Principles of Effective Assignment Design

Assessing student work is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching. From the planning of assignments and student performances of learning, to the providing of feedback, authentic grading and assessment takes time. You can either put in the work early to design useful, clear assignments, making grading easier, or you can put in the time later, struggling to grade assignments that are all over the place. 

Add to that complexity the fact that student learning can be assessed in so many different ways: multiple choice exams, class discussion, oral exams, essays, applications, quizzes, hands-on demonstrations, presentations, and even concrete products. No matter what your field is, there are a couple of principles of student learning assessment that can help you design effective opportunities for students to communicate what they know.

1. Alignment: are your measuring what you should measure? All courses have student learning outcomes attached. Those outcomes should communicate the skills that students need to demonstrate at the end of the course, so EVERY assignment in that course should be furthering understanding of one (or more) of the course outcomes. If your assignment is a stretch - not well connected to outcomes - you might be wasting students' time and energy, as well as your own. 

2. Assessment design: are you really measuring what you want to know? Think about what you truly want students to learn and understand. Then, make sure that your assessment method (exam, essay, presentation, etc.) is well chosen to support your purpose. Ask yourself: am I measuring a different skill than the one I am asking for? For example, if you are measuring student knowledge on a historical event through an essay, are you placing more emphasis on writing skills than historical knowledge? Have you taught the students about writing in your class? Might the poor writers but strong history students perform worse than other formats? If so, vary your assessment strategies or provide support for those students who need help with the alternate-disciplinary skills. 

3. Authentic assessment: are you factoring into your assessment the complexities of student learning? The best kinds of assessment are multifaceted, ongoing and increase in complexity as time passes. Because learning is a complex process complicated by individual differences, make sure that your assignments and assessment of those assignments:

• provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate what they know
• frequent enough to provide insight into students' current levels of mastery and the areas where they need to improve
• build on a logical progression of knowledge, pushing students to use higher levels of thinking and analysis at each level

For more information on this topic, visit the Transparent Assignment Design section in the previous module, and also visit this resource:

• AAHE's "Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning" http://www2.indstate.edu/assessment/docs/ninePrinciples.pdf Links to an external site.

Additionally, check out the suggestions from Texas Tech's "How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?":

• https://www.depts.ttu.edu/tlpdc/Resources/Teaching_resources/TLPDC_teaching_resources/CreatingEffectiveAssignments.php Links to an external site.

And, if you are looking for more information on writing quiz questions, see "Wiley's Writing Quiz Questions Links to an external site." article.