Assessment Consulting Services
Aligning Assessments with Learning Outcomes
Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you analyze your assessments to make sure they are aligned with you learning outcomes.
Learning outcomes set the standard for instruction, learning activities and assessments. Assessments that are aligned with the learning outcomes provide direct evidence of how students are achieving those outcomes. This evidence can then be used to guide students to further learning and to inform decisions regarding course and teaching improvements.
Bloom's Taxonomy is an accepted standard to use when aligning your assessments with learning outcomes. For example, if your learning outcome calls for students to “analyze” concepts or facts, you can make sure that the assessment requires students to perform tasks at that level of cognition.
Designing Culminating Assessments
Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you design culminating assessments that will be meaningful activities for students and will provide evidence of their achieving the learning outcomes. Culminating assessments are not necessarily comprehensive exams. They are most effective when they are robust and require a synthesis of the student’s cumulative learning throughout the course. Your consultants can help you design this event in keeping with the university policy regarding finals (see https://policy.byu.edu/view/index.php?p=64).
Using Rubrics to Evaluate, Score and Provide Feedback
A rubric is an effective organizational tool you should use to set the performance standards for a given assessment. A well-designed rubric helps you organize how you will evaluate, score, and (most importantly) provide feedback to your students. Rubrics are especially useful in scoring and providing timely feedback in large classes. Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you design and use your rubrics.
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Analyzing Student Performance on Assessments
Data from student assessments provide much more information than just scores. From exams, you can see how individuals and groups of students perform on each question. For example, the Exams page in Learning Suite provides reports on each question, including how many students scored correct/incorrect, how many selected individual distractor options, etc. You can also see how your top students performed on specific questions. This information is valuable as you make decisions regarding feedback, correcting misperceptions, and improving your course.
You can also use data gleaned from your scoring rubrics for each assessment. You can track how many students are achieving the higher levels of performance and those who are scoring lower. This data is also important and useful as you formulate feedback and plans for improving student learning. Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you interpret your assessment data.
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Designing Strategies for Forward-Learning Feedback
Evaluating student performance on assessments is much more than giving scores or grades. Forward-Learning Feedback includes an evaluation on the student’s current work or performance along with guidance toward next steps in their learning. Effective feedback not only helps students understand their current performance, it also helps to inspire them to reinforce their learning and to move forward in their progress.
Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you plan your forward-learning feedback strategies.
Effectively Using CTL Assessment Resources Including Learning Suite Assignments, Exams and the BYU Testing Center
BYU resources for effective assessments include Learning Suite Assignments, Exams and the BYU Testing Center located in the Grant Building (HGB). We also support other LMS products, such as Canvas. Learning Suite Assignments and Exams are useful tools for online assessments and are effective for both formative and summative purposes.
The Testing Center offers fully proctored administration of exams. We administer online exams (provided on secure Chrome Book computers), paper-based, machine-scored exams, and written exams (scored by the instructor or department). The Testing Center is especially beneficial for exams requiring a higher level of security, large classes where seating is too crowded for a secure testing environment, etc.
Assessment Services and Teaching & Learning Consultants can help you plan frequent and effective assessments using these resources.