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BIGs Insights > Assessment

Assessment

Several types of assessment are used at different levels in the BIGs program. They include:

1. Assessment of the BIGs program for the purposes of improvement and sustainability.
   • BioFigs/Figs will do assessment of the program. Independent assessment of students by the Freshman Interest Group (FIG) program echoes our finding that students greatly value the learning community developed by taking three courses with a cohort of first year students.
2. Assessment of the BIGs objectives in the classroom
   • Assessment of the products required in individual BIGs seminar courses
   • Types of products, how to assess them
     Rubrics, expectations for quality of work, feedback for the students to continually improve their performance and help them learn
     
   • Example rubric for group presentations from Allen Laughon:
     

Rubric for Peer Evaluation

1. Team Evaluation

	Outstanding	Good	Needs Improvement
Introduction/ Background	Clear introduction to topic; provides background adequate for everyone in the class; problem is well-defined; intro complete in 5 minutes.	Background is good but incomplete; background is pitched at too high a level; use of unexplained jargon; intro exceeds 5 minutes.	Insufficient background or clarity of presentation for audience to understand overall problem or key points.
Conveying Key Points	Key points are clearly stated and illustrated; significance is clearly stated.	Key points lack emphasis or presented without examples.	Key points nearly lost due to poor organization or documentation.
Use of Illustrations	Illustrations are uncluttered, legible and intuitive.	Illustrations could benefit from better graphics, organization.	Illustrations are hard to understand or contain errors. Essential illustrations are missing.
Knowledge of subject	Presentation is authoritative with appropriate examples; includes critical evaluation of topic; presenters are able to field questions.	Presentations generally good but lack some important background material or analysis is lacking depth.	Substantial information is lacking in or is presented without critical analysis.

2. Team Member Evaluation

	Outstanding	Good	Needs Improvement
Participation	Attended all class sessions; major contributor to team discussions, decision making.	Good attendance; generally involved and helpful to team.	Missed one or more important meeting; passive during teams discussions
Initiative, useful ideas	Did more than team-assigned work; thought hard about case; took responsibility to learning about topic.	Did fair share of team work; contributed at least on major section of report and presentation	Relied on others to provide initiative.
Gathering information	Became proficient at literature detective work; found key reviews and original articles; was able to help others.	Found reviews but did not delve into original papers.	Didn’t/couldn’t walk team through gathered papers.
Analysis, criticism	Distilled gathered information down to essential points; found flaws in published work; effective at helping team evaluate findings.	Made substantial effort to understand and intrepret papers; was able to help team in at least one area.	Insufficient effort to understand papers.
Effort on written report	Wrote first draft of one or more sections; edited all sections for content, grammar and style. Read and approved final edition.	Contributed substantial effort but didn’t take primary responsibility for some aspect of report.	Only moderate contribution to report.
Effort on presentation	Helped plan presentation; made subset of slides; edited all slides for clarity and accuracy.	Contributed substantial effort but didn’t take primary responsibility for some aspect of report.	Only moderate effort on making slides.