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Assessment

The general recommendation is to opt for frequent lower-stakes assessment whenever possible. Continuous assessment helps students stay on top of the material, encourages active participation, reduces student anxiety associated with higher stakes tests and exams, and could also help to ensure academic integrity (students are less likely to cheat in lower stakes assignments). As in face-to-face instruction, assessment has to align with the learning goals for the course, and the weight of each assessment component has to reflect both the importance of the learning assessed and the effort required to complete it.

 

  1. Continuous (formative) 
    1. Synchronous, e.g., in class quizzes and polls.
      Special consideration is required for students who cannot attend synchronous events (students in different time zones, students lacking the necessary technology such as high-speed internet).
    2. Asynchronous, e.g., quizzes, homework assignments.
      It is recommended that short quizzes and practice problems sets are given after each pre-recorded video lecture and that their due time is usually within a day or two from the time the material is covered synchronously. 
    3. Participation. e.g., discussion forums, group work.
      Discussion forums, where students ask and answer each other’s questions and the instructor or the TA acts as a moderator, proved to be particularly useful for student engagement and learning. Depending on the course level, this can be made mandatory or left as extra credit. However, as part of the assessment, students should not participate in these forums anonymously. For courses that have group or individual project components, student participation can be assessed through interim activities e.g., short proposal, abstract and outline, peer-review draft and feedback. 
  2. Summative
    1. End of chapter/module assignments.
      As these take longer time to complete, it is recommended that summative end-of-module assignments are released at the beginning of the module and that students are encouraged to work through them as the module unfolds by specifying which parts can be completed as soon as the required material has been covered.
    2. Tests and exams: online, open-book (recommended).
      It is highly recommended that mock tests in the exact format as the actual tests are made available to students prior to the actual tests so that students have the opportunity to practice with the technological aspects of taking the test online, e.g., scan or take pictures of their work, organize their work in one file and save it as a pdf (if required), upload their work to the specified server/folder, etc. Students can also report back on how long it takes to complete these extra steps and eventual issues they have encountered. It is also recommended that students that have time conflicts or require extra time, take the test after the class takes it or they start with the class and finish later. This way, if the test is shared online among some of the students, the majority of the class has the chance to take a fair test. 
    3. Individual or small group projects
      Where applicable, at the completion of the project it is recommended that students submit an individual contribution form (group projects) and/or a brief reflection on how the project contributed to their learning and to acquiring transferable skills. For group projects it is also recommended that some of the synchronous instruction time is allotted to group work (e.g., through breakout rooms in Zoom with the instructor visiting each room that has questions or to check on progress). Having asynchronous instruction designed in the course delivery facilitates this type of interaction during class time.  
  3. Grading
    It is recommended that students have access to complete sample solutions and are provided a detailed grading scheme for quizzes, tests and homework assignments. This is particularly useful in a setup with frequent lower stakes assessment and large classes. For projects, it is recommended that students are provided with a grading rubric at the beginning of the project for each deliverable (e.g., report, oral or poster presentation).

    1. Auto graded assessments on Canvas, WeBWork
    2. Manually graded: students submit work on Canvas, Google Drive (in LionMail), Gradescope?
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