In light of current events, you may need to rethink your assessments. We'd like to encourage you to review this resource from Indiana's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning has a great list of alternatives to traditional exams and papers. If something resonates with you, perhaps there's an option there that you could implement in your course this semester.

If none of the options in the article above work for you, below we've shared a brief overview of some common adjustments that can be made to more traditional assignments for adaptation to the remote environment.

High Stakes Assessments (Summative)

Summative assessments generally help us measure and express how well students have learned. What follows are recommendations of alternatives if you were planning on any of the following assessment strategies.

A Final Exam Proctored in the Testing Center

Removing the IP restrictions and allowing students to take it as is unproctored.
Revising the exam such that it has fewer but more difficult questions centered on the most important learning goals and allowing students to complete it as an open-book exam.
Create question groups and pull from the groups randomly to give each student a different version of the exam.
Divide the high-stakes exam up into a series of smaller, lower-stakes quizzes or assignments
Consider replacing the exam with a different activity that is a more authentic assessment of students' ability to "do the subject"

An Individual Presentation to the Class

Have students record their presentation using VigGrid screen capture technology and share their link in Canvas discussions for general feedback, or use the peer review tool to create a more structured peer review.
Allow students to create a more of a YouTuber-style video presentation about their topic and share it on a class YouTube channel or upload it to VidGrid to share.
Presentations can also be done live via Zoom and the "share screen" tool, but not all students will have the same level of Internet access, so please consider asynchronous presentations.

A Group Project And/Or Presentation

Canvas group can be used for groups of students to work together, sharing files and making use of their own group discussions.
Groups could present by having each member record a different part of the presentation.

Printed Posters or Papers of Any Kind

Make use of the Canvas assignment tool for submission.
Use Speedgrader to annotate, give feedback, and grade.
Employ the peer review tool to help students learn from each others' work.

Low-Stakes Assessments (Formative)

Formative assessments help us understand how well students are learning and give us insight into how may need to teach differently or on what concepts we should elaborate to help students learn more effectively. What follows are recommendations of alternatives if you were planning on any of the following assessment strategies.

Lecture Sessions with Clicker Questions

Vidgrid recorded lectures with embedded questions: Used with the Canvas Assignment feature, results from the embedded quizzing go directly into the Grades. Note that if students watch the video again and answer the questions again, they will receive a new grade.

Prior Knowledge Checks

Before starting a new unit or topic, it can be useful to have a better idea of what students already know so that you can build on their prior knowledge and correct misunderstandings.

Use a Canvas quiz to ask 1-3 questions related to the upcoming topic that will give you some insight into what students know or believe about this topic. Quizzes are great for large enrollment courses and when you already have an idea of student misconceptions and can employ multiple-choice questions.
Canvas quizzes can also be used for short-answer responses.

Minute Papers or Muddiest Points

After teaching, it can be helpful to have students do very short writing assignments to gauge how well they understood what they were just taught (read, watched, etc.).

The minute paper asks two open-ended questions:
1. What was the most important thing you learned?
2. What important question remains unanswered?
The muddiest point writing exercise asks students to describe what they perceived to be the "muddiest point" in that session's learning experience. When teaching remotely, you could ask this after students watch one of your presentations or do a reading.

In both cases, student responses inform what you may need to clarify and many instructors make a short screencast to address those points.