C8 - Self Assessment

Effective learning, particularly online learning, requires that students frequently reflect on their progress, make and adjust goals and learning strategies, and identify areas for improvement. It's important that students understand which behaviors help them learn and proactively apply those strategies. This awareness and knowledge of one’s personal learning process involves increased metacognition—a key practice supporting students’ self-regulated learning.

Many students might not know how to do this—or even that they should—so intentionally including self-assessment and reflection opportunities is very useful.

Self-assessment options might include reflection after a major assignment, clearest/muddiest point reflections, and/or practice quizzes. You can also slip a self-assessment question or two into existing quizzes/assignments.

It's the feedback-from-you aspect that is crucial here. The purpose is to help students see where to focus their attention on learning, particularly if they're off-track in some way. Keep in mind, students don't always know when they're off-track so simply asking them to get in touch if they have questions wouldn't achieve alignment for this element.

If offering knowledge checks or practice quizzes, you can use SpeedGrader (or set up customized responses in a Canvas quiz) to provide some kind of targeted feedback for incorrect responses. Just indicating right/wrong isn't sufficient. The reason? Studies have shown that merely indicating whether the answer was right or wrong had little effect on retention. But when corrective feedback was provided for an incorrect answer, a roughly five-fold increase in the chance of successful recall­­ occurred. That’s pretty significant!

Suggestions for implementing a self-assessment opportunity

1. Add an assignment that gives students one or two question prompts (required length of the answer can depend on how often the self-assessments are done).
   
   
2. Add one or two reflective questions to some of your existing quizzes.
   
   
3. Develop a short graded survey, given around Week 3, 4 or 5 (and, ideally, again at Week 7, 8 or 9 and again in Week 11 or 12), with a list of self-assessment questions. (These could be designed as T/F, multiple-choice, and/or multiple answer questions.)
   • I’m doing my part to learn as much as possible in this course. [T/F]
   • I am currently earning the grade I want in this class. [T/F]
     If not, what is one thing you can do to improve your performance? [short answer]
   • On average, the time I’ve spent per week studying for this class has been: [multiple choice]
     • More than 6 hours
     • 5-6 hours
     • 3-4 hours
     • 1-2 hours
   • I consistently do the reading and turn in my assignments on time. [T/F]
   • I’m confident I understand the following concepts. [multiple answers, “check all that apply”] Include a list of 4-7 concepts taught up to this point
     

4. Send out a weekly (or every other week) announcement asking students to respond to two questions:
   1. In what ways was I successful in this week’s course activities?
   2. What could I do to be even more successful next week?
      
      
5. Include a short-answer question on the mid-term asking students to describe two things they could do to improve their performance in the course. If a student seems unclear what strategies will help them be more successful, you can offer appropriate feedback relevant to their situation/skills.

Examples of Self-Assessment questions for #1 and #2 above:

• A strategy that helped you learn in this class was. . .
• One thing you’d do differently to be more successful in this class is. . .
• What are the three things you’ve learned so far in this course? Give brief explanations of each.
• How well have you been managing your time in this class? How could you manage it more efficiently?
• What are other students doing in discussions that you like and would like to incorporate in your own discussion responses?
• When you were feeling challenged in understanding a new concept, what did you do to get “unstuck”?
• What do you find easy about learning [specific course topic]?
• What do you find most difficult about learning [specific course topic]?
• What do you think is a fair grade for the work you’ve done in the course so far? Explain why.
• What is one thing you are doing really well in this course?
• What can you, as a student, do to improve your chances of success in this course?
• What is one thing you need to improve? What is your plan for making that improvement?

[More examples following this page]

Where to Look

Look in modules for stand-alone assignments or practice quizzes and look in existing quizzes/assignments for self-assessment-type questions.  

What to Look For

Self-assessment can show up in a variety of ways. Keep in mind that low stakes practice quizzes that allow for multiple attempts but only include right/wrong feedback do not qualify (guidance/feedback for incorrect responses should be provided). 

Two things must be true for alignment:

• A method of providing instructor feedback must be built into the self-assessment activity. (In other words, a Canvas page asking students to reflect on X but with no ability to submit for instructor review would not qualify.)
  NOTE: Indicating students should "contact me if you have questions" does not qualify as a self-assessment activity
• There should be a minimum of three opportunities in a full 16-week course; two is sufficient for courses that are eight weeks or less.