Assessing Your Learning

By now, you’ve likely had an exam or two, assignment deadlines, or other assessments of your learning in your classes.  Your instructors assess your learning in many ways – exams, projects, labs, papers, presentations, etc. - but how are YOU assessing your own learning as you go through the semester? An important part of effective studying is monitoring your own learning. Knowing where you stand with course content throughout each week gives you time to adjust your study plan and strategies before the last few graded assessments.

Here’s some resources on ways to self-assess your learning:

• Self-testing, also known as retrieval practice, is an effective way to both monitor and improve your learning.
  • Ask yourself questions at the same level of knowledge and application that you anticipate will be needed for your exam, lab, or project.
  • Think like an instructor when you create your questions. Here’s a guide on how to ask questions at various levels of learning.
  • Consider how you would teach or explain the material to someone else. How would you talk about the material? What examples or metaphors would you give? How would you organize and visualize the information?
  • You can read more about the effects of self-testing here.
• Keep practicing- don’t skip over practice questions or certain concepts.
  • Even if it is an “easy” question or something you think you know, answer it each time. Elaborate further or make more connections each time.
  • If a question seems too hard or you don’t think you know the answer, try to answer it anyway. What do you know about the concept or where might you start to solve the problem?
  • Try answering the questions in a different order, across several study sessions, and even with different approaches (ex: fill-in-the-blank, true/false, multiple choice, short response)
• Like to use flashcards? Or considering flashcards as a new strategy to try out? Check out this Research-Based Guidelines for Using Flashcards to Improve Your Learning by Dr. William Cerbin. It includes effective, research-proven steps as well as resources for digital flashcards.

What’s one strategy you want to try implementing or strengthening this week?