Course Assessments

Step 4: Choose tools and strategies for course assessments and have faculty teaching your gateway, mid-curriculum, and Capstone/senior courses agree on them.

The list of assessment tools and strategies included is intended to provide you with suggested models for implementing course-level assessment.  As described in Step 3, if faculty members agree on both the types of assessment to be implemented within various sections of a course and across the gateway, mid-curriculum, and Capstone/senior-level courses, then your assessment data will be all the more consistent and informative.

Do your chosen courses rely on:	Then a sound assessment tool is:
Writing (including a culminating thesis) or oral presentations?	Rubrics, of which UNR Assessment offer many models (LINK) and which can be shared with students ahead of time. In order to save time and energy, rubrics can include both an assessment scale (0-4 is recommended) and a grading scale.
Tests to cover discipline-specific material	Common questions, or at least questions designed with a common agenda to measure student mastery of, e.g., core ideas, principles, or analytical skills
Knowledge retained from pre-requisites or complicated material that the student must retain going forward in the program	A pre- and post-test (ungraded or not) that measures that retention
Retention and/or development of experiential learning or values important to thinking in your discipline	A pre- and post-survey that collects student input on these experiences and values. The post-survey can be administered as an addendum on UNR's course evaluations, and the same software can be used to disseminate the pre-survey, if desired.
Complicated lectures or the introduction of a large amount of material	So-called 'muddiest point' surveys that ask the students to identify in a given week or at the end of a given unit in the course to identify specific concepts, methods, etc. that remain unclear to them.
Other good assessment tools are professional, standardized examinations (if expected in your discipline), course evaluations, and alumni surveys.