Assessment By Written Reports

Written reports are a classic assessment used by faculty. Written reports may be as short as a one-minute paper and as long as a term paper.

Types of Written Report Assessments

• Written Report Scoring Rubrics
  • Instructor Rubric for Written Reports (Microsoft Word 40kB Jul5 07), from Gallery Walk.
  • Rubric for Research Paper: (more info) from the University of Kansas, a twelve item rubric that evaluates papers using the following criteria: purpose, content, organization, feel, tone, sentence structure, word choice, grammar, length, use of references, and reference format, from Gallery Walk.
• Minute Papers
  • For an overview of minute papers and step-by-step instructions, see Classroom Assessment Technique: Minute Paper (more info)
  • Minute Paper (Includes a section on using minute papers in Introductory Geology Courses) Meg Streepey, Activity from the Student Learning Observing and Assessing Workshop.
• Weekly Reports
  • For an overview an step-by-step instructions, see Classroom Assessment Techniques: Weekly Reports ( This site may be offline. )
  • Etkina, 2000, Weekly Reports: A Two-Way Feedback Tool. Science Education, This article describes how to use weekly reports written by students as a two-way feedback tool in teaching science. The weekly reports help students to reflect on their knowledge, learn how to ask questions, and predict what questions their teacher is likely to ask. The reports help teachers to identify the difficulties their students experience while learning new material, to adjust their teaching to the students' needs, and to match the levels of difficulty of learning and testing. The authors of this study conclude that there is a common mismatch between learning and assessment and offers a solution through weekly journals.

Geoscience Examples

• 
  Laboratory Short Report Assessment Example.
• The Assessing Field-based Activities page includes a lab report scoring rubric example.

Additional Resources

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