Assessing Your Students’ Prior Knowledge

Student assessment is an essential component to teaching and understanding how students are processing their learning, so you may evaluate your learning designs. It allows you to track your class’s performance, while also providing evidence of that progress. Finally, it is presented as a task that challenges students to apply or demonstrate their new knowledge.

However, in order to appropriately track your students’ progress there must be an understanding of where your students are beginning from in regards to previous knowledge, experience, and skill readiness. This is considered a diagnostic assessment. This type of assessment measures a student’s baseline about the subject material and is essential for targeting gaps, uncovering misconceptions, understanding the diversity in the classroom, and creating interdisciplinary connections. Below we will be discussing the benefits, and how to implement prior knowledge checks through diagnostic assessments.

Starting Points and Early Intervention

Our students are as diverse as our society, and they come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, school systems, and opportunities. The benefit of a diagnostic assessment is that it allows the instructor to have insight into each student’s starting point for the course. You might find that your entire class is new to the subject material, or they may already have some level of familiarity with the course material. A diagnostic assessment can deliver essential information from the first week of class that can include identifying students who might need additional help in skill sets, studying, or covering knowledge gaps. This valuable information gives you a chance to adapt your teaching plans. It can also provide you with a chance to strategize opportunities for students to catch-up. Helpful strategies can include recommending review sessions, tutoring, remedial work, or skill mentoring support. The goal is for your students to have the chance to meet future learning objectives.
Here at TWU, students have additional support for study skills and skill mentoring, including: academic advising (TWU Academic Advising), academic coaching (TWU Get Coaching), writing (Write Site), studying science (Science Learning Resource Center), and mathematics & technology tutoring (Dr. Don Edwards Mathematics & technology Success Center).

Methods to Assess Prior Knowledge

When assessing prior knowledge, it is important to ensure that students are assessed uniformly and are not assigned a grade based on their diagnostic assessment. Your options can include an assessment quiz, a student survey, concept maps, portfolios, and concept inventories.
Some of these examples may be more familiar to you than others. Out of this list, assessment quizzes are likely to be the most familiar to you. Timed assessment quizzes are great at recreating a formative or summative assessment that you will likely implement during a semester, but without the pressure of a grade.  You may even consider using a review or practice quiz for the final. In my own courses, I have had students retake and compare their two results at the end of the semester to reflect on their own progress. You can poll or survey students on their prior experience separately or in conjunction with an assessment quiz. You could have older students who have had experience in your subject material, but could be rusty with problem sets or putting that knowledge into practice.
If you would rather stay away from a diagnostic assessment designed around a comprehensive quiz or student survey, you may consider concept inventories or concept maps. Concept inventories are multiple choice or short answer tests that target only the fundamentals within a subject. Their main purpose is to uncover systemic misconceptions or overlooked nuances by focusing on specific fundamentals.  
For a final example, portfolio reviews are great to track students’ academic growth, especially for papers, creative work, research, or projects. By keeping a student portfolio from the first-year through senior year, instructors are able note gaps and fine-tune individual feedback based on what they can see and where they hope students are by the end of a course. This can be standard for courses in the performing arts, but can also be applied to scientific research, journalism, computer programming, English, education, and more.

Closing Thoughts

Using diagnostic assessments is a first step into ensuring that we support students and making sure that you have the necessary information to teach the course well. Just be sure to communicate that no grade will be assigned regardless of the method that you choose. Finally, if you are not certain of how to proceed after a diagnostic assessment, make sure to reach out to us at the Center for Faculty Excellence, where we can help you with resources and strategies.

Dayton L. Kinney, Ph.D.

Coordinator of Teaching, Learning, & Academic Excellence
Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE)
Texas Woman’s University
Stoddard Hall – Room 305A
940.898.3427
dkinney@twu.edu

 

Reference List

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Carnegie Mellon University. (2022). Assessing Prior Knowledge. Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation.

Cohen, A. (2021). Don’t let a college weed-out class ruin your career plans. Boston Herald.

Cornell University. (2022). Assessing Prior Knowledge. Center for Teaching Innovation.

Morrison, N. (2015). The Surprising Truths About How Students Choose Their Majors. Forbes.

Novak, J. & Cañas, A. The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them. Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.

Singh Chawla, D. (2020). Weed-out Classes in Sciences May be a State of Mind. New York Times.

Thompson, M. E. (2021). Who’s getting pulled in weed-out courses for STEM majors?. Brookings: Brown Center Chalkboard.

Yale University. (2021). Building Upon Students’ Prior Knowledge and Skills. Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.