Teaching Tip: Have students compete against themselves, not each other

January 20, 2015

Ipsative assessment is the practice of determining a student’s progress based on earlier work. Many assignments and rubrics are designed to measure student work in the normative assessment mode, that is, against a static set of criteria — often necessarily so. But it’s worth it to take the time to examine why and how we use the assessment methods we do, and to consider the value of allowing students’ own progress to be the benchmark against which successive performance is measured.

Gwyneth Hughes suggests that it may sound utopian but “could be used to identify students who are on an upward trajectory and are willing to learn.” Hughes suggests a few ways in which an instructor can offer ipsative feedback:

Look at both the student’s earlier work and her current work.

Ask student to identify what she considers to be her own areas of weakness in specific assignments and then reflect on whether and how she may have improved in subsequent work.

Decide how the student has progressed and suggest the next steps the student takes.

Go to iTeachU.uaf.edu for more about using ipsative assessment in conjunction with traditional grading methods.

— Teaching Tip by Brooke Sheridan, UAF eLearning instructional designer

Go to http://elearning.uaf.edu/go/tt for all Teaching Tips.