Grading and Feedback

The Testing Effect and Regular Quizzes

The “testing effect,” as it’s called by cognitive psychologists, seems pretty obvious to faculty. If students are going to be tested on material, they will learn it better and retain it longer than if they just study the material. And just in case you had

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Teacher and Peer Assessments

Teacher and Peer Assessments: A Comparison

Interest in and use of peer assessment has grown in recent years. Teachers are using it for a variety of reasons. It’s an activity that can be designed so that it engages students, and if it’s well designed, it can also be an approach that

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Students at university lecture raise hands to ask questions

Conducting In-Class Reviews Effectively

Good study skills are the key to successful performance on exams in college, and good study skills are what many of today’s college students don’t have. We can spend time pontificating about who bears the responsibility for these absent skills. We can philosophize about who

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30 Tips for Writing Good Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice tests don’t get much respect. Maybe it’s because they’re associated with memorization, old-fashioned standardized tests, and other situations in which the answer is likely to be “C.”

Yet when properly designed, multiple-choice tests can be a vital addition to your testing tool box. Outlined

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online courses

Rubric Options for an Online Class

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college students in large classroom

Continuous and Rapid Testing (CaRT): A Simple Tool for Assessment and Communication

Most conventional assessment strategies provide limited opportunities for instructors to realign teaching methods and revisit topics that students have not understood well. Teachers can communicate with students individually, but time constraints may prevent multiple individual conversations. Some students in the classroom are reluctant to ask

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Teacher working at desk

Making Feedback Matter

As teachers, we spend countless hours staying up late, reading essays, and making comments to help our students improve. We walk a delicate line, wanting to give students enough support to develop their papers while not overwhelming them with red ink. We carefully foster their

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Writing good multiple-choice questions

Writing Better Multiple-Choice Questions

Eleven years ago, I discovered a life-changing pedagogy called team-based learning. It let me do things in large classrooms that I didn’t think was possible. I found that the key to successful team-based learning was writing really good multiple-choice questions. I would like to look

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