Tools and Resources

This article, from Stanford's teaching and learning center, addresses strategies for improving assessment and grading practices in the classroom.

Writing learning goals and explicit learning objectives will make it easier for students to understand what is expected of them in your course. Goals communicate what students will learn and objectives communicate the kind and quality of work you expect of them. Explicit objectives also make it easier for faculty to make decisions about course content, activities, assignments, and grading.

Focuses on program assessment and the role that grades do (or do not) play in providing evidence that program goals are being met.

This is a grading rubric to use with scoring an internship journal. It would be a helpful model for someone exploring how to build a rubric generally.

There are 4 tips to help bolster grading efficiency and to deal with student grade complaints.

This is an example of a survey administered to graduating seniors. It is used by the Penn State Berks elementary education program for learning outcomes assessment (program assessment) purposes.

This document describes an alternative method for assessment in which students work collaboratively on an exam.

This document describes the process of assigning a group written position paper.

This document describes strategies for using group quizzes to assess student knowledge.

Two-page example of a rubric used to score groupwork.

Item Analysis (a.k.a. Test Question Analysis) is an empowering process that enables you to improve mutiple-choice test score validity and reliability by analyzing item performance over time and making necessary adjustments. Knowledge of score reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, and crafting effective distractors can help you make decisions about whether to retain items for future administrations, revise them, or eliminate them from the test item pool. Item analysis can also help you to determine whether a particular portion of course content should be revised or enhanced.

This is a quick start guide for engaging in self reflection on teaching. It can be helpful to support the production of the reflection portion of the dossier for P&T and/or annual review for Penn State faculty.

The Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, University of Calgary developed the Taylor Institute Guide on Teaching Dossiers (aka Teaching Portfolios) and Philosophy Statements. This guide is a comprehensive resource for creating a teaching dossier that presents an integrated summary of your teaching philosophy, approaches, accomplishments, and effectiveness. Based on a compilation of current scholarship and open access resources this guide uses a literature-informed framework for developing teaching expertise to lead you through a series of practical exercises to develop and strengthen your teaching dossier and philosophy.

All materials are licensed under the creative commons and we invite you to share, use and adapt this guide within your local contexts and/or educational development initiatives.