Assessment Toolkit

Q3: How do I give students opportunities to practice, get feedback, and improve?

Continuing with the six questions to guide your assessment design:

How do I give students opportunities to practice, get feedback, and improve?

  1. How do I ensure I am assessing what students need to learn?
  2. How do I make assessments clear and fair for students?
  3. How do I give students opportunities to practice, get feedback, and improve?
  4. How do I support students take ownership of their learning?
  5. How do I help students apply their learning in meaningful ways?
  6. How do I design assessments that support student well-being?

Q3 - How do I give students opportunities to practise, get feedback, and improve?

USask Assessment Principle #3 - Gives students multiple opportunities to learn through practice and feedback, so they have sufficient time and support to reflect and improve (assessment for learning).

Summary: Students learn more and do better on summative assessment when they have practice and get feedback during the learning process, blending learning and assessment together.

Known as formative assessment or assessment for learning, these types of assessment fulfill the purpose of improving learning, not just measuring it, and using practice and feedback so students improve disciplinary skills and understanding more quickly and effectively. Formative assessment allows faculty to directly observe learning happening, rather than simply teaching something and then hoping (but not necessarily knowing) that students have learn it for the high-stakes end of term exam.

  • Practice is effective if it is focused on the most critical elements students will need to apply in later classes or work, and student errors are caught early.  It might include sample questions, Poll Everywhere check ins, class activities, skills labs, or smaller parts of larger assessments handed through staged or laddered assessments.
  • Feedback is effective if it is timely, designed to help learners know what to do, and clear.  It can take many forms, for example feedback to the whole class about common errors, self-assessment against criteria, comparison to examples, peer feedback and auto-graded quizzes. 

Resources to Support

Implementing into your course: When assessment is designed to improve students learning, students get early, often ungraded, feedback on their practice. They learn how to do well, and then do an assessment designed to demonstrate their completed learning. Timely feedback and reflection are designed into the course.

Quick win: Add a short, ungraded practice activity one week before a major assessment and discuss common challenges with the class.

USask Resources

Course Alignment Ideas

Educators can build assessments for learning by:

  • Including low-stakes practice activities before major assessments.
  • Using short quizzes, polls, draft submissions, or practice problems to help students monitor their progress.
  • Providing feedback while students still have an opportunity to use it.
  • Breaking large assignments into smaller stages with feedback at key points.
  • Encouraging peer feedback using structured guidelines.
  • Using classroom activities that allow students to test their understanding before graded work.
  • Focusing feedback on specific actions students can take to improve.
  • Returning assessments promptly so feedback remains relevant.

Common Concerns & Related Literature:

Because courses have a lot to cover, it can be hard to find the time in the course for practice and feedback. However, focusing on the most essential and embedding practice and feedback makes it much more likely students will remember what was taught long enough to use it in other courses or after graduation.

Covering course content rapidly is most associated with rapid post-course forgetting. Read more about this in research on cognitive overload, surface learning and cramming.

Providing feedback does take time and is more of a challenge in large classes; however, using audience response systems like Poll Everywhere in class of 200 can significant increase how much student understand and remember, which makes it worth spending scarce resources on.

Feedback can come from peers, self, automated grading systems, and be for the whole class. Extended written feedback is the most time consuming for faculty, and students are less likely to engage deeply with it because it often occurs when the opportunity to use it to improve a grade is over.

Focus on easier, more immediate feedback like Poll Everywhere or a think/pair/share to save time.

Students wisely put their limited time and effort into things that will help their grades, but getting a grade also inadvertently signals the learning is done. Clearly communicate how the practice will improve their grades, and many students will choose to make the effort, especially if it is obviously true based on the results of the first graded assessment.

If your goal is for students to keep learning, giving low weight grades for regular learning activities in class can make a difference to students, as can an opportunity to re-do high-stakes tasks.

Big ideas

Literature

Assessment for learning, formative assessment

 Simple summary: University of Melbourne
How to: Wiliam (2016)

Feedback

 How to: McConlogue, T. (2020)

Practice

 Conceptual: Boud (2008)

Get Support

  • Attend GMCTL workshops to learn about the Assessment Principles and how to use within your course.
  • Book a one-to-one consultation with GMCTL experts who can help you design a full assessment consistent with the principles for your course.

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