RE: Assessment

Exciting Conferences on Assessment Await You!

Several conferences focusing on the topic of assessment will be coming up over the next several months. Faculty interested in "cutting edge" information on assessment should investigate any or all of the opportunities.

At College of DuPage:

On April 8, 1997, at 12:00 to 1:30 pm, College of DuPage will be a downlink site for a teleconference on "Meaningful Student Assessment." The room for this conference has not yet been determined at this writing, but interested persons may contact either Irene Kovala at ext. 3395 or Joann Smith at ext. 3026 for the exact location.

American Association of Higher Education, Miami, Florida

AAHE is sponsoring an assessment conference from June 11 to 15, 1997, in Miami. This year's conference is titled "Assessing Impact: Evidence and Action." Registration materials have not yet been mailed but should be available in early April.

North Central Association, Chicago

The North Central Association's annual conference includes significant sessions on assessment this year. The Conference will be held in Chicago, April 19 - 22 at the Hyatt Regency. Registration information may be obtained by contacting Rene Kovala at 3395.

Indiana University /Purdue University at Indianapolis

IUPUI is sponsoring an international meeting on assessment in Indianapolis, Indiana, on July 21 - 23. The conference site is the IUPUI campus. This conference has an international flavor to it, bringing assessment models from all over the world. Rene Kovala has registration materials available.

New Assessment Videos in the LRC
The LRC has recently acquired two videos that focus on an aspect of student outcomes assessment that is sometimes overlooked: helping students to self-assess their own learning behavior.

Jointly produced by The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique and Sonoma State College, the two videos, each about 60 minutes long, are of sessions presented at the International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform. As such, the production values are quite Spartan. Dr. Richard Paul, Director of the Center, speaks to his audience from the stage of a large lecture hall and uses a few, mostly hand-drawn transparencies as visual aids. From a videographic point of view, these programs are highly unlikely to win any awards, but they are rich in ideas relating to teaching and learning in higher education.

How to Teach Students To Assess Their Own Work: The Foundation (Circ Desk LB 1025.3 .H6 1993) is the more theoretical of the two. One of the major points that Dr. Paul makes is that three variables must be present and given serious consideration if there is to be successful learning in the classroom: the Logic of Reasoning, the Logic of the Content Being Taught, and the Logic of the Students' Thinking. He expands on these concepts at considerable length and analyzes which components of each must be assessed if indeed the learning environment is to be successful

How to Teach Students to Assess Their Own Work: The Tactics (Circ Desk LB 1025.3 .H61 1993) is somewhat more pragmatic. However, the opening recapitulates in brief fashion many of the major concepts developed in the first video, so it is entirely possible to view this one independently of the other. One of the major concepts explored is of the college instructor as coach. A history teacher is really a coach of historical reasoning, and an anthropology teacher is really a coach of anthropological reasoning. As a coach, the instructor must do four things:
1. Take the understanding and skills of the team seriously.
2. Arrange disciplined practice.
3. Discuss with the team what is being practiced, why it is being practiced, what to watch out for, and how the practice is going to be assessed.
4. Arrange "games", which are all assessed and which lead to new practice at the micro and macro levels.

In exploring these aspects, Dr. Paul clearly delineates the responsibilities that both the instructor and the students have to the educational endeavor and the assessment of personal performance.

These videos have a great deal to say about the assessment of the classroom learning environment, especially the role of student self-assessment, and as such they are well worth the time and effort to view them.

F A Q  (Frequently Asked Questions)

Q. For the assessment of a multi-section course, my discipline has chosen a pre-test/post-test strategy, but I'd be interested in knowing how other disciplines are approaching this.

A. Indeed, the pre-test/post-test strategy is a popular and completely appropriate method for many disciplines, but some interesting and creative variations are being pursued. For example, in Anthropology 100 the students will each write a response to two essay questions in class, one early in the quarter and one near the end. Those responses will be assessed to determine how well the analytical concepts and vocabulary of anthropology have been integrated into the students' thinking. Philosophy 100 will do something similar with entrance/exit essays related to a general concept in philosophy.

Other disciplines are looking for direct student input to help shape courses. For example, Math 130 students will be given a survey near the end of the quarter to help answer the question, "Does the current Math 130 course meet the needs of the students who enroll in it?" In Physical Therapy Assistant Program 192, students will be asked to rate and rank the topics presented to determine which ones should be retained or have more or less time devoted to them.

Using a grid, the Speech Faculty will assess each student on four criteria: communication codes, human interaction skills, critical listening skills, and speaking skills. The combined data for all students will be analyzed statistically to determine what, if any, modifications should be made to the course.

Q. The Angelo and Cross text is an excellent source for classroom assessment, but it doesn't have a great deal to say about multi-section course assessment or program assessment. Can you suggest something that deals with these topics?

A. A good place to start is a fairly recent book entitled Assessment for Excellence: The Philosophy and Practice of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education by Alexander W. Astin. The book is part of the American Council on Education Series on Higher Education and was published by Oryx Press in 1993. (The LRC's copy is located at LB 2366.2 .A89 1993)

Divided into twelve chapters, the book deals with such topics as the philosophy and logic of assessment; a conceptual model for assessment; assessing outcomes, student inputs, and the environment; and analyzing assessment data, using the results, and building a data base. Despite the obviously scholarly topic, the book is amazingly jargon-free and quite readable.

This should be an especially useful source for those faculty designated to deal with the data generated by their discipline's assessment of a multi-section course.

Assessment In Action: A Sharing Of Ideas
Keeping Track To Stay On Track

Student Outcomes Assessment is about improving the learning environment at all levels. As such, there is understandably a great deal of emphasis on gathering student feedback so that everyone from the individual instructor to the college president can effect improvements. However, if there is to be real progress, students have a responsibility for their own actions, behavior, and commitment to the educational endeavor, too, so it is important for them to perform a certain amount of self-assessment.

A useful self-assessment technique is to ask students to keep a detailed log for at least a week of how they spend their time. Each hour of the day is divided into half or quarter-hour time slots, and the student should note the activity that took place in each. For those time slots during which "educational activity" took place, the student should also indicate where s/he was, what distractions, if any, were present, and on a scale of 1 - 4, how successful the study was during the time slot.

There are various ways that the data can be compiled, but certainly each student should be asked to calculate some totals: how much out-of-class time was spent on each course; how much was spent working; commuting; sleeping; socializing with friends; watching TV; etc. Armed with the data, a number of approaches can be taken: each student can be asked to write a reflective essay on his/her study habits; students can be broken into small groups to share their findings and report their conclusions; with anonymity protected, students can analyze each other's data and provide feedback on how to improve study habits; the instructor can build a data base and plot study time against standard measures of performance such as grades earned for particular assignments. If structured carefully, these activities do not have to take much class time.

As simplistic as this assignment may sound, it may take such an approach for some students to come to the realization that spending twenty uninterrupted minutes on integral calculus in the LRC may be far more profitable than spending an entire hour while also trying to watch "Late Night With Conan O'Brien"; that in reality they are only spending two hours a week outside of class for a five hour course, and perhaps that is why they are less than successful; that if they are not getting everything done on time, that spending one less hour a day watching TV or playing cards in the cafeteria may make a big difference.

Nearly every student needs to develop or improve time management and study skills. This assignment can help sensitize them to their study behavior, and with the creative use of peer reinforcement, there can be quantum jumps in their performance levels.

Copyright © 1998 College of DuPage
Students' Outcomes Assessment Committee  · (630)-942-2081
klassen@cdnet.cod.edu
Updated December 16, 1999
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