Faculty Center Electronic Workbook

Course Design: Assessment Matrix

Write down all the assessments you plan to use in your course (exam, paper, etc). Not all assessments might be graded. You do not need exactly eight of these:

#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8

Place one-word reminders of these assessments into the shaded boxes along the left side of the chart below.

The top row of shaded boxes represents the Course Objectives you developed in earlier worksheets; place one-word reminders of each objective into these boxes.

 

                 
1                
2                
3                
4                
5                
6                
7                
8                

Place a checkmark in the white box whenever an assessment meets one of the Course Objectives. In this fashion, you can judge whether all the objectives are being met equally.

Are there some assessments which aren’t doing much to meet objectives? If so, do they still belong? Are there some objectives which aren’t being adequately assessed? Use this tool to bring balance to your course, and to make sure you are assessing your objectives.

A healthy matrix will have some checkmarks in every row, and some in every column, but will not be completely filled in. Over-reliance can be as large a problem as under-representation.