Quizzes, Exams, and Academic Integrity

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How do I assess students?
Designing Examinations and Quizzes
Designing Rubrics

How do I assess students?

Learning assessments fall into two broad categories:

Examinations and Accommodations (quizzes, mid-terms, and finals and related academic integrity issues)
Assignments with rubrics (research papers, group projects, explanatory lab reports, presentations, etc.)

For exams, use best practices for writing and scoring exams, being sure to create a scoring guide to show how many points to allocate for correct and/or partially correct answers. Additionally, ensure that you know what to do for students with exam accommodations.

For assignments, use grading rubrics to specify the expectations for the assignment and help keep grading consistent. Required elements of rubrics include grading criteria and points that students earn by meeting the grading criteria for the assignment.

View this page to learn how to support academic integrity

Designing Examinations and Quizzes

Design with learning goals in mind

When writing a quiz or exam question, consider the type of knowledge you want students to demonstrate. You may want some questions to test knowledge of facts. Other questions may require students to show how to begin a process. Questions that require more thinking than simple recall include questions asking students to apply a concept in a new context.

In each of these cases, you can use a more open-ended question (e.g., fill in the blank or short essay) or a multiple-choice question. Quiz/exam question design also requires consideration of item level of difficulty. A stratification of difficulty helps distinguish students who have learned deeply from students who have not.

We often think of multiple-choice exams as testing only rote memory. A skilled question writer can assess higher levels of thinking with multiple-choice items. The following resources, from experts across the field of education, are helpful when designing multiple-choice quizzes and exams.

Consult resources for creating quality multiple-choice exams

Use exam writing tips for constructing high-quality exams.

The wording and placement of exam items matter in creating a high-quality exam. For a clear discussion of what to pay attention to, see the following resources:

Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching’s Multiple Choice Test Question Guide
Multiple-Choice Item-Writing Rules (2-page guide)
Making Multiple Choice Tests More Effective PPT from testing expert, Linda Suskie

Use multiple-choice questions to address higher-order thinking.

Writing items that address more than memorized terminology will help you assess what students understand at deeper levels. For examples of what these items look like in a multiple-choice format, see the following resources:

Examples of Higher-Order Multiple Choice Items and Basics of Writing Tests, from 2008 testing workshop presentation* (see last 4 slides for examples)
Best Practices for High-Quality Exam Questions video* of 2018 workshop presented by testing expert, Hoi Suen, Penn State Professor Emeritus

Designing Rubrics

Design rubrics for consistency, clarity, and feedback

Rubrics help instructors:

Evaluate student work with consistency.
Make expectations for assignments clear.
Communicate students’ strengths and weaknesses.

A rubric supports consistency and fairness in grading as it standardizes the elements of an assignment that are graded. It shows the attainable tiers of performance.

Sharing rubrics along with assignments gives students up-front knowledge of the expectations for their work. Consider discussing the rubric prior to an assignment due date, to help students focus their efforts.

Ask students to pay attention to rubric scores and comments across multiple assignments. Students who notice patterns in areas of excellence or in areas for improvement are better able to make adjustments in learning strategies.

Examples of excellent rubrics appear at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) Value Rubric website. You will find detailed rubrics on analytical thinking, written communication, oral communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and more. Examples of rubrics from a College of IST course appear below in Figures 1–4.

Building rubrics in Canvas saves time in grading. You can integrate rubrics in Canvas with the SpeedGrader grading tool. This allows instructors and graders to show numerical scores and comments on the rubrics. For directions on how to create rubrics in Canvas, see rubrics in the Canvas Instructor’s Guide.

Choose a type of rubric for grading your assignment

There are four common types of rubrics, ranging from minimal guidance and feedback to detailed guidance and feedback. Use Checklist or Simple rubrics for low-stakes assignments; essay exam scoring guides; or small, rapid-feedback assignments done in class. Use Analytic or Holistic rubrics for larger assignments like research papers, group projects, lab reports, and presentations.

Checklists include the criteria for evaluation only. 

Figure 1 provides an example of a checklist rubric for an assignment where a student has to submit a portfolio. The only elements included in this rubric type are the criteria for evaluation—the things (skills, knowledge, etc.) that students must demonstrate. Students have either provided evidence or not. They earn points for how many things they have accomplished.

Checklist Rubric
Goal: Demonstrate depth of understanding the reading through application or analysis, with accuracy
Criteria	Presence of Criteria (X/O)
Reported facts accurately
Showed deep understanding through application or analysis

Figure 1. Evaluation criterion for a checklist rubric describing the things needed to complete the assignment

Simple Rubrics include criteria for evaluation and performance levels. 

The Simple Rubric shown in Figure 2 has two elements: a) criteria for evaluation and b) a scale to indicate the level of understanding or growth that is communicated by the student’s work. There is no further elaboration about how the grader determined the score that is awarded. This type of rubric is good for giving students some approximate feedback, but it wouldn’t be very helpful for final ratings of a large, significant project.

Simple Rubric
Goal: Demonstrate depth of understanding the reading through application or analysis, with accuracy
Criteria	Performance Levels
Criteria	Beginning	Developing	Accomplished
Accuracy	6	8	10
Depth of understanding	6	8	10

Figure 2. Simple Rubric contains information about the elements of the assignment being evaluated and an undefined 6 – 10 point scale.

Analytic Rubrics combine criteria for evaluation and levels of performance with a description.

Analytic Rubrics are the most common type of rubric used in the College of IST (see example in Figure 3). Similar to the Checklist and Simple rubrics, the Analytic rubric includes a) the criteria for evaluation; and like the Simple rubric, the Detailed rubric includes b) a scale to indicate performance levels. In addition, the Detailed rubric also has a description of each performance level. The student and the grader know what it means to get a low, middle, or high rating on each criterion, because there is a description in each cell.

Analytic Rubric
Goal: Demonstrate depth of understanding the reading through application or analysis, with accuracy
Criteria	Performance Levels
Criteria	6: Beginning	8: Developing	10: Accomplished
Accuracy	Somewhat accurate	Mostly accurate	Completely accurate
Depth of understanding	Basis knowledge of ideas	Able to apply ideas	Mature analysis of ideas

Figure 3. Analytic Rubric contains information about the elements of the assignment being evaluated, a scale for evaluation, and a description associated with each point along the scale.

Holistic Rubrics provide a scale of possible performance levels, along with a holistic description of the performance at that level.

The Holistic Rubric (see Figure 4) is similar to the Analytic rubric. Both include criteria for evaluation, a scale to indicate performance levels, and a description of each performance level. However, whereas the Analytic rubric separates out each evaluation criterion, the Holistic rubric lists all criteria together for a particular point on the performance scale, providing a holistic description of what it means to achieve the highest mark, middle marks, and the lowest mark.

Holistic Rubric
Goal: Demonstrate depth of understanding the reading through application or analysis, with accuracy
Criteria	Performance Levels
Demonstrated deep understanding through mature analysis of ideas, intriguing application of concepts, and completely accurate knowledge	Accomplished (18-20 points)
Demonstrated developing comprehension through clear application of ideas and mostly accurate knowledge	Developing (16-17 points)
Demonstrated basic, beginner level comprehension through clear explanations of ideas and mostly accurate knowledge	Beginning (12-15 points)

Figure 4. Holistic Rubric contains a holistic, summary description of the achievement that was reached at each of the points of the performance scale.