Tools and Resources

Item Analysis (a.k.a. Test Question Analysis) is an empowering process that enables you to improve mutiple-choice test score validity and reliability by analyzing item performance over time and making necessary adjustments. Knowledge of score reliability, item difficulty, item discrimination, and crafting effective distractors can help you make decisions about whether to retain items for future administrations, revise them, or eliminate them from the test item pool. Item analysis can also help you to determine whether a particular portion of course content should be revised or enhanced.

This document describes a specific strategy that provides a collaborative learning experience for students.

The questionnaire includes seven items, which are the same for every instructor. Responses to items 1-4 are available to the instructor and their academic unit head. Items 5-7 are provided only to the instructor. Fall semester 2023 is the first to use this questionnaire. It replaces the SRTE.

Heavily abridged version of Weinstein, Y., Madan, C. R., & Smith, M. A. (in press). Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, prepared for and presented at "Reframing Testing as a Learning Experience: Three Strategies for Use in the Classroom and at Home" on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.

Six key learning strategies from research in cognitive psychology can be applied to education: spaced practice, interleaving, elaborative interrogation, concrete examples, dual coding, and retrieval practice. However, a recent report (Pomerance, Greenberg, & Walsh, 2016) found that few teacher-training textbooks cover these principles; current study-skills courses also lack coverage of these important learning strategies. Students are therefore missing out on mastering techniques they could use on their own to learn effectively. This handout contains the six key learning strategies to address those concerns.

This document was created to provide you with a source of options for gathering data on teamwork assignments and projects. You may choose to adopt one of the examples as is, combine elements from several of the examples, or use the examples to identify characteristics that correspond to particular aspects of your assigned work, course content, or student population.

Brief explanation of several easy-to-use Classroom Assessment Techniques, with examples.

Writing learning goals and explicit learning objectives will make it easier for students to understand what is expected of them in your course. Goals communicate what students will learn and objectives communicate the kind and quality of work you expect of them. Explicit objectives also make it easier for faculty to make decisions about course content, activities, assignments, and grading.

Round Robin is a systematic technique that allows students to brainstorm answers to questions. It allows all students an opportunity to contribute.

This two-page handout provides a basic explanation of how to make and use rubrics to improve grading. Print references included.

This file is an example of a rubric that can be used to grade a science experiment. The use of a rubric can help instructors to grade more accurately and more quickly.

This document describes strategies for using group quizzes to assess student knowledge.