Design effective assessment tasks

Tracking the student’s process for a large assignment promotes deeper learning and improves the quality of student work because it provides multiple opportunities for feedback on different aspects of their work. This type of scaffolding also helps students get started on complex assignments early and ensures they are on track throughout. As a result, they will be less likely to feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the task and less tempted to cut corners. 

There are a variety of ways to build a process approach in your assessment. You can ask students to submit evidence of their information gathering and planning or have staged assessments wherein students submit partially completed work prior to final submission.

You can decide whether to simply collect evidence of student work throughout the process, provide formative, non-graded feedback to students at each collection stage, or to attribute grades to student work as collected. The milestones you choose can be evidence of progress (i.e. research question, list of sources) used to develop metacognition (i.e. one page reflection) or can be parts of the larger assignment (i.e. bibliography).

See an example from Dartmouth University of a research assignment broken down into discrete steps.

Another means to build success with smaller tasks, or scaffold assignments, is to continually raise the bar. For example, if you require regular reading summaries or responses, you can scaffold these by assigning progressively more complex and/or abstract readings. Similarly, if assignments focus on problems or different kinds of tasks, you can increase the task difficulty and complexity with each assignment. For example, you could increase the level of thinking required in successive assignments from summarizing a reading, to analyzing it, to finally evaluating it.

Presented in no particular order

• Make it known to students which of the course’s learning outcomes will be assessed in the assignment and what the assessment criteria are (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2016). 
  • This ensures that all students understand the expectations and requirements of an assignment, regardless of their backgrounds or abilities. Learn more about assessment criteria and transparency as inclusive practices.

• Create clear assignment descriptions, including the learning students will be applying (explaining course concepts, investigating course concepts, challenging course concepts, etc.) and reference the course content (lectures, chapters, class activities) that will help students complete the assignment.
  • This helps students understand how the assignment relates to the course material, providing a clear roadmap for the completion of work. Including course concepts in assignment descriptions can help students grasp the underlying principles and theories they must apply. Also, ensuring students understand the purpose and objective of an assignment motivates them to delve deeper into the course topic and develop a more comprehensive understanding.

• Provide choices and multiple options for assignments, including choice between different topics and choice between different formats of assignment (oral presentation, podcast, game, poem, comic, video. etc.), as much as possible.
  • This allows students to choose assignments that align with their strengths, interests, learning preferences and abilities (Waterfield & West, 2008). This practice also reinforces the notion that students are in control of their learning and can be trusted to know the best way to express their understanding, positioning instructors as facilitator and supporter of learning. As an inclusive practice, it can also reduce the number of individual adjustments to assessments (Tai et al, 2022). 

• Design flexibility into assessment tasks regarding where, when and how an assignment is completed (Killam et al, 2024).
  • This supports learner variability and is in keeping with Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

• Adopt self-assessment and student reflection as a component of assignment grading.
  • This encourages students to gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and challenges. Promoting opportunities for students to express in their own words their needs and experiences helps instructors identify and address any barriers to learning and provide tailored support based on student reflections. This also emphasizes the role of self-reflection in learning, including reflection on how one is learning and how they are impacting the learning of others (Centre for Teaching & Learning, 2023).

• Design timed assessments such as take-home or in-person exams so that students can complete them in less than the allotted time.
  • This allows students who encounter obstacles when reading, writing, processing or recalling information to demonstrate their learning without undue anxiety due to time constraints. It can also decrease the need for accommodations for students who encounter the above-mentioned obstacles.