by Yvonne Braun and Natascha Reich
For many faculty and GEs, remote instruction has demanded that they reconsider how they conduct assessments of student learning in their courses. UO’s Academic Council has required that instructors not grade attendance, that they offer alternative or make-up assignments even for participation-based grades, and that instructors find alternatives to proctored exams.
Instructors are responding to these conditions with wide-ranging, creative and learner-centered alternative assessments that combine content knowledge with learning skills aligned with course goals. Below are a series of short profiles of faculty and GE instructors from different disciplines highlighting how they are approaching assessment this term as well as their one tip or piece of advice for other instructors. As always, not all ideas may work equally well for all courses and disciplinary considerations, but hopefully seeing how colleagues across campus are finding ways to assess student learning remotely inspires you to find solutions that fit best for you and your students.
For additional ideas, see TEP’s blog post on Alternative Assessments and this recording of a TEP workshop on the same topic.
Names: Mark Blaine and Charlie Butler
Unit: School of Journalism and Communication
Spring Course(s): J212: Writing for Communicators (2 sections)
How We’re Approaching Assessment:
As a way of merging assessment with engagement, we’re trying out a video series called Word Nerd (vimeo.com/user/2732991/folder/1718529), in which faculty members and students in the SOJC community enthusiastically share a short tip, trick or pet peeve related to writing via a short, recorded Zoom interview. The goal is to connect students with the passionate community of writers in the school and inspire them to feel passion for writing too — later in the term they will be invited in their discussion groups to share tips, tricks and pet peeves that they have related to writing. We will then produce Word Nerd segments on the best of those.One piece of advice:
Shifting media — moving from text to video in this case — helps accomplish a school goal for students to be able to write across platforms, but more importantly, it asks students to think about the content differently for the alternative medium while also asking them to share a personal connection to it. We’re asking them to produce a segment about why they care about something that’s fundamental to their education, but that they can have fun and be creative with.
Name: Shannon Boettcher
Unit: Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: CH222: General Chemistry IIHow I’m Approaching Assessment:
Exams usually carry the primary weight of the grade in science courses. However, with the current situation it is very difficult to accurately assess knowledge remotely without proctoring, especially in introductory chemistry. We are addressing this by substantially reducing the fraction of the final grade assigned to exams. We instead instituted daily “in-class” work that the students do in breakout sessions and that builds on the pre-recorded lecture content. A fraction of these assignments are graded each day (randomly chosen out of the 250 students so each student gets the same number graded) and they are more difficult than the typical homework, which incentivizes students to attend the breakouts. The exams are timed, with randomized problems, where the problems must be completed in the order they are given, and where all students are asked (if possible) to all take the exams at the same time to minimize temptation to share answers. The exams are open book, note and internet, again, to prevent those who might cheat from gaining a significant advantage (as there is little way to prevent use of these resources in the current context). The students seem happy with these changes. I am also providing substantial flexibility for any student that makes a reasonable request (and I repeatedly encourage the students to reach out to discuss their unique situations).One piece of advice:
My philosophy has been to prioritize maintaining high levels of learning over being able to assign fair grades relative to previous years — in this case by making many more assignments, and accepting that the traditional mode of ensuring studying and understanding of the material through exams would fail.
Name: Alexandre Dossin
Unit: School of Music and Dance
Spring Course(s): MUP 171-MUP 771: Performance Studio: PianoHow I’m Approaching Assessment:
In normal academic years, this is a hands-on piano performance class. I meet individually with each pianist, work on their repertoire and research, and have a weekly meeting in Beall Recital Hall, where students play for each other (I sometimes play for them as well), exploring various performance techniques while getting the necessary performance experience. With the campus closed, I decided to invite some of my friends, who are renowned pianists and pedagogues, to join us on Zoom. They have lots of experience and are able to talk about the art of performance through their international careers. From Thursday to Tuesday the students research the life and performance of those guests, and come up with questions, which drive the 2-hour informal conversation on Wednesday. At the end of the term, part of their grade will depend on their research, questions, and a paper based on the performance philosophy of one of those artists. I still meet individually with each student to work on their specific repertoire. They will produce a 5-10min lecture-recital YouTube video by finals week, which will be the remaining part of the grade.One piece of advice:
In the field of music performance, assessment is heavily based on live performances in front of the faculty and/or audience. Since we can’t do that right now, internet is a great tool and should be explored in creative ways. Getting to know experts in the field is very important not only in the learning process, but also in professional life after graduation. Challenging students to ask intelligent questions make them think about their craft. Quite often, it is harder to formulate a good question than to give an answer.
Name: Julie Heffernan
Unit: College of Education
Spring Course: EDST 455/555: Education as HomophobiaHow I’m Approaching Assessment:
Education as Homophobia is a senior Education Studies seminar course that typically involves a lot of community engagement and opportunities to attend events and work directly with the LGBTQ community. A central goal of this course is to increase gender and sexuality equity fluency skills in future teachers. Because our current shelter-in-place guidelines negate all the opportunities for students to dialogue with LGBTQ youth, teachers, and families I needed to set up a new set of activities and assessments to support the development of fluency skills. I designed a midterm oral exam for students in the course.The midterm oral exam requires students to work in teams of four on developing a series of discussion questions to share with me in a small group Zoom meeting. Students began working in their small groups on problems of practice during week 3 and will present to me as Fishbowl “expert panels” in Zoom meetings in week 6. I will assess their mastery of concepts and engagement in the discourse of the discipline in these mid-term exams.
One piece of advice:
When a group of students work with materials together and collaborate in advance in order to present it together this is often called a Fishbowl teaching strategy.I regularly use variations on the Fishbowl instructionally IRL (in real life) to get students practicing usage of theoretic terms and mastering various arguments. I recommend this strategy to help students engage and develop fluency in your content area.
Name: Chuck Kalnbach
Unit: Lundquist College of Business
Spring Courses: BA 308: Business Leadership and Communications and MGMT 416: Organizational Development and Change ManagementHow I’m Approaching Assessment:
BA 308: I’m using the Zoom breakout rooms for students to give individual presentations (not graded by me) to their teammates in which they get feedback. Students then reflect on this experience (presenting, giving and receiving feedback) in their weekly journals (graded by me). I then look to see how they incorporate what they learned into subsequent assignments.MGMT 416: A big part of this class is an on-line simulation which students complete on their own. How successful they are in the simulation is not as important as what they learn. After a class debrief, students write a reflection paper on what they learned and how that shapes what they will do in their future workplaces as organizational leaders and managers. I expect those learnings to carry over into their final team project as well.
One piece of advice:
Increase time for team deliverables. It takes longer for virtual teams to produce a product collectively. Have clear expectations that teams create a team charter to outline how they want to operate and hold each other accountable. We have a process that teams use. Reduce assignments and content by 20-25%.
Name: Yvette J. Saavedra
Unit: Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Courses: WGS 303: Women and Gender in American History and WGS 422/522: Special Topic in Sexuality Studies: Defining DevianceHow I’m Approaching Assessment:
For this term students are completing two forms of low stakes writing assessments, a weekly, discussion post based on pre-recorded class lectures, and a weekly reading response that serves as a capstone for the week. In the latter they engage the material from the lecture, discussion, and reading and provide an analysis reflective of their understanding of the unit’s learning outcomes. These weekly check-ins help ensure that students are meeting learning outcomes and can successfully scaffold the lesson toward higher stakes assessment such as midterm and final exam. This keeps students engaged and helps me see what I need to address in the subsequent lecture and discussion sections.One Piece of Advice
Recognize that although remote, each class has a unique dynamic that should inform your approach to questions, discussions, and delivery.
Have a question about implementing alternative assignments in your courses?
Contact TEP at tep@uoregon.edu or you can use this form and a consultant will be in touch.
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