Planning for assessment

Assessments can be used in a variety of ways:

• Pre-assessments - used to identify learner's existing knowledge and skills at the start of a course.
• Formative assessments - used throughout the course to track a learner's progress and provide constructive feedback.  They are often not graded and may involve peer-to-peer assessments or self-assessments.
• Summative assessments - used to evaluate the progress a learner has made towards the learning outcomes.  They may be based on performance in an activity, through an exam, or by the learner creating a product demonstrating their learning.

• Providing clear instructions will improve students' success in their assessments.  Consider developing and sharing a marking rubric with students early on so they have a clear understanding of what's expected of them.  
• Providing flexibility (e.g., deadlines) and choice (e.g., topics and format) can increase student engagement, buy-in and ultimately success.  
• Unlike traditional assessments, which tend to measure how well a student has acquired specific knowledge or skills, authentic assessments, measure students' proficiency by asking them to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of what they have learned.  Read more about reducing disposability in assessments.   
• Assessments help instructors monitor, measure and document the progress of each participant's learning toward the course outcomes.  Learning activities should give students opportunities to engage with course content and prepare them to be successful in the assessments.  Consider using an alignment table template (like this one) when planning your assessments.   
• As of April 2021 instructors are permitted to modify the assessment format and grading structure presented in the course outline as you see fit.  
• As per YukonU's Academic Regulations (5.02), students should have 30% of the total course grade assigned before the withdrawal date in any given term.  You can find that day HERE.

• Learning Outcome and Assessment Alignment Table template
  
• YukonU's Assessment Planner
• Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics
• Reduced Disposability (from the ACE Framework)
• Flexible Deadlines (from the ACE Framework)
• Student Design and Choice (from the ACE Framework)
• Rethinking Fairness (from the ACE Framework)