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Category: Quality Assessment

March 31, 2025

Conestoga’s Evaluation of Student Learning Policy is changing: Here’s what you need to know

Reading Time: 6 minutesStarting September 1st, 2025, the updated Evaluation of Student Learning Policy will bring changes to how assessments are structured in courses. These updates aim to ensure that assessments are both meaningful and manageable for students and faculty.  The highlights: The intention of these changes is to provide time between assessments and promote effective assessment strategies during Conestoga’s 14-week semester.  This post describes a...
Categories Quality Assessment Comments: 0
March 19, 2025

The Exam Question Manager: A New Tool for Faculty

Reading Time: 6 minutesWell, they could certainly do it all by hand, manually tracking every change from one document to another, and all for the sake of reordering and reformatting the questions that they’ve already spent so long developing. This process is not only tedious, but it’s prone to errors that can quickly snowball into more work for you down the line. Fortunately,...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
March 12, 2025

Designing Asynchronous Assessments

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen designing your asynchronous course using backward design, start by clearly defining the learning outcomes students should achieve each week. Then, determine the most appropriate assessments to evaluate their progress. Your ultimate goal is to ensure students can effectively demonstrate their learning and meet the intended outcomes. In an asynchronous environment, assessments must be thoughtfully designed to accommodate self-directed learners,...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Online Asynchronous/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
March 11, 2025

Understanding Multiple Choice Test Item Analysis Report from DataLink

Reading Time: 7 minutesAs faculty members, we all strive to create fair, effective, and meaningful assessments. But once a test is administered and the results are in, we’re often left wondering: Did my test truly measure student learning as I intended? If you’ve ever opened your test item analysis report from DataLink and felt overwhelmed by the numbers, statistics, and unfamiliar terms, you’re...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Grading & Grading Tools/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
February 25, 2025

Scaffolding: An Overview

Reading Time: 6 minutesBy Dr. Ada Sharpe, Dr. David Baidoo-Anu, and Dr. Monsurat Raji. Defining scaffolding  In education, “scaffolding” refers to the use of assessments and instructional strategies to progressively build students’ capacity in completing a task. A scaffolded approach provides structure to increase the complexity of learning tasks over time while reducing the amount of support provided to the learner. Such an...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Assessment Implementation/Effective Teaching/Lesson & Course Planning/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
January 29, 2025

Assessments with Purpose: Leveraging Test Blueprints to Organize Question Libraries and Optimize Question Pool Selection

Reading Time: 5 minutesAs educators, we all know how challenging it can be to design or select assessment questions for our courses. Whether it’s for quizzes, mid-terms, or final exams, deciding what content to include, how to format questions, and ensuring alignment with learning outcomes—while also maintaining equity—can feel overwhelming. If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Research shows that many faculty...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Assessment Quick Guides/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
January 27, 2025

Evaluating Professionalism in College Courses

Reading Time: 4 minutesThis post was collaboratively written by Nancy Nelson and Joel Beaupré, and revised by Jesslyn Wilkinson, Marcia Chaudet, Nasreen Sultana, and Ada Sharpe Background  Many college educators aspire to teach, reinforce, and assess professionalism in their courses, though they may approach this objective in different ways, using different language. The grading category of ‘professionalism’ generally relates to skills and attitudes that are transferrable, non-technical, and essential to many workplaces. Separate from marks for content knowledge, professionalism marks...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Grading & Grading Tools/Quality Assessment
January 9, 2025

Navigating Religious Accommodation Requests

Reading Time: 7 minutesBy: Dr. Sara Kafashan and Dr. Lauren Spring, with Sandrine Uwimana  Some faculty may feel caught off guard if/when student requests for religious accommodations come their way. When navigating such religious accommodation requestions, it is imperative for Conestoga faculty to not only adhere to Conestoga’s Religious Holy Day and Spiritual Observance Policy and Procedure, but also the Ontario Human Rights...
Categories Effective Teaching/Inclusive Assessment/Inclusive Teaching/Lesson & Course Planning/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
November 20, 2024

Fostering Positive Conceptions of Assessment Among Students

Reading Time: 8 minutesThe way students perceive assessments can significantly influence their engagement and overall experience in your course (Barnes et al, 2017). For many, assessments are seen as judgments of their worth rather than opportunities to improve their learning (Baidoo-Anu, 2023; Brown & Hirschfeld, 2008). How often have you observed students becoming disengaged or unmotivated as assessments approach? Now, imagine the possibility...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Assessment Implementation/Inclusive Assessment/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
November 13, 2024

From Traditional to Transformative: Practicing Student-Centered Assessments in Contemporary Classrooms 

Reading Time: 5 minutesBy Dr. Monsurat Raji, Assessment of Learning Consultant In today’s rapidly evolving educational landscape, you could better support your students by reassessing and enhancing your approaches to student assessment. Traditional assessments, often limited to tests, superficial learning, and rote memorization, fail to capture the full spectrum of student learning and capabilities. You can better support your students’ growth, learning, and motivation...
Categories Assessment Design & Development/Inclusive Assessment/Quality Assessment Comments: 0
October 10, 2024

Is it Time to Refresh My Rubric? A Checklist When Your Rubric Needs a Tune-Up 

Reading Time: 3 minutesDo you have a rubric that you’ve been seeing a lot of lately? Perhaps there’s one rubric you’ve been using to grade multiple submissions this semester and noticed that it isn’t quite as smooth as you’d like.  Grading with a rubric oftentimes gives rise to observations about its limitations: you might notice, for example, that students are struggling in a...
Categories Grading & Grading Tools/Quality Assessment/Reflective Practice Comments: 0
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