Formative low-stakes assessments give both students and teachers important feedback. These types of assignments give students a chance to learn and practice new concepts, knowledge, and skills; identify gaps in knowledge; and get immediate feedback. For instructors, the small low-stakes assessments are often easier to put together and allow them to tell if their instructional approach is working as intended. Eyde Olson, senior instructional designer, shares helpful guidance and resources on this topic.
In his book Small Teaching, James Lang recommends creating small, spaced out, assessments throughout the course because they provide opportunities for practice, interleaving, retrieving, connecting, and reflection. Lang says in his article, Small Changes in Teaching: Space It Out, “The more often the students have to retrieve, use, and reflect upon the course material, the more opportunities you are giving them to learn it deeply.”
Small-stakes assessments like entry/exit slips, practice quizzes, and polls tell you if your students understand key concepts. They reduce cheating too since the low points minimize the impact of failure. Lastly, they motivate students to do their homework and come to class, so they improve class discussions too.
Small formative assessments work well if you use them frequently throughout the semester. You can give them in class regularly on a scheduled basis or on a more impromptu basis, or a combination with a unit of quizzes administered on a scheduled basis and other quizzes administered on an impromptu basis.
Instructors typically set passwords or publish the assignment in Canvas just in time during the class period, either of which will make your quizzes secure from AI chatbots or paid contractors.
Finally, these small quizzes are easy for instructors to create and grade. They don’t need to be big or take a lot of work
Mix it up: Design different types of low-stakes quizzes with different types of questions, depending on the purpose of the assignments.
- Mini-quizzes: Replacing some larger assessments with low-stakes mini-quizzes throughout the semester gives you several opportunities to improve your teaching even more. You can better monitor your students’ progress, allowing you to make timely adjustments, if needed. You can clarify misconceptions and further explain difficult subjects. These small quizzes can be easy to grade too if you use a few automatically graded multiple-choice or True/False questions. Terminology or vocabulary mini-quizzes are especially good at the beginning of the term to help students learn basic or foundational knowledge.
- Reflect and Report Quizzes: These low-stakes quizzes work well to help students think about their learning. In one scenario, students reflect on the week’s learning objective, their progress in achieving the objective, what they need to do next, and the importance of the learning objective for their success in the course. Reflect and Report quizzes discourage offloading to AI because students are asked to self-report on their own progress and/or something discussed in class and/or something specific to their goals. Instructors say grading is fast. A quick skim is enough for them to see if students are working on their projects or studying for a major test, and if they are planning their next step in their coursework, and how well they connect their work to the unit’s learning objective.
- Reading or Film Response Quizzes: Asking about recent homework assignments or class discussions motivates students to read the assigned material and watch the assigned video or think about a recent class discussion in the light of their homework. Your questions could be general “template” types or specific related to a previous homework assignment or discussion. An example of a template question might ask, “What was interesting, challenging, or confusing to you from both the reading assignment and from our first discussion?”
- Classroom Assessment Techniques: Quick CATs like one-minute paper, entrance/exit slips, or muddiest-point will give you a snapshot of student understanding. These can be adapted to high-enrollment contexts, as well.
- YuJa Video Assignments: If you create lecture videos, consider embedding multiple choice questions and reflection prompts in your videos to help your students develop meaningful connections. These YuJa quizzes sync to Canvas gradebook.
Possible Quiz Scenario for a Semester: You could administer a few vocabulary or terminology quizzes with automated multiple-choice questions at the beginning of the term. You might follow up with a few general and/or specific response quizzes. Once students are working on their major projects or assignments, you could have them do a Reflect and Report quiz. Even if they aren’t doing a major project but instead are studying for a major test, you could give a Reflect and Report quiz about what they’ve learned in the last few weeks and what they are going to do next to successfully meet the course learning objectives.
Since students are reporting on their own progress or something discussed in the prior class or connecting their work to a course learning objective, these assignments are usually quite academically rigorous. Designed in this manner, they encourage students to do their own work rather than going to chatbots or paid contractors.
Regular low-stakes assignments typically result in better attendance and class discussions. Since these assignments are graded, they motivate students to do their homework, come to class, and be prepared for class discussions.
In conclusion, students benefit from more frequent, distributed learning assessments, which can be easily given in class, either impromptu or scheduled or a combination. This approach helps students space their studies and keeps them on track. And, giving regular feedback on these formative assignments may very well reduce your workload later in the semester because your students perform better.
For help with any of these techniques, contact an instructional designer assigned to your college.
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/assessments