A colleague tells you she wants to conduct an in-course assessment of student performance. She is teaching a course for the first time and wants to be sure she addresses any student issues before they become significant problems. What would you recommend and why?

A) Check the active learning exercises each week, and use them as a barometer of student engagement. When conducting formative assessment, it's better to use one simple measure than to use a variety and then become overwhelmed by the process.

B) Analyze the items on the assessments you're using. If students are not performing optimally, you can adjust their grades as you move through the course rather than waiting for a summative evaluation.

C)Pull out Bloom's Revised Taxonomy to be sure your assignments require an appropriate blend of higher level thinking. You want to be confident your learning objectives are challenging enough for your students without being too hard for them to successfully master the course material.

D) Apply Chickering and Gamson's seven principles to get a good feel for how the teaching and learning process is working for students. It's thorough and will yield specific action items if you need to make adjustments in how you're teaching.