Early Assessments, Scaffolding Assignments, and Pacing

Inclusive Practices to Support Student Success & Retention

For the past several years, the Cromwell CTL has sponsored book clubs and workshops that focus on inclusive pedagogy. Some of our past no-fuss book clubs included James Lang’s Small Teaching, Kevin Gannon’s Radical Hope, and, in Fall 2023, Inclusive Teaching by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy [listen to a podcast with Hogan and Sathy or check out their article at the Chronicle].

In our Syllabus workshops we point to a range of best practices and resources for inclusive course design. Here we want to focus on three related aspects of inclusive teaching that support student success and retention: low-stakes assessments, scaffolding assignments, and pacing.

There are many dimensions of inclusive assessment. One easy intervention is to offer frequent, low-stakes assignments. These can take a variety of forms: quizzes, journal entries/reflection questions, discussion board assignments, muddiest points, reading guides, and more. Such low-stakes assignments support student learning in the following ways:

• Allow students to practice what they’re learning before they are asked to complete exams, papers, or other high-stakes assignments.
• Help faculty to understand where students may be struggling with the course material.
• Allow us to identify students who may need additional support earlier in the semester.
• Provide students with a variety of opportunities to show what they’ve learned and to earn points outside of high-pressure assignments.

Many of us already scaffold our assignments. In some instances, this involves breaking large assignments — research projects, presentations, papers, etc. — into smaller pieces, such as a proposal, thesis statement / research question, annotated bibliography, outline, rough draft, peer review assignments, and more. By scaffolding assignments this way, we can help students by:

• Providing feedback at the early stages of a project to make sure students are on the right track.
• Giving structured opportunities to practice specific skills.
• Preventing overwhelm by breaking a large task into smaller, more manageable ones (and helping them learn how to do this for themselves in the future).
• Helping students make progress on a large project by providing a series of preliminary deadlines.
• Offering opportunities for students to earn points through low-stakes assessments.

One final and related way that we can support student success and retention is to carefully consider the pacing of our courses. Here are a few ideas about pacing that you may want to keep in mind as you craft your syllabi:

• Early Assessments: It is important to provide students with small assignments early in the semester (during weeks 1-3) to help identify struggling students so we can connect them with additional supports.
• Withdrawal Deadline: Grade and return some large assignments before the withdrawal deadline so students who are struggling can make an informed decision about withdrawing from your course.
• Staggering Workload: Consider staggering deadlines around busy times in the semester. For instance, you could assign a paper or exam prior to or after midterm time.
• Schedule Writing/Project Workshops & Review Days: Building workshops and review days into the semester gives students the opportunity to consult with the instructor and collaborate with peers during class time. It also gives students the chance to focus their attention on key assessments.