Exams and quizzes have been part of higher education for centuries. It’s not easy to break old habits. But they have well-known weaknesses that make them hard to recommend in a pandemic situation.
Whenever I advise someone on assessment, I always start with the question, “What do you want to know?” The same question makes a lot of sense when thinking about course evaluations and midterm evaluations. While most instructors don’t have control over final course evaluations (I suppose the idea is that the questions asked are what administrators want to know), we by and large do have control over the questions we ask on midterm evaluations. Richard Talbert, chair of mathematics at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, has an elaborate system for tracking student perceptions over a whole course, but the questions he uses would be great for any kind of mid-course check-up. The statements he asks students to reflect on are…
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