QM11 Guided Self-Review – Course Evaluation/Assessment and Grading Policy

Evaluating the Course Evaluation/Assessment and Grading Policy Standard

In addition to the grading policy and a statement on how you will handle late work, this standard governs how assessments (assignments, tests and quizzes) tie into the learning objectives you evaluated earlier. The most often missed elements in this standard are these criteria:

• Explicity linking assignments/assessments to the course objectives
• Making sure the assessments measure the stated learning objectives or competencies
• Including variation in assessment types
• Ensuring that assessments build on one another and/or increase in complexity

Here is a suggested method to determine whether you have met these criteria:

1. Start with the learning objective and determine what you wanted to measure in that objective. (It helps to number your objectives.)
2. Look at your assignments, quizzes and tests to see which of them gives you a measurement that matches your objective.
3. If it matches, then mark the assessment with that learning objective number. (Learning Objectives will likely match for more than one assessment.)
4. Repeat steps 1 – 3 for each objective
5. Once you have evaluated all objectives, look at your assessments and note the way they build on each other – ask yourself:

• • Do they start at an appropriately simple level and move to a more difficult level?
  • Are there any holes in the movement up to mastery?
  • Do they offer varied approaches to the material (some writing, some tests/quizzes, presentations) or all they all pretty much the same?