Always Assessment

When I was in college they were called tests. Now, in the teaching and learning field the idea of assessment has gobbled up the concept of testing and spit it back at faculty to emphasize the distinction between formative assessment and summative assessment. One paper I found useful puts it this way:

. . . teachers can build in many opportunities to assess how students are learning and then use this information to make beneficial changes in instruction. This diagnostic use of assessment to provide feedback to teachers and students over the course of instruction is called formative assessment. It stands in contrast to summative assessment, which generally takes place after a period of instruction and requires making a judgment about the learning that has occurred (e.g., by grading or scoring a test or paper).

The ability of students to practice the "economic way of thinking" is probably on the list of goals, implicitly or explicitly, for every Economics 101 class. In an economics class formative assessment is as important as summative assessment in motivating students to learn. At least that's my experience.

A simple formative assessment technique is The Muddiest Point, alternatively called The One-Minute Paper. The technique is easy to implement and it works. I've been doing it for years, off and on. The trick is to actually get meaningful feedback rather than the stock reply "everything clear." In other words, students have to be prompted to think hard about whether they've really mastered the concepts. When the instructor follows up with a report at the beginning of the next class as to what concepts were the muddiest and gives students the another chance to learn those concepts before the class moves on, students see the value.