Documentation:Building Cohesion Between Goals and Assessment/Planning for Assessment

Planning for Assessment

When planning your course activities, keep in mind your goals and how you will assess students' progress. Your course goals must be supported by both the activities and the assessment (ultimately).

In the following example, the objective of the course is to have students be able to apply the course concepts in order to collaboratively solve a problem. However, the activities chosen require the students to classify course concepts and demonstrate a beginning understanding of their connections to the problem they will be required to solve. This means that when students are assessed on their application of all relevant knowledge required to solve the problem, they lack experience with the depth of analysis they need.

The following graph indicates the disconnect between what is assessed and what is practiced.

In an ideal situation, the activities would support the course objectives by ensuring that they require students to engage in such a way that they are building the capacity for success with the final assessment.

In other words, the more clearly you can communicate how the learning activities support the ultimate course goals, the more likely students are to be successful in the assessment.