Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning at Lebanon Valley College

Assessment & grades: Practice + feedback = learning. Testing + grading ≠ learning. Give students opportunities to try tasks and skills without worrying about grades. Provide feedback to help them do better – then you can grade an assignment which they should be prepared for.

When writing exam questions, make sure students aren’t unfairly cornered into regurgitating the exact answer you’re looking for. Sometimes questions are straightforward, as in 2+2=4. Many times you’d be surprised at 1) how they read the question differently, and 2) how many ways you could approach a certain question. I finally realized that when I had to explain to students “yes, but that’s not what I was looking for there”, I had created a dilemma.