the entire paper showing that he/she understood and learned from the paragraph you marked up.

Grading papers

Before you begin to grade a set of papers, make up a numbered checklist of all of the criteria that you will use in grading. You might divide it into points that need to be improved, such as needs elaboration, redundant, needs a citation, spelling, grammar, inaccurate interpretation, etc, and good points such as good opening, thorough explanation of ideas, good development, proper use of English, etc. Of course there should vary from discipline to discipline. When you wish to comment on one of these on the paper, just put the number of the item on the checklist beside the sentence. Then staple a copy of the checklist to each paper. A quick review of those items indicated most can help you write a summary comment at the end. If you are really organized, you can distribute this checklist to students in advance of when they hand in the paper so they will know what you are looking for also. You might want to keep this checklist form one year to the next, edit it and adapt it for the level of course.

Streamlining grading essay exams or papers

Develop a standard comment sheet to be distributed to all students. You can individualize a few comments at the end.

I received a form letter-like email, with some general customization at the bottom in response to a request I made to a company that prompted this tip.

*Getting students to improve their own writing

Many of us spend much time correcting papers or essay exams and trying to get students to improve their writing. However, we may not be very effective in getting students to improve. Perhaps we need to start where the students are. Ask the students to write a short piece attached to the paper stating their strengths and areas of difficulty with the paper or essay. This encourages students to be reflective practitioners about their own learning. Then when you grade the paper you can spend more time giving feedback on those points that were raised by the student. Perhaps you could even have a brief conference with some of the students going over your feedback on their perceived strengths and areas of difficulty.

Grading exams, papers and giving students feedback

When grading exams or papers, speak to the learner, not the error. Comments or a grade is a tool for communicating with the learner. Our responsibility as instructors is help the learner move forward. The question you want to ask is: What does this learner need from me at this time to learn more? Then shape your comments accordingly:

*Making your time to grade papers more efficient and helping the students learn more

You could grade them globally, by determing criteria or a rubric for an A,B,C,D or F papers. Then read them quickly to see if your criteria make sense. Read them again, without a pen in hand and sort them into grade piles. Do a final random check of a few from each pile. Without writing comments, you will cut you time for grading. Then attach the same copy of your criteria to the students in advance and ask them to self-assess.

Next semester ask the students to hand in parts of the paper, or steps-such as athe problem or thesis statement, key resources consulted, etc. or drafts in advance. Your final papers will be a higher quality.

Helping students to organize for essay exams

Here is a good organizer to tell students about and even write on the top of essay exams. Just remember REDOER

R = read the question thoroughly
E = evaluate what is being asked
D = determine how and what you will answer
O = organize your thoughts and your answer
E = execute your answer
R = Review and revise your answer

Perhaps you notices students' answers that did not reflect all of these steps as you grade now.

Helping students to write better essays and papers

When you assign a paper or an essay specify the intended audience or readers. Students will write a better paper if they think they are not writing for you. You may tell them they are writing for a lay audience such as for a newspaper or a professional audience. Giving the audience also helps the students frame their argument and select proper language.

Asking students to reflect on their papers or projects

On the day students hand in their projects or large papers, ask them to reflect on some aspect of the project or their learning. For example, you could ask them: what they learned from doing this project or what they would do differently if they were to do the project over again. Or you could ask them to choose a reference that they used for the paper and state why they agreed or disagree with the author.

They can either spend a few minutes in class or write online if they hand in their work on digital drop boxes once they hand in their assignment

This exercise is a quick check that they. student, know something about their projects (that they did the work) and it also serves as a good reflection on their own learning.

The Grading Process

*Making returning or discussing tests a teachable moment

Because grades are so important to our students, we should capitalize on the teachable moments when we return tests, or meet with students individually to discuss their grades or a test. When you are engaged in such activities, ask yourself: What do you want the student to learn now? What long term message can you be giving your students now about learning, your respect for them, their confidence or ability to succeed? Think about what you say when returning or discussing tests. Students are more inclined to listen and remember these words than those delivered during a lecture.

Managing the grading process

As we get closer to when grades are due, the grading process seems to take on an increased importance. To manage the grading process, faculty must abandon 3 common false assumptions about grading-grading can be totally objective, there can be total agreement about the grade and that grades are the most important motivator for students. Instead adapt the following principles developed by Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson (their book, Effective Grading A Tool for Learning and Assessment is available in the Teaching and Learning Center):

Giving students an extra assignment

Toward the very end of the semester, some students seem to wake up to the fact that their GPA will not be what they want or need it to be. Some of them ask for extra credit assignments. (It depends on your philosophy if you would consider an extra assignment.) Here are 3 suggestions for an extra assignment, if you agree to give extra assignments. You set the limit on the number of extra points a student might receive.

Should you curve your grades

Generally I do not recommend curing grades on tests or courses because it has many disadvantages (e.g., promotes competition, may discourage students from studying together, etc). An alternative for entire course grades is to use the school's cutoff for each grade and to announce that you reserve the right to slightly lower the cutoff but not to raise them. At the end of the semester you can see if you need to make some minor adjustments in the cutoff to have a better distribution of grades or to keep a few people from failing. This alternative was suggested by Judith Miller at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

*Helping students to learn when you give and return tests

Students are very motivated when teachers return tests. Often they are motivated to get a better grade, but you can turn that motivation into achieving better learning. When you return a test, have students get into groups to discuss what are the best answers and why. This can work for multiple choice tests and for essay tests. Have students learn why an answer is correct, or well done.

This same technique of working together in small groups can work after students have taken the test individually and before it is graded. You might even count the group answers toward individual credit.

Some faculty question spending this much time on 1 test, but the rationale is that this is motivated learning time for the students to really learn.

*Helping students to take group assignments more seriously

Some faculty feel that some students do not take group responsibilities as seriously as they should. One way to help students take group responsibilities or assignments more seriously is to give the students some choice in how much group responsibilities count (you could give them a range of possibilities) and to allow them to come up with some of the criteria on which they will be assessed on these assignments. These criteria might include individual contributions, attitude toward group members, etc.

The ideas follow from my reading of Michaelson, Fink, and Knight book on Team-Based Learning

Treating all your students fairly with their final grades

Alan Sims tells me that there are many grades changed after they have been handed in. If you are changing grades for some students are you giving an unfair advantage to the complainers, mark grubbers or more empowered students? Did those who did not complain for many reasons have an equal access to a higher grade? Perhaps the only reason why grades should be changed after they have been handed in is if the instructor made a mistake.

Some guidance to decide if you want to allow for extra credit

About 3/4 way through the semester many students realize that they are not earning the grades they wanted or needed to earn. Many ask for extra credit opportunities. You can set a policy that you will not allow students to earn extra credit if they did not complete a major assignment, have not participated adequately in class, or who violated any academic integrity or honesty policies in your course. This policy means that students who have blown off your course are not eligible to earn extra credit, but you can decide if the rest who have been trying but not always mastering might be eligible. Be sure the policy is announced to all and enforced uniformly.

Explaining your grading system on the first day of class

Ask students what grade they want to earn in your course before you give them the grading scheme. Then go over how they will earn an A,B,C. This is especially relevant if students have to do different types of assignments or more assignment to earn a higher grade. If you allow student to redo assignments or hand in assignments late but not earn full credit this should be explained to them also when you have their attention.

Grading papers more efficiently

As the end of the semester approaches we find ourselves grading many papers. Often students make the same types of mistakes or reasons why they lose points. Develop a check list for why students lose points in advance of beginning to grade and add to the list as you grade. When a student makes one of these common mistakes or writes a less than perfect answer, check off the rationale or reason on the checklist. Then staple your checked checklist to each paper. This should save you time in grading and provide the students feedback on their work.

Helping students to do better on redone assignments

If you allow or require students to redo an assignment or a paper after you have seen or graded it, give your students more explicit directions of your expectations with the request for the redone work. If you used a scoring rubric, let the students see the rubric and how they did on the rubric. Then tell them what components they can redo to improve the paper. Without these explicit expectations students may not know how to improve the paper.

*Grading for student groups

Excellent students are often anxious about receiving group grades for group assignments because they feel their grade may be lower than what they usually receive. Students need to have a mechanism for letting you know about their peers who did not contribute or were even worse. You need to give students permission to fire a group member or leave the group themselves to become part of another group. However, before they take such a drastic step, they should try to work out problems and discuss their concerns with you. If students have not let you know about any problems during the term, they may find that their group project is not as good as it could have been and their grade may reflect that lack of communication.

Grading papers fast at the end of the semester

Although I have suggested many times that you give feedback to students, the end of the semester is not the time to give detailed feedback to students. Most students are only interested in their final grades and not feedback. Instead use this system to quickly grade your essays and papers.

Read your papers over quickly without putting any remarks on the papers and put them into 5 piles of A,B,C,D, and F. Then read them over within each pile and rank order them within a grade to assign more refined points, such as B+ or B-. The only comments you should make on papers are ways to remind you how you are grading-such as incorrect facts, confused or not well developed.

Feedback

*Getting immediate feedback as to the student's understanding of the material you covered in class

As faculty we often wonder if our students understood what we were trying to teach. Examinations are often the first indication of how well and how much the students learned. Yet that may be too late, and also may have a punitive implication for the weaker students Another techniques is to obtain feedback during every or many class(es) through the use of any of many different Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs). Plan for these activities and let your students know that you will be doing them and how you will use them. Spend a few minutes at the end of class getting the students to write on 1 of the following:

or orally give you the answer to a multiple choice question. If they do not get the answer right, have them in small groups discuss the answer and arrive at the right answer. Use the feedback that you learned from these CAT's to change what you are covering, how you cover the material, go over questions, help them with what they missed. Do let the class see that you are using the feedback they provided you to change the next class.

*Using paper and pencil classroom assessment techniques

Asking students to write an answer to a question posed in class and then have them hand in their written answers (even without their names on the sheet) has the following advantages:

This question should be well written and planned in advance. The instructor should respond to the student answers by giving the students feedback on what they wrote. This feedback should be as immediate as possible.

*Giving students an early idea of what we expect of them

Give students a very short quiz very early in the semester. Give them a question or two to let them see what you expect them to know, in terms of detail. Let them know that this quiz is intended to give them a sample of the type of exams they will get from you. If you give essay questions, give a smaller essay. This early evaluation helps students to prepare throughout the semester in an appropriate fashion.

*Engaging students in assessments, self-assessments

Here is an idea that may sound a little off the wall, but it gets students engaged in self-assessment. When you correct a paper or an essay, give much feedback or comments, but to not assign a grade. (Keep a copy of your comments, and the students work.) Ask the student to assign themselves a grade based upon their own assessment and your comments. Also allow students to write any comments back to you. Then you assign the grade and return the paper back to the students. Students will take your comments more seriously and hopefully try to improve.

*Assessing students on skills or competencies

If you assess students on skills or competencies, you might want to use Cathy Poon's (a faculty member in Pharmacy Practice) approach:

*Giving Feedback to your students

Toward the end of the semester, it is a good time to give your students real feedback on their progress. Some suggestions might include:

*Planning for self-assessment opportunities in your courses

One of the key features of learning-centered teaching is providing students with many opportunities to self-assess and to gain the skills to be able to judge one's own performance. Fink identified three developmental phases of self-assessment:

This tip come from L.D. Fink Creating Significant Learning Experiences. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003

Students helping peers to learn better

Helping students learn to be critical about their peer's work

Early in the semester, give 2 writing assignments that are similar and for which you can grade the students using the same grading rubric. Go over your expectations in terms of the rubric when you go over the assignments. The 2 assignments should have the same due date. Assign 50% of the students to do assignment 1 and 50% to do assignment 2. After you remove their names, or have them do them with only their code name or id number and you record that they handed it, give the first group the papers from assignment 2 and the assignment 1 goes to the other group. Ask the students to grade the paper using the rubric. This exercise helps students to develop their own critical evaluation skills. You can either count the grade the students assigned each other or just use it for the purposes of formative feedback.

Helping students to give and receive peer feedback

If you use peer assessments as part of your class, tell your students that if they practice giving and receiving feedback,they will be better able to receive constructive feedback throughout their careers. This is a skill that takes practice, but is essential to learn.

*Test Administration

Preventing Cheating

Suggested Standard for Academic Integrity

Preventing Plagiarism

Insuring the students did the work on out of class papers and projects

Explaining your grading system on the first day of class

Letting students know how they are doing in the class throughout the semester

Helping students to realize that they earn their grades

Checking to see that your students did work they handed in for group projects, term papers, etc.

Showing concern for students might reduce the amount of cheating in your course

Getting students to self-assess on their preparation and performance on tests

Student Assessment and Feedback

Planning Constructing Assessments

*Planning student evaluation that promote a variety of skills

Making up exams

Constructing multiple choice tests

*Showing Students that exam was connected to course material

*Returning student's work after the school year

*Making your time to grade papers more efficient and helping the students learn more

*Build in Self Assessments as you are planning your course

*Making Exams a Learning Experience

*Helping your students to get over their anxiety over exams

Gaining useful feedback from your students at mid-semester

Ways to improve peer assessment

back to top *Creating an effective comprehensive final exam or capstone assessment for your courses

Helping students to do better on exams

*Making returning exams a learning experience for the students

*Managing Large Classes

*Giving students as many opportunities for on-going formative feedback

How to level the playing field if you allow students to have access to old exams

*Getting better term papers and giving students experience with peer assessment

*Helping students to see how much they progressed during the semester

*Having the audience be more involved with student presentations

*Evaluating students on class participation

*Another way to make exams a time for learning

Getting a quick read on how students are doing while checking for who is enrolled

Some guidance to decide if you want to allow for extra credit

Extra credit that focuses on learning from previuos shortcomings

Using self-assessments in your courses and having them count toward the grade

Giving timely and quality feedback to students

*Using a bingo card concept to increase student interacton with the content and decrease procastination

How you can help all of you students next semester to get an A in your class

Students helping peers to learn better

Asking students to assess themselves on exams or papers

*Using a special answer sheet to allow students to see immediately how they did on an exam

Essential components of assigning grades for your students

Helping students to prepare for tests

Helping exams in large rooms to go smoothly

Making returning tests a learning experience for the students and not a defensive experience for you

Assessing group performance

Allowing students a chance to correct themselves when they do not make a good presentation

Giving quizzes as a learning experience

Avoiding the student perception that you are not fair, or not doing your job right

What to include about assessment on your syllabi

Multiple Choice Questions

*Helping students prepare for multiple choice questions

Multiple Choice Testing

*Returning Multiple Choice Tests Without Getting Defensive

Returning multiple choice tests or grades on multiple choice exams

Essay, papers

Efficient grading of essays

*Grading Papers, Essays Efficiently

Grading papers

Streamlining grading essay exams or papers

*Getting students to improve their own writing

Grading exams, papers and giving students feedback

*Making your time to grade papers more efficient and helping the students learn more

Helping students to organize for essay exams

Helping students to write better essays and papers

Asking students to reflect on their papers or projects

The Grading Process

*Making returning or discussing tests a teachable moment

Managing the grading process

Giving students an extra assignment

Should you curve your grades

*Helping students to learn when you give and return tests

*Helping students to take group assignments more seriously

Treating all your students fairly with their final grades

Some guidance to decide if you want to allow for extra credit

Explaining your grading system on the first day of class

back to top

*Creating an effective comprehensive final exam or capstone assessment for your courses