Assignments are a preferred evaluation style for many instructors that can encourage higher teaching and learning experience for students to think critically, develop new perspectives, resolve problems, navigate incidents, and ask the right questions.
Many types of assessments may be appropriate to your course beyond traditional exams that can accurately reflect the kind of thinking and problem-solving you want your students to engage in.
In developing assignments for your course, it is helpful to think about exactly what you want to assess. The questions below will help you focus on the skills and knowledge your assessment should include.
Do you want to assess your students’ acquisition of specific content knowledge or their ability to apply that knowledge to new situations (or both)?
Do you want to assess a product that students produce, or the process they went through to produce it, or both?
Do you want to assess any of the following?
- Writing ability
- Speaking skills
- Creativity
- Reading comprehension
- Is a visual component to the assessment necessary or desirable?
- Is the ability of students to work in a group an important component of the assessment?
Instructors can easily attach Summations articles to assignments, materials, discussions and presentations as an integral part of students’ learning. To help you get started in developing assessments of your student's learning, here are some sample editable assessment templates to incorporate Summations articles.
Article Summary Assignment Template