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What if I told you about this magical teaching practice that, done even once, produces large improvements in student final exam scores[1], helps narrow the grade gap between poorly prepped and highly prepped first year college students[2], and might even result in more positive course reviews[3],[4]? What if I also told you this magical teaching practice is something you already know how to do? What if I told you, the secret to increasing your students’ success and  overall satisfaction is……more TESTS!?
Okay…well to be fair, it’s a little more nuanced than that. While adding just one test to a class does indeed improve final exam scores, it turns out that more frequent, graded exercises in general improve learning outcomes for students [2],[5]. Even better – if these exercises are low stakes, they can improve learning outcomes without increasing student anxiety [4],[6].
We often view testing as an unpleasant but necessary way to assess student performance. It may be time for us to instead view testing as a useful teaching tool and to implement an assessment system that maximizes the potential learning benefits. In this post I will discuss the important known benefits of frequent, low stakes assessments as well as some practical tips for how to maximize these benefits without adding undue stress to your life or the lives of your students.
Benefit #1: “Thinking about thinking”
Testing can improve a student’s metacognition, or their ability to “think about thinking.”  A good metacognitive thinker understands how their thought processes work and can pay attention to and change these processes [7]. A student with strong metacognitive skills can therefore more successfully monitor, evaluate, and improve their learning compared to students lacking these skills. Unfortunately, many students struggle with metacognition and must contend with “illusions of mastery” (or thinking they understand a subject better than they actually do).  Self-testing is a good way to prevent illusions of mastery, but many students do not incorporate self-testing into their studying, instead electing more passive modes of exam preparation such as rereading texts[8]. Incorporating more testing into the curriculum forces students into the position of making mistakes and receiving feedback, allowing them to frequently measure their learning in relation to expectations and adjust accordingly. Again, note that providing feedback is an essential part of this process.
Benefit #2: Practice Remembering
Testing can improve a student’s long term memory of information presented in class by forcing students to recall what they’ve learned through a cognitive process called active retrieval. Active retrieval strengthens neural pathways important for retrieving memories, allowing these memories to be more easily accessed in the future.
 
While any sort of retrieval practice is useful, it is most beneficial when it is effortful, spaced, and interleaved.  An example of effortful retrieval practice includes testing which forces students to provide the answers (i.e. Short answer and fill in the blank questions as opposed to multiple choice). More effortful retrieval also occurs with spaced and interleaved practice.
Spaced practice is testing that occurs after enough time has elapsed for some (but not complete) forgetting to occur (i.e. Present the information and then wait a couple months, days, or even just until the end of class to test students on it). Interleaved practice incorporates different but related topics and problem types, as opposed to having students practice and master one type at a time (e.g. cumulative testing where you mix problems from different units together). Interleaved practice can help students learn to focus on the underlying principles of problems and to discriminate between problem types, leading to more complex mental models and a deeper understanding of the relationships between ideas[6].
How to Implement More Assessments (Without Losing Your Mind)
So, all you have to do now is come up with a ton of quiz and test questions and free up a bunch of class time for assessments! Don’t forget you also need to grade all of these! After all, feedback is an important part of the process, and frequent (even low stakes) grading has the added benefits of enhancing student motivation, attentiveness, and attendance.I know what you busy teachers (ie. all of you) out there are thinking….“Your ”magical” teaching practice is starting to sound like a hugely effective pain in my butt.”
 
Don’t give up on me now though! There are some fairly simple ways to add more assessments to your curriculum. Furthermore, you should be able to do this sans student rebellion because these assessments are low-stakes. Frequent, low-stake assessments as opposed to infrequent, high-stakes assessments actually decrease student anxiety overall because no single test is a make it or break it event. In fact, several teachers have reported a large increase in positive student evaluations after restructuring their classes in this way[3],[4],[6]!
 
Below I lay out some tips for getting the most out of shifting your assessment practices while maintaining both your own and your students’ sanity:
1) Know that “effortful” testing is not always necessary
While effortful testing is best for retrieval practice, even basic, easily graded recognition tests such multiple choice questions still offer benefits, such as helping students remember basic (but important!) information[6],[9].
2) Create different assessment questions
You can also make assessments more effortful by creating questions that engage higher cognitive processes. Now you can sit back, relax, and indulge in one of my personal favorite pastimes (watching student brains explode) without the stressful grading!
3) Make use of educational technologies to ease your grading
For instance, clicker tests are a quick way to test students and allow you to provide feedback for the class all at once.
4) Make assessments into games
If your students need a morale boost, make a quiz into a trivia game and give winning groups candy. Some good old competition and Pavlovian conditioning may make students reassess their view of testing.
5) Assess participation
Doing something as simple as a participation grade will still provide students with incentive without overburdening them or yourself. For instance, this type of grading would work in conjunction with #3.
6) Keep graded assessments predictable
Making assessments predictable as opposed to utilizing pop quizzes helps students feel at ease.6 Furthermore, if they students KNOW an assessment is coming, they are more likely to study and pay attention.
7) Find ways to revisit old material in your assessments
Making assessments cumulative is an effective way to space out your review of material and has the added benefit of making problems interleaved and effortful, all of which maximize retrieval practice[6].
8) Have students reflect on mistakes
You can help students develop metacognitive skills by giving them opportunities to reflect upon and correct their mistakes on assessments. For instance, have students take a quiz and then discuss their answers/thinking with their classmates before receiving feedback. You can also give students opportunities to create keys to short answer questions and grade their own and several (anonymous) classmates’ answers. This will allow them to think through what makes an answer complete and effective.
9) Break large assessments into small ones
Instead of creating new assessments, break up large ones into multiple, lower-stakes assessments. For example, consider replacing big tests with several quizzes. Consider scaffolding large projects such as independent research projects and term papers. Ask for outlines, lists of references, graphs, etc. along the course of the semester before the final project is due. This might cause more work for you in the short term but can help prevent complete disasters at the end of the semester, which can be time consuming.
10) Utilize short daily or weekly quizzes
If you don’t want to adjust a big project/test or lose class time by adding time-consuming assessments, consider adding short daily or weekly quizzes. These grades can add up to equal one test grade. One could consider dropping the lowest score(s) but allowing no make ups to reduce logistical issues.
 
These are only a few of the many strategies one can use to transition to a frequent, low-stakes assessment system. What are your experiences with low stakes assessments?  Have you made use of any which seem particularly effective in enhancing student learning?
 
Related Reading:
Much of the information about the benefits of testing is from:
Brown, P.C., Roediger III, H.L., McDaniel, M.A. (2014). Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Jones, S. A Case for More Testing: The Benefits of Frequent, Low-Stakes Assessments. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

For the last few weeks, we have been offering time-saving tips for delivering feedback to individual students and to larger groups as they work on projects for your classes. But we suspect that now, since the semester is over, you likely will not be giving your students much formative feedback.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use this time to improve the efficiency of your feedback processes. Now that the semester is over, you have a great opportunity to do some forward thinking about next semester. And, if you plan it right, we think you can actually provide your students with more feedback, while spending less time delivering that feedback.
In this post, we detail the design of a semester and feedback plan to maximize the amount of feedback students receive on their work and minimize the time we spend writing to students.
Designing Semester and Feedback Plans
Although designing a semester plan for your class seems like a daunting task, it allows you to frontload scheduling due dates, giving you more time during the actual semester to flesh out the specifics of your course (like assigned readings and class activities) as it progresses week to week, assignment to assignment. To create this kind of plan, we are providing you with starting points that focus on two essential functions of your classroom: what you ask students to produce, and what kind of feedback they will need for those products. By creating a rough timeline of assignments and feedback, you can avoid overbooking your schedule (and yourself), and respond to students more efficiently.
Designing a Semester Plan

Make a list of your major assignments. When will you introduce an assignment to your class? What are the goals of those assignments? How long will these assignments take for students to complete?
Make a list of your minor assignments. What smaller activities does the class need to complete to support that major assignment? How long will those take? Will they require feedback from you, their peers, the class as a whole (hey we have plenty of resources to help you with this btw)? Where will these varieties of feedback be most beneficial for students in your class?
Identify places where students need feedback. Do your students need your feedback on one major assignment before they can complete the next one? What goals do the minor projects support?
Consider your own schedule. Now is also a good time to remember to plan your semester timeline in accordance with your own academic life–are there weeks you will attend conferences? If you are a graduate student, when are your final projects due? When are your exams? Maybe avoid scheduling due dates around this time.

Designing a Feedback Plan

Schedule products. After you’ve listed your major and minor assignments and the amount of time they’ll take, begin placing them on a timeline.
Identify goals. Based on the overarching goals for a unit or a semester, which goals does each of these assignments support? Articulating these in advance will help guide how you design feedback prompts in the future.
Identify kinds of feedback students can receive. Knowing that there are a variety of ways to respond to student work, identify specific kinds of feedback students can receive to enhance their performance along project goals.
Distribute feedback moments across time, and distribute labor across people. This is a point we emphasized in our earlier posts — don’t plan all your feedback to come at once. If you distribute the work of feedback across time, students will receive more — and more focused — responses, and will likely absorb more of their feedback.
Distribute the labor of giving feedback across people. Students will receive more feedback (and, we believe, will learn more) if you give them the responsibility of responding to their colleagues at critical moments in a project.

Check out a model feedback plan based on a unit Matt used in his class in the Spring 2015 semester.
 
As you can see, with this feedback plan, students receive feedback throughout the whole process of producing their research papers and projects, and get feedback on every minor product that leads up to the major products. The feedback is also designed so that students receive feedback on each of the goals for the Research Unit.
 
However, this feedback plan is designed to minimize the amount of time Matt spends writing to students. During the whole unit, he will only need to write to students two times (Week 3 and Week 7), and might write a total of 3 paragraphs to each student. But, he will also offer individuals feedback through verbal feedback during scheduled class time and in individual conferences (Week 8 and Week 11), and provide verbal feedback to the whole class on several occasions (Week 2, Week 6, Week 7).
 
While not all teachers have the luxury to control all parts of their assignments or schedule, we hope and believe the strategy of developing a Feedback Plan is flexible enough to work for many teachers.
 
We’d Love to Hear from You: What methods do you use to schedule your assignments? What projects take up the most time during your semester? What do you do when the timing of a unit is too fast or slow? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Gomes, M. & Noel Turner, H. Lighten Your Load: Planning for More Efficient Feedback Next Semester. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

We are writing teachers, and in the world of writing, feedback is HOLY. But does that mean we love spending every waking hour responding to student work? Indeed it does not! But because we’re writing teachers, we see lots of writing, and think a lot about how to devise ways of making our lives easier.
 
In this post, and in others, we’ll discuss ways to reduce the amount of concentrated time you spend providing feedback by creatively harnessing classroom resources. We’ve found it essential to distribute the labor of providing feedback across time and people. In other words, don’t do it all at once, and don’t do it all yourself. This week, we offer ways for providing individual feedback once a project is under way.
Teacher-to-Student Feedback: Four Ways to Narrow Your Parameters
Both of us know that sitting with a stack of 50 student papers and no strategy other than “get through them” can be daunting. So, what can you do to strategize?
Do you offer as much feedback as you can muster? Do you let feedback emerge organically from your first read of a project? While there are times when this can be a pedagogically useful approach (usually at the beginning of a project), we’ve found there are more efficient ways to respond. Here are some strategies we’ve used to narrow parameters & get work done:

Ask students to craft one question about their work, and use that question to guide your feedback. Since we teach writing, a question we receive from a student might look something like this: “Does the organization of my paper make sense?” Students’ questions limit the scope of our responses, as long as we insist on only responding to only those questions.
Craft your own question about students’ work, and use that question to guide your feedback. Specific questions can often provide useful feedback (for example, “how well does evidence support the thesis?”). In Matt’s experience, the more specific the question, the less time he spends thinking about how to respond.
Have students identify a specific outcome or assessment criterion they are concerned with, and respond only to that concern. When Matt uses this strategy, the question becomes “What does this student need to do in order to perform better along specific project goals or assessment criteria? What do they need to do to become a more reflective writer (project goal) or to organize their claims effectively (criterion)?” This strategy has the added benefit of prodding him to specifically elaborate on his understanding of outcomes or assessment criteria.
You can identify a specific outcome or assessment criteria too. Maybe you only want to reply to students’ engagement with previous literature — maybe responding to only that one thing will be most pedagogically useful. We get it, it works, it saves time.

Student-to-Student Feedback: Four Ways to Redistribute the Labor of Response
Like we promised earlier, it’s entirely possible to distribute the labor of responding across a class. For example, many of you are probably familiar with peer review, and some of you may even use peer review. Here are a few recommendations we have for facilitating student-to-student feedback activities:

Model feedback for students. Maybe they’ve given feedback to their peers before, maybe they haven’t. Show students what good feedback looks like to you. We like soliciting work from previous and current students and modeling in class how we would respond to that student’s work.
Create effective feedback structures. While some students might do great with open-ended prompts for offering feedback, in general, that feedback will only improve with well-structured prompts you’ve designed.
Do it regularly. Don’t just talk about student-to-student feedback once at the beginning of a course and pray that will be enough to turn them into professional responders. Instead, return regularly to the activity of offering feedback, and talk openly about what kinds of feedback will be most useful at various points in a project.
Call “peer review” something else. Heather likes to call it “feedback.” When she has called the activity “peer review,” she has found students are more likely to gravitate toward line editing, grammar, or what folks in writing studies call “lower-order concerns.” When she stopped calling it “peer review” and started calling it “feedback,” students were more likely to offer “higher-order concerns,” focusing their attention on organization, quality of analysis, ability to synthesize literature, and strength of arguments.

We’d Like to Know: What time-saving methods have you used to respond to your classes once a project is under way? What methods of individual response have you found most effective for your students’ learning? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
 

 
Originally posted at “Inside Teaching MSU” (site no longer live): Gomes, M. & Noel Turner, H. Lighten Your Load: Eight Ways to Make Individual Feedback More Efficient. inside teaching.grad.msu.edu

I once tried to copy over content from a text document and it didn't drop in well. The spacing was weird. Additionally, the bulleting feature didn't show right when I published the article and the heading feature did not work. So I am testing this now. First, let's test the headers: 
This is a 'header 1'
let's see how this works. Headers are important for accessibility. 
This is a 'header 2'
Why is it important? They help assistive technologies read the content and sets up the ability to use functions that enable users to advance through the materials in helpful ways.
This is a 'header 3'
Imagine if there is a 60 page paper. What many of us are used to papers and publications that have section headers, titles, subtitles, and the lot. If I am seeing impaired, I won't be able to 'see' those features of the piece. But, assistive technologies plus the use of built in features like headers, allows readers to navigate through the text via the titles and subtitles (depending on how it is set up...the assistive technology that I use reads out the lines and gives me to choice to go to the next and also navigate through the various header levels). Now onto the bullets. Bullets and numbers are important. I like lists. Lists can be helpful when I want to present materials in a certain way, but often when you copy content over from somewhere else (and if that content already has bullets), it will not paste in correctly. So while you might 'see' bullets it might actually be a series of spaces followed by a special character dot and an assistive technology might read "space space space space space space space dot" and then read the content after the bullet...and this is rather annoying to listen to. So let's see how the site handles bullets:

this is a bullet
this is another bullet
this is one more bullet
this is the last bullet
wait you know what, I don't want to be a bullet. I want to be a number.


Ah ha! Now I am a number. 
Wait...what is happening, now I am a different number. 
Ahhhhhhh [identity crisis looming]

Phew...normal text again.