Evaluating Students
Ideas for Effective College Teaching | Faculty and Staff

Evaluating whether students have learned course material can be a challenging task. Faculty have many assessment options, which include multiple choice quizzes, essay exams, research papers, collaborative projects, laboratory or field work, or portfolio assessment.

When deciding on an evaluation strategy, the logical place to start is considering your instructional objectives for your course. Are your evaluation methods consistent with both your teaching goals and teaching techniques? If not, be sure that you develop assignments that allow students to demonstrate the kind of learning that you genuinely want to measure.

Another good rule-of-thumb is to use multiple evaluation methods in your classes. You should be aware of the fact that some students will perform better on some forms of assessment in comparison to others even if you are measuring students' mastery of the same material, . (Example: Did you know that women "underperform" on multiple choice tests in comparison to men?)

Evaluating students often is another way to increase understanding of the course material. There are many advantages of frequent assessment (regardless of whether you use brief essays, quizzes, in-class exercises, or other strategies). First, you can gauge students' level of comprehension so that you can tailor your teaching approach. Second, frequent feedback allows students to determine whether they understand the material. Your constructive comments also let students know what they should do differently in order to improve their performance.

Here is a checklist for constructing multiple choice questions if you use this assessment technique:

1. Are students instructed to select the best answer, not the correct answer?
2. Is the stem clear and concise?
3. Is the stem stated in positive form?
4. Is the full problem and all relevant material presented in the stem?
5. Are you sure that the intended answer is clearly the best?
6. Do the alternatives avoid all of the above or none of the above?
7. Are alternatives equally plausible in terms of length, complexity, and plausibility?
8. Have you avoided the use of always, never, all, none, sometimes, may, and usually?
9. Are all of your terms grammatically consistent with the stem?

If you use essay questions and writing assignments (which I would strongly encourage!), be sure to state the questions or topics clearly and precisely. Students will generally perform better if you state your expectations concretely and provide the evaluation criteria up-front. Also, try to focus on higher-order thinking skills (such as comparisons, applications, evaluations, or justifications) in these assignments. Here are some recommendations for grading written work.

1. Read all answers first
2. Grade question-by-question
3. Allocate points for parts of answers
4. Use improvement-oriented comments
5. Praise where appropriate
6. Provide model answers

Are you interested in reading more? Here are links about using essays, multiple choice questions, projects, and establishing a grading system.