The benefits: Altringer’s research shows that “an important differentiator of success and failure is interpersonal relationships on teams.” Her targeted approach to building relational effectiveness creates longer-lasting impact than giving feedback to teams... Read more about Applying human-centered design processes to build successful teams
Advocating for developing students’ “evaluative judgment” to make decisions about the quality of their own and others’ work, this article suggests refinements to common practices such as self-assessment, peer assessment, feedback, rubrics, and the use of exemplars.
This synthesis of research on assessment feedback in higher education courses features 12 pragmatic recommendations for instructors and a “feedback landscape” framework.
An experiment found that students wring their own multiple-choice or short-essay exam questions increased their engagement with the content, decreased stress, and nearly eliminated cheating.
A meta-analysis of 21 studies concluded that using assessment rubrics for formative learning can be effective for improving performance and self-regulation by increasing transparency, reducing anxiety, and encouraging reflection.
Howell Jackson, James S. Reid Jr. Professor of Law, experiments with end-of-semester exams and writing assignments to create opportunities for meaningful, formative feedback through skills practice, reflection, and peer collaboration.
"Standing on the foundations of America's promise of equal opportunity, our universities purport to 'serve as engines of social mobility' and 'practitioners of democracy.' But as acclaimed scholar and pioneering civil rights advocate Lani Guinier argues, the...
Analytics evaluate individual components of a course and evaluate student performance. Course Analytics takes a three pronged approach to creating substantive data for Canvas users.
Canvas, Harvard’s learning management system, enables instructors to identify outcomes to track mastery in a course, and add outcome aligned rubrics to discussions...
The conference program highlighted a range of assessment examples across disciplines and provided the opportunity for faculty colleagues to work with one another to design personalized assessments for their own 2015-2016...
The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) compiled some examples of assessments, techniques, and pedagogies for attendees of the 2015 Faculty Conference: Designing an assessment for learning.
In a study conducted at the University of British Columbia, Deslauriers and colleagues found that instruction of a large-enrollment physics class taught using the concept of “deliberate practice,” based in constructivism and formative assessment, resulted in increased student...
Logan McCarty, Director of Physical Sciences Education, and Louis Deslauriers, Director of Science Teaching and Learning, adopted an active pedagogy for a large introductory physics course and saw significant gains in student learning and attitudes. Assessment played a role every step of the way.
The benefits: By explicitly stating the course learning objectives and designing complementary in-class activities, they created effective feedback loops – the activities helped students assess their own understanding, and according to McCarty, “more importantly, the instructors got feedback on how students are learning.”
The challenges: Defining course learning objectives can “feel awkward. It feels artificial. And the value is not immediately apparent,” McCarty admitted. “But it is essential for creating effective assessments.”
Takeaways and best practices
Revisiting learning objectives may expose invalid assumptions. When the instructors tested an elementary concept from the course prerequisites, they found that many students did not in fact understand it – crucial feedback that, McCarty said, “in six years of teaching this subject, I had never seen before.”... Read more about Setting up effective feedback loops: The role of assessment in course transformation
Bethanne Altringer, Senior Preceptor in Innovation and Design and Director of the Desirability Lab, uses personalized approaches to students’ learning in courses like 
