Assessment provides evidence that learning has taken place.

The BIG Idea in a Nutshell
Connecting to Cognition
Designed to Engage
Digging Deeper (Optional)

Learner Centered Design

As the instructor, you are the expert in your topic. Oftentimes, your students may be unfamiliar with what you will be teaching and having clear objectives and assessments will help them understand what is expected of them and what they will be doing in your course. By “backwards-planning” your course, you can create a clear timeline for how your class will be structured, what you will be teaching and students will be learning, and how you will gather evidence of this learning. Especially in an online setting, clear alignment between course objectives and assessments is even more important since you do not have the ability to adjust things based on real-time, face-to-face feedback/input from your students.

Connecting to Cognition

In order for deeper learning to take place, students need to participate in activities and experiences that allow their brains to wrestle with new concepts and information. Students need continual opportunities to retrieve new information as well as feedback on their application of this new information. By providing these different facets of learning within your class, you allow students the opportunity to move beyond surface-level fact recall to long-lasting, deeper understanding and application of the college-level topics you are teaching.

Designed to Engage

Students will engage in deeper learning when they know what is expected of them, and assessments aligned to clear learning objectives will provide you with the evidence that they are engaging in this deeper learning or not, and what to do in response. While a course plan is like a map of where you will go over the course of a semester, your assessments serve as pit-stops to make sure everyone is still on board, and give you an opportunity to make small changes to the route.

Digging Deeper (Optional)

If you are interested in learning more about the cognitive sciences support for aligning assessment with your course objectives, please explore these resources:

Assessment: We Cannot Improve At Scale What We Cannot Measure by Maurice Elias, published in Edutopia

Linda Darling Hammond's TED Talk: Testing, Testing (approx. 10 minutes)