Types of Assessment

Scale with Formative & Summative Assessment being weighted against traditioanl

Finding the right balance of assessments for your course depends greatly on your course learning outcomes. The skills and knowledge a student is expected to leave your course will greatly determine how you pick and choose your assessments. However, learning is a process and creating the environment in your courses where a student can benefits from failure (aka performing poorly on a formative assessment) can provide the opportunity for stronger performances on higher stakes assessments. Let's look at four types of assessments and how they can be utilized for your course.

*A majority of the following content on this page was sourced from the University of Indiana Teaching Online Series, a professional development course that is available via Canvas Commons.

Formative assessment is designed to provide feedback to both student and instructors about how well the learning process is going. Examples of formative assessment include Panopto Quizzes, think-pair-share activities, and other low risk assignments that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Another option for formative assessment is to develop a larger, summative assessment and break it into smaller components that can be turned in throughout the quarter. An example of that would be breaking an essay into 'chunks' and having students submit their topic and thesis first before they can begin working on the rest of the essay. This allows you to catch and address misconceptions, challenge students’ early work, and provide the opportunity for them to revise and resubmit each piece in a unified whole at the end of the quarter or unit.

Formative assessment options such as Panopto Lecture quizzes, the Canvas Quizzes tool, think-pair-share activities in discussion forums or group spaces offer ways for students assess their own understanding of course concepts. If you are interested in embedding some understanding checks in your Canvas pages, try Quizlet Links to an external site. which can be added by going to Settings and then Apps in your course.

An often overlooked option for formative assessment is peer review and feedback Links to an external site.. When adequately scaffolded, peer review and critique can be a learning activity for both the student giving and the student receiving the peer review. The Assignments tool in Canvas provides options for blind peer review, or you can set up a Discussion where students post their thoughts or explanations or examples and then provide feedback to the person posting immediately above them. Students can be split into small groups where they can share an initial draft of a paper or project, each student gives feedback to all the other group members, and then they work together to synthesize their best efforts into a group report. Using the Group spaces in Canvas allows the instructor to see all of the initial drafts and student discussions while keeping each group separated from the other groups.

Check out this list from Saga Briggs from TeachThought.com for more formative assessment ideas. Download Check out this list from Saga Briggs from TeachThought.com for more formative assessment ideas.

Summative assessment is designed to provide evidence that students have achieved a learning outcome or otherwise gained skills or knowledge throughout the course. Final exams, projects, portfolios, and presentations are often used to summatively assess students' knowledge and skills. Courses that use a blend of summative and formative assessments provide more consistent support for learning than relying exclusively on a midterm and a final exam.

Final papers, projects, and portfolios have a variety of options in an online class. It's easy to incorporate media into Assessments, Discussions, and Pages - both in project instructions such as presenting a video case for analysis, and in student work such as recorded presentations, interviews, and demonstrations. A videoconferencing tool like Canvas Conferences can be used for synchronous assessments such as oral exams in languages, group presentations, or role play scenarios.

Authentic assessment asks students to demonstrate skills and knowledge by performing realistic tasks within the discipline. It provides opportunities to practice, consult resources, get feedback, and refine performances and products. Well-designed authentic assessments:

are realistic, using real-life situations with constraints, purposes, and audiences that impact what needs to be done.
require judgment and innovation to effectively solve unstructured problems
assess students' ability to use their knowledge and skills to negotiate a complex task as a whole.

Authentic assessment commonly uses strategies such as case studies, simulations, consulting (where students work with real organization to explore a problem and recommend solutions that are evaluated by both the instructor and the organizational partner), internships, and service learning.

Traditional assessment tends to emphasize the development of a body of knowledge or skill. Does a student know the who, what, when, and where? Traditional assessment strategies are helpful when you want students to identify one best answer and/or target isolated skills in a concrete fashion.
Something to keep in mind is that assessment methods do not have to line up with assessment approaches. For example, multiple choice test items can be developed to assess understanding in an authentic case.