Assessment Tools

Duke's Trinity College Office of Assessment

The Office of Assessment at Duke's Trinity College provides on-going analysis and research on Duke's undergraduate curriculum, courses, departments and programs in efforts to improve student learning at Duke. In addition, the office serves as a resource for departments and faculty. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to, university wide course evaluations, curricular requirements, academic performance, academic advising, program and department level assessment.

The tools described in this section support assessment and evaluation efforts across the spectrum of assessing the individual student, assessing teaching, assessing instructional technology use, and evaluating educational programs.

Polling

Asking students to respond to multiple choice questions during class time can help instructors assess whether key concepts have been learned.

Personal Response Systems (PRS) automate of classroom assessment by providing an easy way to pose multiple choice questions and immediately share and discuss student responses. Personal repsonse systems can be used for very easily for informal, formative assessment in the classroom. Want ideas for classroom uses? See our resources on Presenting.
Contact one of our CIT consultants to discuss other ideas that might work in your setting, such as Blackboard polls or even student use of cell phones to respond to polls.

Automate grading of assignments

Self-graded quizzes

Students can benefit from self-graded quizzes, which can be used to improve learning and assess knowledge level. There are several tools to assist with the creation of self-graded quizzes.

Blackboard contains a mechanism for creating self-graded quizzes to assess student learning.
iQuiz Maker can be used to create true/false and multiple choice quizzes for playback on a fifth generation ("video") iPod. Instructors can provide review materials for courses and subjects that require substantial memorization of vocabulary, facts and dates and to provide short quizzes to check comprehension after lectures and lab sessions. Faculty might consider giving an assignment for students to create quizzes that summarize key concepts to share with the class.
StudyMate guides instructors in the creation of learning assessments through the use of templates.

Online testing tools

The Blackboard Test Manager offer several advantages to instructors including automated grading, question pools, automated item analysis to improve assessment quality, and the ability to provide students with the opportunity for repeat attempts at an assessment.

Promote mid-course feedback from student-instructor and student-student

Anonymous surveys

Web-based survey tools available to all Duke affiliates that support anonymous surveys include Blackboard's survey tool and the ViewsFlash online survey tool. Contact us for advice or assistance if you're not sure how to get started or which one is best for your needs.

Peer review

Blackboard's Peer Assessment tool is a new opportunity in Blackboard 8 to implement peer feedback activities. Calibrated Peer Review is a web-based online tool that can assist faculty in implementing peer review to enhance student learning and collaboration.