Step 1: Plan
Start by selecting one, and only one, of your classes in which to try the Classroom Assessment. Focus your first assessment on a course that you know well and are comfortable with. Your "focus class" should also be one that you are confident is going well, one in which most students are succeeding and relatively satisfied. Although this may seem an odd suggestion, it is best not to use Classroom Assessment to gather data on a problematic or difficult situation until you become more experienced with CATs. In other words, minimize your risks while you develop confidence and skill.
Once you have chosen the "focus class," decide on the class meeting during which you will use the Classroom Assessment Technique. Make sure you reserve a few minutes of that class session for the assessment. At this point, you need to select A CAT. One-Minute Paper, Muddiest Point, One Sentence Summary, Application Cards, and Directed Paraphrasing are all flexible and easily adaptable to many situations, and simple and quick to apply. They also generate data that are easy to analyze. For those reasons, they make excellent introductory CATs and have been widely used by faculty from many disciplines.
Once you have chosen the "focus class," decide on the class meeting during which you will use the Classroom Assessment Technique. Make sure you reserve a few minutes of that class session for the assessment. At this point, you need to select A CAT. One-Minute Paper, Muddiest Point, One Sentence Summary, Application Cards, and Directed Paraphrasing are all flexible and easily adaptable to many situations, and simple and quick to apply. They also generate data that are easy to analyze. For those reasons, they make excellent introductory CATs and have been widely used by faculty from many disciplines.