Module 3

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Module 3: Develop and Grade Low-Stakes Quizzes and High-Stakes Exams

In this module, we'll take a closer look at how you can use bCourses to administer quizzes and exams. bCourses is well-equipped for this task and there are many options for how you can set up a quiz or exam beyond multiple choice, as well as different settings to help mitigate academic dishonesty. We'll also take a look at some alternatives to exams that can be more resilient to potential scheduling changes.

In addition to considering how you may revise your high-stakes exams, you may also want to consider how to incorporate quizzes into your course as an instructional tool. Quizzes can be a particularly useful component to any class because they allow for students to get immediate feedback on the knowledge they've acquired and for you to have a clear sense of what they are understanding from the instructional materials.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you'll be able to:

  1. Develop a flexible midterm or final exam
  2. Use low-stakes quizzes to monitor student comprehension and provide immediate feedback
  3. Create and edit a quiz in bCourses
  4. Maintain the academic integrity of high-stakes exams with technical tools and traditional approaches
  5. View and grade student quiz responses in bCourses
  6. Develop and grade exams in Gradescope
  7. Apply best practices for developing and grading low-stakes quizzes and high-stakes exams

All of these learning objectives will help you to achieve the overall course objectives: Design flexible exams and assignments and Grade student exams and assignments and provide feedback via bCourses and Gradescope.

How To Do It

Develop a flexible midterm or final exam

In preparation for specific student needs and potential short-term disruptions, it's important to plan in advance how you could administer your midterm, final, or any other major exams so that you can feel confident that they are assessing students accurately even if not proctored in person.

Though we will look at settings you can use in bCourses to protect academic integrity in this module, it's worthwhile to first consider how you could develop an assessment that doesn't require proctoring or other forms of monitoring to effectively assess student learning.

Many instructors already opt to assess students using methods other than a standard proctored exam. Linked below is a useful article from CTL on different approaches than traditional testing.

Use low-stakes quizzes to monitor student comprehension and provide immediate feedback

All of the resources above included a point about opting to present a series of quizzes throughout the course rather than one or two major exams. You may also consider creating a series of low-stakes or formative quizzes in addition to major exams.

We're using the term "low-stakes" to indicate quizzes that are for a small portion of the grade because their main purpose is to give students an opportunity to confirm their understanding of the content and receive feedback and then use that information to revisit the materials if needed. You may also hear these types of quizzes referred to as formative quizzes in that they are designed to help students learn, rather than evaluate what they have learned, and give instructors insight into where students are getting stuck. 

Low-stakes quizzes provide a crucial opportunity to gain insight into how students are comprehending the material and readjust where needed. Consider using questions that mirror the questions on your high-stakes exams or focus on areas where students usually face confusion. Seeing how students respond will give you greater insight into how to support them and clear up confusion. 

One strategy to employ is having a "Check for Understanding," short quizzes after your assigned readings and lecture videos. This can allow instructional teams to quickly review quiz analytics to understand where students are having challenges and successes related to knowledge acquisition. 

The following articles from the Graduate Student Instructor Teaching & Resource Center present two case studies from two very different courses on how incorporating low-stakes quizzes improved student comprehension of the materials.

If you do opt to incorporate a series of low-stakes quizzes, bCourses has some useful tools for how you can analyze the quiz results and use that analysis to inform your teaching. The following article from the Canvas Guides explains how you can access and assess the quiz statistics.

Create and edit quizzes in bCourses

There are many components to creating and editing quizzes in bCourses. In this section, we'll focus on the most essential functions to set up a quiz. It's important to note that whether you're creating a high-stakes exam or a low-stakes quiz, in bCourses they are all called "quizzes."

Maintain the academic integrity of high-stakes exams with technical tools and traditional approaches

Please note that the university's policies around remote proctoring continue to evolve. Be sure to review the CTL's page on Remote Proctoring FAQs for up-to-date information if you are considering remote proctoring as a way to maintain the academic integrity of your exam.

Another way to ensure academic integrity is to highlight its value to you and the course and your expectations around it. There are many different approaches to communicating this message to students and having them affirm their agreement and commitment. There are also ways to set up quizzes in bCourses to mitigate students ability to cheat. The following resources from the Academic Senate and the Canvas Guides review both components to maintaining academic integrity.

There is also a tool in Canvas called Quiz Log that you can use after students have taken a quiz to see if an individual student left the quiz page at any point during the time they took the quiz. This tool is automatically turned on in bCourses. Though Quiz Log is relevant after the quiz, it may discourage cheating if you let students know that you have access to the tool before they take a quiz or exam. The following article from the Canvas Guides explains how to use Quiz Log.

View and grade student quiz responses in bCourses

You can view grades in Canvas via the Gradebook and complete grading via a tool called SpeedGrader. If you aren't already familiar with the Gradebook and SpeedGrader, you can watch these overview videos to begin.

Below are articles from the Canvas Guides highlighting aspects of the Gradebook and SpeedGrader specific to quizzes. 

Develop and grade exams in Gradescope

In addition to the quiz tool in bCourses, you can opt to also use Gradescope, a suite of tools designed to accommodate a common grading workflow. With Gradescope, students or instructors scan and upload homework or exam submissions. Instructors and GSIs create a living rubric that allows for speedy grading of large courses. The software can reveal valuable statistics about student work, and provide a path for students to request re-grades of questions. It is particularly effective for exams that have equations or other formula components. You can learn more about Gradescope via the links below.

Best Practices

Now that you know how to complete the activities covered in this module, read more about how best to use them in your course.