Frequent, low-stakes assessments: Balance and benefits
Session Type
Poster
Room
The Great Hall, Somerville House (room 3326)
Start Date
17-7-2025 4:00 PM
End Date
17-7-2025 6:00 PM
Keywords
frequent low-stakes assessment, instructor workload, student workload, self-guided learning, student engagement
Primary Threads
Teaching and Learning Science
Abstract
COVID-19 prompted a shift in post-secondary education from largely co-operative face-to-face instruction to almost complete isolation with online learning. Within this transition, there was an increased recommendation for instructors to incorporate frequent, low-stakes assessments into their online practice. Frequent low-stakes assessments are assessments designed with the intention to increase student engagement and stimulate self-guided learning, benefits that would have been crucial during this independent learning period. However, this recommendation provided little specifics on criteria to design and implement these assessments. This lack of specifics, combined with a lack of SoTL literature on these assessments, prompted instructors to produce their own individual versions and applications of frequent, low-stakes assessments for their online practice.
We’ve since transitioned back to instruction with mostly in-person elements, but the effect of these ambiguous instructions persist. The perception of frequent, low-stakes assessments and their usage differs among all instructors, consequently causing students to experience multiple versions of assessments per-week per-course. This experience has led to students becoming overwhelmed with an increased workload and an overall contradiction of the intended benefits of frequent low-stakes assessments.
To address this concern, this project aims to gather institutional data and stakeholders’ (students and instructors) opinions to create an operational definition of frequent, low-stakes assessments, i.e. inform on strategies to implement these assessments into a balanced workload while preserving the intended benefits. This poster will specifically focus on the analysis of ethics-approved collected stakeholder data and explore the interpretations and opinions towards frequent, low-stakes assessments that undergraduate students and instructors hold.
Elements of Engagement
Open discussion on recommendations and thoughts towards ongoing challenges or limitations of the research project will be facilitated. Additionally, the audience will be given an opportunity to provide input (via QR code or in-person) on frequent, low-stakes assessment strategies that they have personally put into place for their courses. As this poster introduces stakeholder opinions, personal observations on instructors' or students' opinions towards frequent, low-stakes assessment usage and criteria are also welcome!
Creative Commons License
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Frequent, low-stakes assessments: Balance and benefits
The Great Hall, Somerville House (room 3326)
COVID-19 prompted a shift in post-secondary education from largely co-operative face-to-face instruction to almost complete isolation with online learning. Within this transition, there was an increased recommendation for instructors to incorporate frequent, low-stakes assessments into their online practice. Frequent low-stakes assessments are assessments designed with the intention to increase student engagement and stimulate self-guided learning, benefits that would have been crucial during this independent learning period. However, this recommendation provided little specifics on criteria to design and implement these assessments. This lack of specifics, combined with a lack of SoTL literature on these assessments, prompted instructors to produce their own individual versions and applications of frequent, low-stakes assessments for their online practice.
We’ve since transitioned back to instruction with mostly in-person elements, but the effect of these ambiguous instructions persist. The perception of frequent, low-stakes assessments and their usage differs among all instructors, consequently causing students to experience multiple versions of assessments per-week per-course. This experience has led to students becoming overwhelmed with an increased workload and an overall contradiction of the intended benefits of frequent low-stakes assessments.
To address this concern, this project aims to gather institutional data and stakeholders’ (students and instructors) opinions to create an operational definition of frequent, low-stakes assessments, i.e. inform on strategies to implement these assessments into a balanced workload while preserving the intended benefits. This poster will specifically focus on the analysis of ethics-approved collected stakeholder data and explore the interpretations and opinions towards frequent, low-stakes assessments that undergraduate students and instructors hold.