Assessment offers critical data about teaching and learning and can alter the direction and decisions made in a course. It also greatly impacts student and teacher success.
When thinking about assessing teaching and learning:
- You need to tie assessments to course goals and outcomes.
- You need to create formative assessments that can be used to inform instructional practices and to give students advice without worrying about grades.
- You need to design summative assessments that can be used to gather information on student learning in order to assign a grade.
- Above all, you need to consider assessments as tools for improving teaching and learning. Effectively assessing your students will measure what they have learned, and effectively assessing yourself will measure what you have been successful teaching.
