Faculty Resources · Teaching Toolkit

Assessment Strategies

Use assessment to gather useful evidence of learning and give students meaningful feedback.

Use low-stakes questions, minute papers, polls and short practice activities to see what students understand while there is still time to respond.

Ask students to apply knowledge in realistic situations, make decisions, create products, explain reasoning or solve discipline-specific problems.

Align questions with learning outcomes, mix question types when appropriate and use assessment data to identify patterns in learning.

Write a clear stem, avoid unnecessary clues, use plausible distractors and test meaningful knowledge rather than trivia.

Make criteria visible before students begin and use feedback to show both current performance and the next step.

Design assessments around observable learning, clear expectations and evidence of process rather than relying only on detection after submission.

Assessment resources