Sample Classroom Assessment Techniques

The material in this section has been adapted from the Handbook titled Course-based Review and Assessment: Methods for Understanding Student Learning, published by the Office of Academic Planning and Assessment at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. www.umass.edu/oapa/oapa/publications/. Martha L.A. Stassen, Kathryn Doherty and Myra Poe, authors. Used by permission. Edited and adapted by Linda Hansell, Community College of Philadelphia.

Classroom assessment can be conducted over the course of a semester, or it can be done at key moments during a specific part of class.

This section provides examples of powerful classroom assessment techniques.

An assessment method that evaluates student learning at particular points in time is a formative assessment.

Assessing student learning at specific points in your course can mean assessing at the start of the semester, after a particularly in-depth lecture, at times when you think ideas are not flowing as freely as they might, to clear up potential areas of confusion or to encourage reflective thinking on particular issues or topics.

The following methods of assessing student learning at specific points in time facilitate the learning experience and help students become more conscious of their learning. By linking course feedback to your goals and outcomes, the learning/evaluation process becomes more "real" for students. It gives them the opportunity to reflect on their own learning in the context of articulated learning outcomes for the course and to gauge the extent to which they are meeting these outcomes. They, and you, can then make timely adjustments to teaching and learning in the classroom.

Assessing Student Learning at Key Points in the Semester

Knowing what a student brings to a course or a unit is important. Knowing what learning is taking place at a specific moment in class is equally valuable. Every instructor can identify key concepts within a course. Assessing the extent to which students understand these key concepts can be especially helpful in gauging whether students are “getting” course content, or moving through the semester without a solid base of understanding on important fundamental concepts. This information can also help you know whether to slow down, move faster or adjust your syllabus to accommodate disparities in learning.

Assessment methods to gauge student understanding of core concepts include:

Rubric (primary trait analysis)	Reading reaction
Minute papers	Paper reaction
Misconception/Preconception check	Punctuated Lectures
Muddiest point exercise	Classroom Opinion Polls

Rubric (or Primary Trait Analysis)

Using a rubric is sometimes referred to as primary trait analysis (PTA), adapted by Walvoord and McCarthy (cited in Walvoord & Anderson, 1998). This assessment method combines traditional grading practices with classroom-based assessment. This technique asks the instructor to link specific goals and outcomes for a particular course assignment to varying levels of achievement or competency (e.g., excellent, good, fair, poor). These levels are based on the degree to which the student has met the identified learning outcomes for the assignment or course. To construct a rubric, the teacher: 1) identifies the factors or traits that will count for the scoring (such as thesis, materials and methods, eye contact with client, and so on); 2) builds a grid (rubric) for scoring the student’s performance on that trait; and 3) evaluates the student’s performance against those criteria.

For example, an essay for an English course might be analyzed for primary traits and levels of achievement as follows:

Trait	1-Poor	2-Weak	3-Good	4-Excellent
Introduction
Argument
Grammar
Tone
Conclusion

The instructor would then check off the score for each of the five primary traits listed as important for the assignment, with a minimum total score of 4 (poor) and a maximum total score of 20 (excellent). In this way, rubrics can reduce a good deal of the subjectivity in grading and facilitate more reliable tracking of student progress on important course objectives throughout individual assignments.

This example of a rubric is very simple. Others are more complex, providing definitions of what an "Excellent" introduction to an essay would look like and sometimes assigning varying numbers of points to different traits based on their importance in the assignment.   Examples of more robust rubrics are Community College of Philadelphia’s Core Competency rubrics

• Critical Thinking

• Effective Communication

• Information Literacy

• Quantitative Reasoning

• Responsible Citizenship

• Scientific Reasoning

Minute paper

The minute paper may be one of the most widely-used and accepted methods of classroom assessment. This method offers a quick and easy way to assess student learning at a particular point in time. Credited to Angelo & Cross (1993), the minute paper not only provides helpful feedback, but requires little time or effort to administer. Several minutes before the end of class, you might stop your lecture or end the discussion to ask students to take one or two minutes to answer, in writing, several questions about the day’s work. These questions might include, “Do you still have questions about the material we covered today?” or “What is the most important thing you learned in today’s class?” Students respond on a sheet of paper and hand them in before leaving.

You can use the minute paper to assess:

• Student recall and understanding
• Student evaluation of what they recall
• Student ability to self-assess their learning and understanding

Minute Paper Example

Concerned that his students may not be understanding the importance of multiple points within his introductory statistics lectures, this instructor took several minutes at the end of each class to ask the following question:

“What are the five most important points from this session?” “What one or two questions still remain in your mind?”

The students were given five minutes to write. The instructor collected the responses and read them through, making a list of “important points” and “important questions” and tallying how often each item was repeated.

Results

• Many points that students listed as “important” the instructor felt were simply details.
• Students came up with as many as 20 different important points from the same lecture.
• Some students mentioned points that he had not even brought up in the lecture at all.

The next day, the instructor listed the 10 or 12 most common responses on the board before class. He began class by explaining the relative importance of each point and their relationship to each other. He also told them which points were not related and used the discussion to answer several of the important questions that had been raised in the minute papers. After a month of using the minute paper at the end of each class, with a feedback session at the start of the next, the average number of different “important points” dropped from 20 to 8. Repeated use of the minute paper helped his students learn to listen more carefully and helped him realize the importance of being explicit in his lectures.

(adapted from Angelo & Cross,Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993).

Muddiest Point

The muddiest point exercise (Angelo & Cross, 1993) is a variation of the minute paper. Administered during or at the end of a lecture or class discussion, the muddiest point exercise asks students to think about what went on in class that day and to write about what was the "muddiest" (least clear) point in that day’s class.

The muddiest point exercise:

• asks the student to reflect on the class lecture or discussion
• asks the student to decide what was understood and what was unclear
• asks the student to self-assess learning and to identify what did/did not work

One way to address the potential for confusion on key points is to incorporate into your course syllabus preplanned times to assess students for their “muddiest point.” You can also use a more informal approach and assess for confusion or misunderstanding when you sense there may be a problem.

Muddiest Point Exercise

In thinking about one of the courses you teach, which topics do you believe might be most likely to cause confusion or “muddiness”?

1
2
3
4
5

Can you think of ways to adjust your teaching methods to anticipate and address this potential confusion?

Possible Muddy Point	What Can I Do In Advance?	When should I assess? (i.e. start of semester, midpoint)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Misconception/Preconception Check

The misconception/preconception check is a way to assess what students bring with them into class or how they are processing information at various points in the semester. Used at the start of a course, the misconception/preconception check is a short survey, questionnaire or essay-type evaluation that asks students to comment on information and key points relevant to course content, similar to the background knowledge probe discussed above. Student answers provide the instructor with an understanding of the extent of “real” understanding or knowledge that students bring with them on the first day of class. It also offers information about misconceptions students may also have, which the instructor can subsequently address and clear up during class.

The misconception/preconception check can also be used at various points in the semester to help assess whether:

• misconceptions are clearing up or growing
• preconceptions are being reshaped
• students are improving in their ability to assess relevant course content and filter out untruths or inaccuracies (critical thinking)

Misconception/Preconception Check Example

At the start of the semester, the instructor of a pre-Columbian history course explained to the 25 students in class that she was gathering information on what each student already knew about the Americas and Native Americans before 1492 so that she could better tailor her teaching to fit their existing knowledge. She passed out sheets of blank paper and asked the students to write their answers to the following questions, without putting their names on the papers. They had five minutes to write.  The questions were:

1. About how many people lived in North America in 1491?
2. About how long had they been on this continent by 1491?

3. What significant achievements had they made in that time?

   After she had collected the papers, the instructor wrote a fourth question on theboard:

4. Where did you get those first three answers?

The students spent the rest of the class period trying to answer the fourth question and realized that they could not. Their impressions of pre-Columbian history were based on vague knowledge whose source they were unable to identify. At the end of class, the instructor gave the students their first library research assignment: work in pairs to double-check the accuracy of their answers to the first three questions.

(adapted from Angelo & Cross,Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993).

The Misconception/Preconception Check shows how an instructor can quickly gauge a student’s initial knowledge or understanding and how to catch students’ interest in a particular subject. This technique can also be an end-of-the-semester exercise used to assess the accuracy of student understanding after completing the course.

Punctuated Lectures

The punctuated lecture technique provides immediate, on-the-spot feedback on how students are learning from a lecture or a demonstration and how their behavior may be influencing the process. It also encourages students to become self-monitoring listeners and self-reflective learners. This technique is designed for use in classes where lectures or lecture-demonstrations are a primary method of instruction.

This technique requires students and teachers to go through five steps:

1. Listen – students begin by listening to a lecture or demonstration
2. Stop – after a portion of the presentation has been completed, the teacher stops the action
3. Reflect – students reflect on what they were doing during the presentation and how their behavior may have helped or hindered their understanding of the information
4. Write – students write down any insights they have gained
5. Feedback – students give feedback to the teacher in the form of short, anonymous notes  

Punctuated lectures can be used to monitor student listening skills throughout the semester by asking students to save their written reflections in folders. After they have done several of these self-reflection assignments, ask students what they have written, looking for patterns and changes over time.

(adapted from Angelo & Cross,Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993).

Classroom Opinion Polls

You may already use de facto opinion polling in your classes when you ask students to raise their hands to indicate agreement or disagreement with a particular statement. Create a short survey (one or two questions) and ask students to complete it and hand it in. By making the classroom opinion polls anonymous, they will provide more honest and accurate results for you.

Classroom opinion polling can help you discover student opinions about course-related issues. In this way, you can better gauge where and how to begin teaching about issues that come up in students’ responses and where potential conflicts or divisions may arise. Students also learn about their own opinions, compare their opinions to others and test their opinions against evidence and expert opinion.

Use the classroom opinion poll to evaluate student learning over a period of time or over the course of a semester by creating a pre- and post-assessment poll. This assessment method will help you determine whether and how students’ opinions have changed in response to class discussions and assignments.

(adapted from Angelo & Cross,Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993).