RSOM Faculty Development Guide: Start a Teaching Renaissance

Assessment rigor refers to how cognitively complex an assessment is.  An assessment with an appropriate level of rigor measures a range of student thinking and understanding so that it measures what all students know and can do. When designing assessments you want to make sure that you are varying the complexity, however more important is that the level of rigor is appropriate for your students and their current knowledge and skills.  
 

Bloom’s taxonomy is a great resource when designing assessments.  This can be used to ensure correct rigor for each individual assignment, but allow you to look at your course as a whole and make sure you are varying activities and not just having students remember facts.

Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Helps to ensure rigor is appropriate.
• Helps give ideas for activities and assignments.
• Helps to make sure you are varying types of assessments. 

Note: Blooms can help you when you are doing backwards design.  If you are struggling to come up a learning objective and the desired results you want, you can use the verbs in the Bloom’s Taxonomy chart to give you a starting point. 

Below are some links to resources on assessment rigor.