Quizzes and exams are common summative assessment techniques that appear in many courses. They are popular tools for assessing student completion of learning activities. Incorporating quizzes and exams can entail planning where they will fall in the sequence of the course, how they will be delivered, and writing the actual questions for the quiz or exam. High stakes exams, such as finals and midterms are popular for their efficiency, but there is also research to support the value of frequent low stakes assessments compared to infrequent high stakes exams.

For major assessments consider how you prepare students for those events. Students should know what to expect in terms of length of the assessment and question type (is all multiple choice, all essay questions etc.) Popular techniques for preparing students include review sessions, practice quizzes (in graded or non-graded formats), and making past exams available to students. Depending on the length of the assessment (e.g. one hour exam vs. 15 minutes quiz) you might anticipate a range of times for students to complete.

Another popular technique for preparing students to take quizzes and exams is “Exam Wrappers”, a brief document that asks students to reflect how much time they dedicated to prepare for an assessment and what strategies they implemented.  Ideally, students should review past exam wrapper thoughts when the date of the next quiz or exam approaches.