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Evaluating Student Learning

Evaluating (or assessing) your students’ learning is an essential component of the teaching role. The purpose of this webpage is to provide you with alternative ways to approach student assessment.

Non-Evaluative Assessment

Would you like to know whether your students understand the complex concept that you are discussing in class today? Would it be helpful for you to know what aspect of today’s class was most confusing for your students? One way to find out this information is by using a just-in-time, non-evaluative form of assessment. Here are some ideas:

  • Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs): CATs are non-graded, anonymous, just-in-time, and quick assessment methods that can provide you with useful information about your students’ learning. Examples of common CATs include:
    • Muddiest Point
    • Minute Paper
    • Classroom Opinion Polls

    For a detailed explanation and an overview of possible CATs to use the classroom, please see the following websites from Carnegie Mellon and Vanderbilt.

    For the most comprehensive overview of CATs, please see the following book (available in the CTL Library):  Angelo, T. A. & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

  • Clickers:  The quickest way to get information on whether your students understand a complex concept that you are teaching is to use clickers. By using clickers, you can find out immediately if students are following your lecture. For a demonstration of how one professor uses clickers (combined with peer instruction), see the following video by Eric Mazur at Harvard University.
  • Concept Maps:  One way to understand how students understand a number of concepts in relation to each other is to use a concept map, which is a graphical representation of ideas. For more information on this assessment approach, please see the following link from Carnegie Mellon University

Evaluative Assessment

There are many ways to approach evaluative assessments of student learning. Here are a couple of innovative ideas:

  • Collaborative Quizzes: For a unique idea of how to assess student learning in groups, you may want to try collaborative quizzes. This resource from the University of Iowa explains this idea in detail.
  • Alternatives to Final Exams: Are you looking for an alternative to the traditional final exam or end-of-semester final paper? This resource from Stanford University provides a comprehensive list of alternatives to consider. While some of these ideas are still traditional options, there are several suggestions that are outside-the-box assessments.
  • If you choose to use multiple choice questions on assessments, use best practices in formulating stems and answer choices.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a challenging topic for any professor to address – in terms of how to develop assignments in a way that minimizes the risk of plagiarism, how to determine if a student indeed plagiarized, and, if yes, what consequences the student should face for plagiarism.

First, we recommend that you review the Trinity College formal policy on intellectual honesty, which is outlined in the Student Handbook.

A 2013 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides a nice summary of the types of plagiarism and some of the resources available on the web for dealing with student plagiarism.

There are also many web resources that provide guidance on how to design assignments in a way that can minimize plagiarism. A great place to start is with “Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices.” We also recommend the following websites and articles that can help you understand the nuances of plagiarism and how to avoid and detect it:

Faculty should also consider how they will treat the use of generative AI in student writing and may wish to review further resources on this topic.

Archive of “Teaching Tips” Related to Evaluating Student Learning