Designing Assessments: Training for a Higher Education Marathon

When it comes to designing assessments in higher education, consider how you might train for a marathon. Stay with me—whether you’re planning out how to run 26.2 miles or planning out how to get students successfully through a course, both require careful preparation, thoughtful pacing, and a clear finish line. You can’t just roll out of bed and start running in a marathon (I mean, the Greek legend about the first marathon literally sees Pheidippides drop dead at the end), and you certainly can’t put a final exam in front of your students and expect them to successfully demonstrate all of the course outcomes on day one.

In the world of higher education, assessments serve as your students’ training plan. Just as a runner in training needs to build strength and stamina to cross the finish line, students need well-designed assessments to help them develop the knowledge and skills they’ll be expected to demonstrate by the end of the course. Let’s break it down step by step, or should I say, mile by mile.

Align Assessments to Outcomes (Set Your Marathon Goal)

Before lacing up your running shoes, you need a goal—whether it’s completing a marathon or a run around the block, you start by knowing your destination—what race are you running? Your training for a 400-meter sprint is going to be a lot different than the training that goes into an ultramarathon. In order to figure out how to best achieve your racing goal, you need to know what, specifically, your goal actually is. The same goes for assessment design: where do you want to end up? What are your learning outcomes?

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), which include both Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs), act as your final destination, the equivalent of crossing that marathon finish line, downing a tepid bottle of water, and donning your braggy medal. What do you want your students to achieve by the end of the course? These outcomes should be clear and measurable, just like your goal time or distance in any race. When you align your assessments with these outcomes, you give students a clear path to success, ensuring that every step they take (or assignment they complete) gets them closer to the finish line.

Much like runners tracking their progress, students and faculty benefit from a “course map” showing how assignments align and measure the learning outcomes. Including a chart in your syllabus that outlines how SLOs (PLOs and CLOs) and assessments align is a great way to provide this clarity to students. It’s the same as having your running plan mapped out—students know exactly what they need to do to achieve their goals.

Direct vs. Indirect Assessment Methods (A Mix of Workouts)

Just like marathon training involves different types of workouts (speed drills, long runs, cross-training), assessment of SLOs in higher education includes both direct and indirect methods.

Direct methods are like time trials in your training plan. Just as a time trial pushes a runner to test their speed and endurance under race-like conditions, direct methods such as projects, papers, presentations, quizzes, and exams challenge students to demonstrate their mastery of the material. These high-stakes efforts map directly to course learning outcomes, giving students the chance to prove their readiness, much like a runner showing they’ve built the speed and endurance to move onto the next step in their training. These are the measurable, quantifiable efforts where you get a clear result—just as a time trial tells you exactly how fast or far you’ve run, direct assessments give you concrete data about what students have learned.

Indirect methods are more like monitoring your resting heart rate, blood pressure, or blood oxygen levels during your training. They may not directly tell you how fast you’re running or how far you’ve gone, but they are crucial indicators of how well your body is adapting to the training. In the same way, indirect methods such as end-of-course surveys, alumni feedback, or course evaluations don't measure student learning directly. Instead, they offer valuable insights into how students perceive the curriculum, the learning environment, and their overall experience.

Just as a marathoner uses resting heart rate or blood pressure to gauge overall health and recovery, educators can use indirect assessments to ensure that students progress well, remain engaged, and benefit from their learning journey.

Balancing both methods, just like balancing your workouts, ensures that students get the right mix of direct challenge and reflective feedback.

Designing Rubrics (Measuring Your Progress)

Rubrics are like your pace chart in marathon training. Runners rely on a pace chart to guide them through each mile of a race, and a rubric functions similarly, providing clear expectations for each part of an assignment. Just like no two assessments are the same, no two miles in a race are identical. An uphill mile requires a different kind of effort than a flat mile, and the first mile of a marathon will feel very different from the 10th or the 20th. A pace chart helps you know exactly what you need to be doing at each stage of the race, adjusting for those changes in terrain and fatigue.

Similarly, a rubric breaks down the different components of an assignment, giving students guidance on what’s expected at every level—whether they’re just starting out or tackling the more challenging aspects. It ensures that students know exactly how to adjust their approach to meet the criteria and that graders know exactly what they should evaluate. Whether the goal is mastery or improvement, both a pace chart and a rubric provide valuable guidance, breaking a complex task into manageable, measurable steps.

Setting Benchmarks (Tracking Your Race Pace)

Before a marathon, runners set benchmarks—mile splits, target heart rates, or pace goals. These benchmarks help them monitor their progress throughout the race and adjust as needed. For assessment design, benchmarks serve the same purpose. They set the standard for what success looks like in achieving the course learning outcomes.

When setting benchmarks for a course, think about what level of performance indicates success. For example, you might set a benchmark that 80% of students need to achieve a grade of C or higher, or that a certain percentage should reach “meets expectations” on a specific rubric category. Just like a marathoner checking their splits, these benchmarks help you measure student progress and make adjustments to improve their learning.

But just like a runner needs a solid reason behind their pace strategy, benchmarks need a rationale. Setting arbitrary benchmarks without a clear rationale won’t be helpful in the long run. Creating thoughtful, data-informed benchmarks ensures that you’re measuring progress in a way that’s both meaningful and actionable.

Continuous Improvement (Adapting Your Training Plan)

Even the best marathon training plans require adjustments. If you’re not hitting your pace in training, you tweak your plan—maybe add in more speedwork or adjust recovery days. The same goes for assessments. As you collect data from student performance, it’s important to continuously review and revise your assessments to make sure they’re effective.

If you notice that a particular assignment isn’t helping students achieve the intended outcomes, it’s time to adapt. Just like a runner swapping out shoes that aren’t comfortable, you might need to revise the assignment, adjust the rubric, or rethink how the assessment aligns with the course learning outcomes. The goal is to ensure that every assessment, like every mile in a race, is purposeful and aligned with the end goal.

Continuous improvement is a key part of the assessment cycle—after every race (or course), you reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and how you can improve for the next round.

The Finish Line (Summative Assessment)

After all the training, the race day finally arrives. The marathon itself is what you’ve been preparing for all along—the ultimate test of your endurance, strength, and preparation. Similarly, in assessment design, the summative assessment is the final stretch where students demonstrate everything they’ve learned throughout the course. It’s the big project, exam, or capstone experience that provides concrete evidence of learning.

Just like running a marathon, this is the moment when students put their hard work to the test. Every formative assessment—the time trials, daily runs, and long training sessions—has prepared them for this critical point. If assessments have been aligned with the course learning outcomes, students will be able to show mastery and demonstrate that they’re ready to cross the finish line. Just as a marathoner uses the race to prove they’ve built the stamina and skill to complete 26.2 miles, students use the summative assessment to showcase the knowledge and abilities they’ve gained over the course of their academic "training."

Running the Assessment Marathon

Designing assessments is no easy task, but thinking of it like marathon training can make the process clearer. Align your assessments to outcomes, balance direct and indirect methods, create clear rubrics, set benchmarks, and continuously improve—this approach will set your students (and you) up for success. Remember, great marathon runners and great assessments start with clear goals. With the right preparation and pacing, both students and runners can cross the finish line strong and move on to the next challenge.