Goals and Objectives

Guidelines for Use

Module Content

Student Assessment

Applications

Case Studies
Examples
Scenarios

Adaptation to the Discipline

References
Specific teaching methods
Key Books

Assessing the knowledge and skills of our students is one of the most important skills that college teachers can have. Anyone who has taught knows that students learn what they think they will be tested on. Changing the way a course is assessed can, by itself, change how students study and work in the course as well as how much they learn from it.

One key principle in student assessment is that the assessments should match the goals of the course. If we give lip service to teaching something like “critical thinking” but assess only students’ knowledge of low-level facts and concepts, then students are unlikely to be fooled for long. They will study the low-level knowledge.

Therefore, this module focuses on both developing good goals and objectives for a course and devising assessments that can readily differentiate between students who have attained them and those who have not. In addition, it advocates having a variety of assessment tools available rather than a limited repertoire of test item types.

This module provides guidelines and resources to:

• Introduce Future Teachers to AQIP (Academic Quality Improvement Project) and Office of Academic Assessment guidelines;

• Develop course objectives in terms of measurable learner outcomes;

• Provide alternative assessment strategies;

• Illustrate standards and rubrics for evaluation;

• Explore the process of assessing learner outcomes;

• Provide ideas for giving criticism and feedback, including alternative forms and modes of feedback to learners.

The Goals/Objectives and Assessment module can be printed out in PDF format.