In response to the national excitement around course embedded assessment, various campuses and state-wide college systems engaged in faculty development in assignment prompt development drawn from the literature focused on creating assignments for the classroom. However, while the literature is replete with frameworks, templates, guides,…

Labor-based grading: for many instructors in the world of distance learning this is a new concept, yet it is one that is rapidly growing in acceptance and popularity. First introduced in 1993 by English professor Peter Elbow, the premise of labor-based grading is that instructors weigh assignments based on how much labor--how much…

Effective science instruction involves opportunities for all students to do science, including engaging in the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices through inquiry-based learning. Many students with learning disabilities have the accommodation of shortened or reduced assignments in their Individualized Educational Programs to allow them equal…

The challenge of teaching communication skills outlined in Goal 4 of the "APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major" is that it occurs in many contexts and the communicator must adapt the form to match both context and purpose. We created a taxonomy of dimensions and kinds of communication that represents the various contexts…

This paper describes a framework for educating future evaluators and users of evaluation through community-engaged, experiential learning courses and offers practical guidance about how such a class can be structured. This approach is illustrated via a reflective case narrative describing how an introductory, undergraduate class at a mid-size,…

EXCEL spreadsheet algorithms were developed at Villanova University to efficiently and consistently retrieve information from ASPEN® flowsheets and used for grading work in senior design. The challenge is to take a large volume of data that is in the stream and unit operations reports and quickly and consistently calculate a list of key grading…

Mastery grading is an approach to grading in which students are assigned term grades based on whether they meet certain enumerated objectives, rather than accumulating points. In this note, I describe my experiences using a mastery system, which I call techniques grading, which applies the insights behind the standards-based and specifications…

Equity-minded assessment refers to a set of practices that collectively serve to understand, prioritize, and optimize the learning experiences and outcomes of student learners, particularly students from communities who have been historically marginalized or underserved in higher education. The scholarship on equity-minded assessment (Montenegro…

This innovation proposes an alternative to the traditional exam/test model. Many faculty members have likely struggled with the need to objectively assess their students and the push back they get from students in administering such assessments. The current article outlines a win-win solution that allows professors to objectively assess student…

Distance learning is something many physical educators never thought they would have to do, given the practical and philosophical contradictions inherent in teaching and learning movement-based content through a computer. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced most physical education teachers to transition to distance learning modalities. Questions…

This paper describes an approach to use automated assessments in online courses. Open edX platform is used as the online courses platform. The new assessment type uses Scilab as learning and solution validation tool. This approach allows to use automated individual variant generation and automated solution checks without involving the course…

This practice-sharing piece outlines two main approaches to flexible summative assessment schemes, including for each approach one example from my practice and another from a published study. The bento approach offers the same assessments to all students but a variety of grade weighting schemes, allowing students to change weighting during the…

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council." Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed…

To promote the development of greater creativity in my students' design work, I created an online tool--called Reflective Inquiry (RI)--that accompanies all of my open-ended assignments and that I require students to submit with each project. The RI is composed of a series of prompts that students must respond to, almost daily, to explain and…

While primary and secondary teachers are legally required to adhere to inclusion guidelines for students experiencing disabilities, instructors in higher education have had more leeway to operate under a more traditional paradigm which can marginalize rather than include students in the classroom. Furthermore, students experience exclusion for…