As a practitioner of learner-centered instruction, I am always looking for new ways to engage students in the learning process. Keeping true to the old adage “whoever is doing the teaching is doing the learning,” my instructional style often engages students in dialog, conversation, and
Grading student papers may be the college instructor’s least pleasant duty. Most of us carefully mark each page, noting problems, questioning assumptions, and offering additional information, many times on the final version of the essay when it is too late to make improvements. I have
When we return work to our students, we hope that they will study our feedback carefully and strive to improve their writing on the next assignment. Indeed, there are times when faculty may observe a student receiving a paper, looking for the grade, and then
When I discovered the ungrading movement a couple of years ago, I realized it fit well with an approach I’d been exploring in my writing classes—one that prioritized student labor, revision, and holistic assessment. I knew this approach had a well-established basis in theory and
Because so much depends upon the evaluation of a student’s learning and the resulting grade, it is in everyone’s interest to try to make the evaluation system as free from irrelevant errors as possible. Borrowing from the evaluation literature, I propose the four R’s of
Before March 2020, I believed firmly that frequent, in-class quizzes were a way to ensure students had prepared for class and had some understanding of the material. In fact, I was notorious for pop quizzes, although I did make it a practice of dropping the
1. I call my quizzes “knowledge checks.” The name emphasizes the primary purpose of the quiz—to discover what the student has not mastered in the assigned material. Students do not associate the word “quiz” with my formative intentions so I avoid using it.
2. Both
How can you infuse your classes with lively, productive experiences that nurture awake and alert minds in your students? What sort of instructional practices prime students to be cognitively active “learners on the go”?
It’s your turn to take one. Find the answer key at the bottom (no peeking).
We’re ready to share responses to our call for insights, experiences, and opinions on quizzes. You can expect to see them over the course of the next several weeks. I’ll start here with an overview of the issues to consider if you want to start
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