Valerie Khait (Psychology) – Transforming our teaching

A little more about your classes:

I teach undergraduate intro and major courses, classes ranging from 30-150 students, in-person mode of instruction.

The issue you’re addressing:

Adding more informal assessment to the courses and thinking about those assessments more deeply.

Tell us a bit more about your teaching innovation:

Incorporating more assessments geared at giving students opportunity to self-assess without a grade and to come back to what they’ve already worked on and improve on their previous work. Designing assessment to be more focused on progress and less on the exam grade.

A large letter A and an abundance of words around it encouraging self-assessment. — Assessment types that can help students get an A such as re-doing a task to assess mastery; encouraging them to try other ways of presenting projects than just an essay; having students write their own exam questions; engaging in more peer review to keep them involved throughout the whole semester.

Your initial takeaways:

Students are less afraid of exams but are still falling back on writing essays. Might need to ban them!

Suggested “podcast pairing”:

Dr. Breanna Boppre on “Alternative Assessment: Creative Ways to Use Technology to Engage Students and Assess Learning” (Lecture Breakers podcast)

Transcript “Alternative Assessment: Creative Ways to Use Technology to Engage Students and Assess Learning”

Emily Dosmar on “Ungrading: The Misconceptions, the Research, and the Strategies” (Faculty Focus Live podcast)

Transcript “Ungrading: The Misconceptions, the Research, and the Strategies”