TLL Monthly Tips and Resources

What Are We Grading?

Taking a moment to reflect on our practices can help us better support students. Here are a few questions we’ve been exploring:

• What am I grading? Does it connect to what I want students to learn?
• How does my feedback help students improve?
• Are feedback and grades the same thing?
• How do students use my feedback on future assignments?

These questions offer a starting point for examining our practices with curiosity and considering small changes that might make learning more visible to students.

One Small Idea to Try

Give students a chance to use your feedback. After returning an assignment, ask them:

• What is one thing you learned from my feedback?
• What is one thing you can apply to your next assignment?
• What question do you still have about your work or the feedback you received?

Resources to Explore

• Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives - from University of Arkansas Tips
• How to Write Measurable Learning Outcomes - from "How To Canvas"
  
  

Five Tips for Better Assessment

• Tip 1: Consider how your activities and assessments set students up for success step by step.
  • If we think of learning in terms of the hierarchy of skills in Bloom's Taxonomy, we often take students from the first steps (understand and remember) to the higher steps of evaluate or even create without carefully guiding students through the levels.
  • For example, if I begin by showing my students how to do something (students remember and understand), but suddenly I ask them to use that information to create something new, they may feel lost or insecure. Instead, if I add scaffolding steps to apply the new information in pieces (e.g. mini-projects or doing it in a group) and analyze (e.g. analyze an example), they will feel more comfortable and will have more time to let the new information sink in before they have to do something big (create).
• Tip 2: Consider how to use formative assessments to prepare students for summative assessments.
  • Formative assessments check student understanding on a regular basis. These tools include practice activities, low-stakes quizzes, minute papers, exit tickets, polls, and drafts. Such activities help students apply new knowledge/skills and build confidence along the way.
  • Use these tools to get immediate feedback, allowing you to see how much students are understanding and then adjust your lessons/approach accordingly. For instructors, it's like an "early warning system" that provides insight into where students are before a big assessment like a midterm, project, or final exam.
• Tip 3: Consider how your assessments match the outcomes of your course.
  • Choose a course that you teach, get the SLOs, and reflect on how your assessments and activities address those outcomes. Use this Course Map form to begin this reflection. Then consider how you might add or omit course content and activities to better address the outcomes of your specific courses.
• Tip 4: Stuck on how to assess an outcome? Try this tool!
  • Plug your SLO into the Assessment Ideas Assistant by The AI Campus and see how the AI bot would recommend assessing the outcome. 
• Tip 5: Consider how to design your assessments with AI in mind.
  • Some assessments (take home exams, essays, and others completed outside of class) are susceptible to inappropriate AI use. According to the Bok Center at Harvard, the following assessments are likely to be more effective:
    • In-person written exams
    • Alternative assignment modalities such as oral exams, in-person presentations, video essays, posters and infographics, and on-paper annotations are likely to be more AI-resilient than traditional text-only assignments. This can be especially effective if students are given an option (e.g. an oral exam, presentation, or video).
    • Traditional assignments like essays and problem sets when coupled with in-person comprehension checks, presentations, discussions, or other adaptations.
  • Key takeaways for dealing with AI and assessment:
    • Discuss your AI policy with your students.
    • Use a variety of assignment types and consider replacing high-risk assignments for ones that are less susceptible to inappropriate AI use.
    • Scaffold a lot so that students can do assignments step by step and with constant support.
    • When possible, connect out-of-class assignments with in-person check-ins, steps, and evaluations.
    • Where you permit AI, require transparency (logs/screenshots or prompt sheets) and ask students to cite their AI usage.

November - Coming soon!