Make Learning Visible
Assessment provides evidence of what students are learning. It can also support learning by helping students practise, receive feedback, recognize their progress, and decide what to work on next.
In backward design, assessment comes after identifying the desired learning outcomes and before planning learning activities. Once you know what students should be able to do, you can ask:
What evidence would show that students have achieved this learning outcome?
Why alignment matters
Effective assessments give students meaningful opportunities to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking described in your course learning objectives. When objectives, learning activities, and assessment strategies are aligned, students receive a clear and coherent learning experience. When they are misaligned, an assessment may measure something other than what students were expected to learn.
Examples of alignment and misalignment
Engineering
Learning objective: Analyze experimental data and draw evidence-based conclusions
Aligned assessment: Students interpret a dataset and justify their conclusions
Misaligned assessment: Students complete a multiple-choice quiz focused mainly on recalling terminology
History
Learning objective: Evaluate competing interpretations of a historical event using primary sources
Aligned assessment: Students construct an argument using and comparing primary-source evidence
Misaligned assessment: Students list dates and events
Nursing
Learning objective: Demonstrate safe and effective patient-assessment skills
Aligned assessment: Students complete an observed simulation using a clear performance rubric
Misaligned assessment: Students explain how an assessment should be conducted on a final exam
Business
Learning objective: Recommend a course of action using financial and market evidence
Aligned assessment: Students analyze a case and defend a recommendation
Misaligned assessment: Students present business concepts as a video recording without engagement with peers
Effective assessment starts with understanding the different types and how they work together to support and measure learning.
| Formative Assessment: Assessment FOR Learning | Summative Assessment: Assessment OF Learning |
| Low-stake activities that provide feedback to improve learning: | Higher-stake evaluation that measure achievement: |
| * Practice quizzes or problem sets * Outlines, drafts of projects with feedback * In-class polls or discussions * Self-assessment checklists * Peer review activities | * Midterms and final exams * Major papers or projects * Presentations or performances * Portfolios |
| Purpose: Help students identify gaps and guide their studying. Should be frequent and provide actionable feedback. | Purpose: Evaluate what students know, do, and/or value. Provide students opportunities to demonstrate mastery. |
- Formative assessment: Low-stakes check-ins that help students identify what they know and what they still need to work on, guiding their study efforts. Used regularly throughout the course, these assessments promote learning by providing timely feedback, motivating students to stay engaged, and helping them track their progress toward learning objectives as they work toward more complex tasks.
- Summative assessment: Higher-stakes evaluations that measure achievement of learning objectives at key points in the course, often at the end of a unit or learning cycle. In addition to evaluating overall performance, these assessments give students an opportunity to consolidate their learning and demonstrate their progress in meaningful ways.
Frequent formative assessments promote learning by providing ongoing feedback and helping students understand their progress, while summative assessments offer meaningful opportunities to demonstrate achievement of learning objectives and are typically scheduled at key milestones in the course.
Swim: Building Your Assessment Plan
Let’s design a comprehensive assessment system for your course. Work through these steps, considering both formative and summative assessments.
Step 1: Map Assessment to Learning Objectives
Start by listing your course-level learning objectives. For each objective, identify at least one summative assessment that will measure achievement:
Example Mapping
Objective: Students will be able to analyze historical documents for bias and perspective
Summative Assessment: Document analysis essay where students examine 3-5 primary sources and discuss how author perspective shapes the historical narrative
Formative Assessments: Weekly practice analyses with feedback, peer review sessions, in-class guided analysis activities
Step 2: Design Your Summative Assessments
For major assessments, consider these elements:
- What format best measures the objective? Papers, exams, projects, presentations, portfolios, performances?
- How will you evaluate quality? Develop rubrics that make criteria explicit
- What support will students need? Plan scaffolding and practice opportunities
- When should this occur? Time summative assessments to allow adequate preparation
Summative Assessment Examples
Consider assessments that mirror professional or real-world tasks:
- Business: Develop a marketing plan for an actual local business
- Sciences: Design and conduct an original experiment following research protocols
- Education: Create and teach a lesson plan with peer observation
- Engineering: Solve an authentic design problem with constraints
Step 3: Build in Formative Assessment
Plan frequent, low-stakes opportunities for students to practice and receive feedback:
- Before each major assessment: Include at least 2-3 practice opportunities
- Weekly or more: Quick checks for understanding (polls, quizzes, discussions)
- Early in the course: Diagnostic assessment to understand student background
- Throughout: Self-assessment opportunities where students evaluate their own work
Formative Assessment Ideas
- Minute papers: Quick end-of-class reflections on key concepts
- Concept maps: Visual representations showing relationships between ideas
- Practice problems: Low-stakes problem sets with answer keys
- Peer feedback: Students evaluate each other’s work using rubrics
- Draft submissions: Preliminary versions that receive feedback before final grading
- Discussion contributions: Regular participation showing engagement with ideas
Step 4: Create Rubrics and Success Criteria
Make expectations transparent by developing clear evaluation criteria:
Effective Rubric Design
- Identify key dimensions: What aspects of performance matter most?
- Define performance levels: What does excellent, proficient, developing, and beginning look like?
- Use descriptive language: Avoid vague terms like “good” or “adequate”
- Focus on learning objectives: Rubric criteria should directly reflect what you’re assessing
- Share in advance: Students should see rubrics before completing assignments
Step 5: Balance Your Workload and Students’ Stress
Consider the practical realities of grading and student workload:
- Avoid clustering: Space major assessments throughout the term
- Prioritize what to grade: Not everything needs detailed feedback or grades
- Use efficient grading methods: Rubrics, commenting on common issues, peer evaluation
- Consider alternatives: Can some assessments be self-graded, pass/fail, or completion-based?
Deep Dive: Designing Assessment for Learner Variability
Once you have developed a well aligned assessment strategies and implemented it in your classroom with satisfying feedback from your students, you may consider the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approaches (visit the UBC UDL Hub for more info) to assessment that promote equity, reduce bias, and better support diverse learners.
Let’s examine one assessment through three UDL lenses. Choose one assessment from your course and consider the following questions:
- Intended Learning: What must students demonstrate to show that they have achieved the outcome? Which parts of the assessment are essential to the learning, and which are simply features of the current format?
- Engagement and Representation: Are students given opportunities to make meaningful choices where appropriate? Are students expected to infer any important but unstated academic conventions?
- Action and expression: Does the required format directly support the intended learning outcome? Where format is not essential, could students have an appropriate choice in topic, medium, audience, or approach?
Examples of UDL-informed revisions
Time-written test for a statistics course
Learning objective: Interpret statistical findings
Possible revisions: Simplify instructions, separate sections clearly, and provide practice with the test format
Individual oral presentation of a journal article
Learning objective: Analyze research evidence and construct a supported conclusion
Possible revisions: Permit a live presentation, recorded presentation, or written analysis using common criteria, provided oral communication is not an intended outcome; provide option to present with a peer
Case analysis
Learning objective: Demonstrate effective communication
Possible revisions: Retain a simulated oral interaction because the communication performance is essential
A small change can make meaningful differences
You do not need to redesign every assessment at once. Identify one manageable change that could reduce an unnecessary barrier while preserving the learning outcome and academic standards.
Want to join a course design cohort?
The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) hosts two course design programs.
Course Design Intensive (CDI)
The CDI is for faculty members, including instructors and sessional lecturers, teaching credit courses at UBC, where you will work in a supportive atmosphere, both individually and collaboratively, to design or redesign a UBC credit course. The CDI is usually offered around mid-August and composed of two in-person sessions and two online sessions.
Journey into Course Design (JiCD)
JiCD is for faculty members, staff, and graduate students, who are designing courses, modules, and/or learning activities. This 2-part in-person workshop is usually offered in May/June and November/December.
Please check CTLT’s event page for the latest offerings of either CDI or JiCD.
