Classroom Assessment at College of DuPage

Outcome Assessment at College of DuPage

Classroom Assessment

Date: 1/19/1999

To: All Part and Full -Time Faculty

From: Classroom Assessment Sub-Committee

RE: Classroom Assessment Techniques and Reports

College of DuPage is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA). In accordance with both the NCA’s initiatives and the college’s own mission statement, all College of DuPage faculty members and academic disciplines are responsible for participating in ongoing assessment activities designed to develop and support excellence in teaching and learning.

Classroom Assessment Techniques (C.A.T.’s) provide teachers and students alike with methods of regularly pausing to reflect on their goals, their progress toward them, and their best strategies for ultimately achieving them. Although C.A.T.’s are often simple, and may take only a few minutes of classroom time to complete, at their best they initiate and sustain productive ongoing dialogue about learning in our classrooms, providing us with valuable feedback that allows us to make informed decisions about how to affirm or revise our current classroom practices.

At the beginning of the 1996-1997 academic year, full-time College of DuPage faculty members began a concerted effort to apply C.A.T.’s regularly in their courses. Each Spring Quarter since then, full-time faculty members have completed Individual Classroom Assessment Reports, which describe both the C.A.T’s themselves and the discoveries to which they have led. The Classroom Assessment Sub-Committee of the College-Wide Assessment Committee compiles and publishes those reports each year. The Second Annual Report on Classroom and Multi-Section Assessment: 1998-1999 is now available.

This year, one of the Classroom Assessment Sub-Committee’s main goals is to extend assessment activity to encompass the members of the part-time faculty. To that end, we are requesting that all part-time faculty members apply and report on at least one C.A.T. this quarter, filling out and submitting the attached report form as directed.

We have included several sample classroom assessment techniques here for your perusal. (Please note that you are free to report on techniques that you already regularly employ. The attached samples are meant only to suggest possibilities, not to limit choices.) For more examples, visit the College’s Assessment Web Site at http://www.cod.edu /outcomes. In addition to sample individual reports, the web page includes sample multi-section reports, a list of the current committee members, a collection of articles from the Assessment Newsletter, and a wealth of links to both general and discipline specific assessment resources. We encourage you to spend some time surfing the site, which will provide you with a range of valuable techniques readily adaptable for use in your own classrooms. You’ll find Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville’s site, from which the attached examples are drawn, particularly handy if you are looking for quick, clear introductions to basic techniques.

We thank you in advance for participating in and supporting the assessment effort; invite you to contact any member of the committee if you have questions, comments, or suggestions; and ,of course, encourage you to enjoy exploring and discovering assessment’s potential for enriching both teaching and learning.

"Assessment is most successful when undertaken in an environment
that is receptive, supportive, and enabling."

(Assessment in Practice, Bana, Lund, Black, and Oblander, 1996)

Attachments -- Frequently Asked Questions