Thoughts from the BlendKit 2016 readings for week 3.

Ideas from Week three readings in BlendKit 2016.

I’ve been involved in assessment for quite a while. One of the areas covered in this week’s reading is the need to provide assignments that clearly are ready for assessment. I find that a rather odd thing to present to an audience that does instruction for a living. Perhaps it is my background in assessment and experience with accreditation, but the idea that an assignment (or even course) would be presented for academic credit without such things as objective and outcomes, expectations, and some sort of process is foreign to me.

In order to have an assignment that clearly lays out to students what they are expected to do, how they are to do it, and how they will be graded as a result, the assignment needs universally present component.

Blendkit 2016 lists these as name of assignment, objectives, recommended resources, expectations in terms of time, effort, and format, level of group participation, process, and grading criteria.

In my experience, a well-organized assignment is a narrative or roadmap. It can be organized chronologically, in terms of organization, or a combination of the two. From a student perspective, I think the order is critical as well.

I would probably combine these a bit more. Students will want to know up front

1. What the assignment is (title and description)
2.  What it is worth (in terms of points and also in terms of overall value in the total course grade), which wraps grading criteria and method such as rubric or objective quiz/test in as well.
3.  When it is due
4. Overall process to complete it. That wraps expectations, level of work expected, and participation.

Using these as headings in the assignment universally within a course, especially in a standardized format helps students better understand the assignment and expectations without having to search for information. Of course this is assuming that there isn’t a large amount of variation in explaining the intricacies of the assignment.  You mileage will vary.

Student generated test questions

The idea from the reading is that students be asked to come up with their own questions for inclusion into an upcoming exam based on the content.

This is another one of those AHA moments for me. I’d never considered doing some sort of assessment by having students create their own test questions. It is a great idea for an understanding check and also as a potential diagnostic tool.  You could tell a lot about what students are learning by what they put down as potential quiz questions, and probably even more by what is omitted. If you get nothing back on larger segments of the content, that may indicate that there is not as much emphasis, or that there is another problem. You may even find that they have generated questions in areas that you had not considered.