for Academic Assessment Dr. Marjorie Dorimé-Williams

Best Practices Most Common Practices

What Are Best Practices? “There is no such thing as best practices.” “The reality is best practices are nothing more than disparate groups of methodologies, processes, rules, concepts and theories that attained a level of success in certain areas, and because of those successes, have been deemed as universal truths able to be applied anywhere and everywhere.” -Mike Myatt, 2012

One More Time With Less Hyperbole Best practices can be thought of as just practices and processes that others have found to be successful or “the best” for them. They’re often not very concrete. They’re there for you to think about, evaluate, and on occasion use as a starting point. There are different types of best practices corresponding to the different types of assessment (i.e. formative and summative).

1. Provide spaced assessed tasks to enable students to allocate sufficient time to study over a suitable time period and avoid ‘cramming’. Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips (From the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning At Brown University)

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips 2. Design the assessment so that students tackle the task appropriately: i.e. they engage in the process of learning rather than simply producing a final product.

3. Give students the opportunity to practice the skills they need for each assessment. Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips

4. Provide sufficient and detailed feedback.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips 5. Focus your feedback on student performance, learning or actions the student can control.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips 6. Provide timely feedback: while it matters to the student and can be used to improve future performance.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips 7. Align feedback with the learning goals of the assignment and the assessment criteria.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips (From the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning At Brown University) 8. Provide feedback that is appropriate to the student’s breadth and depth of background, experience, and level of independence.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips (From the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning At Brown University) 9. Feedback needs to be read and noticed.

Assessment for Learning: Top 10 Tips (From the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning At Brown University) 10. Make sure feedback is acted on by the student.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 2. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 6. Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational community are involved.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 8. Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.

Assessing Student Learning: 9 Principles of Good Practice 9. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.

Some General Suggestions 1.Don’t skip steps. 2.Keep it simple. 3.“Never test the depth of the water with both feet.” 4.Stay focused on the learner. 5.Close the loop. 6.Be professional. 7. Get help. 8.Work together