Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip, an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching.
TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Creating Fair, Transparent, and Meaningful Assessments
By creating assessments that are fair, transparent, and meaningful, you promote a positive and inclusive learning environment, increase student engagement, and ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed. These practices support SCU’s commitment to academic excellence and student success while also promoting equity in assessment.
This week, we challenge you to tweak one of your assessments to include a new practice.
Here’s one way to do it
- Clarify Learning Outcomes: Align assessments directly with clearly articulated learning outcomes in your syllabus, on Camino, and/or when you introduce the assignment in class. This ensures that students understand what they are being asked to demonstrate and why it matters.
- Provide Rubrics and Examples: To enhance transparency and help students understand what constitutes quality work, share rubrics and sample work ahead of time to outline your expectations and grading criteria. This will make grading more equitable and easier for you!
- Offer Multiple Assessment Formats: Incorporate a variety of assessment types (e.g., written assignments, projects, presentations, quizzes) giving students opportunities to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways and not just rewarding the good test-takers.
- Give Constructive Feedback: Provide timely, constructive feedback that helps students understand their strengths and areas for improvement.
DID YOU DO IT?
Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey. The survey is anonymous, but if you choose to enter your name, you’ll be entered in a drawing at the end of the quarter to win a new book from Faculty Development!
UPCOMING EVENTS
- Come to the Research and Teaching Through Change session on Wednesday, April 30th at 3.45 pm in the Mission room. This session, featuring Fr. Matthew Carnes (Mission and Ministry), Kelly Douglas (Legal Counsel), Shá Duncan-Smith (Inclusive Excellence), and Mary-Ellen Fortini (Research), will provide an opportunity to get perspectives from leadership on the federal context of higher education right now and what it means for your research and teaching. Read more and register here.
- Join us for the Writing Retreat on Thursday, May 1 from 9 am to 4 pm in Varsi 222. We’ll provide a quiet, focused space for your writing, you bring your projects, and anything else you might need for the day. Feel free to drop in and out as your schedule allows. Light lunch and snacks are provided. Register here.
WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?
- Learn about assessment design and how to create your own rubrics (including many samples you can use!) at SCU’s Assessment DRT pages and find more tips and resources for supporting students and student learning here.
This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Patti Simone on behalf of the Faculty Collaborative.
Missed a teaching tip? Read them all here. Don’t forget to check out our Faculty Associates office hours here.
And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development and Faculty Collaborative events.
