1 / 10

Assessing College Student Learning

Assessing College Student Learning. Barb Putman August 24, 2012 New Faculty Workshop #1. Why assess?. To find out what students are actually learning, versus what we think they are learning To identify student-learning areas that are missing, weak, duplicated, and/or conflicting

harper-glass
Download Presentation

Assessing College Student Learning

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Assessing College Student Learning Barb Putman August 24, 2012 New Faculty Workshop #1

  2. Why assess? • To find out what students are actually learning, versus what we think they are learning • To identify student-learning areas that are missing, weak, duplicated, and/or conflicting • To demonstrate accountability to our students, college, and community • For students, assessment • Gives feedback about their learning • Can be motivating • Helps identify strengths and weaknesses • Can help students learn to self-assess • Provides a summation of what has been learned/accomplished • For instructors, assessment • Provides feedback about student learning • Can guide current and future content and instructional adjustments • Can be used to help students take increasing responsibility for their own learning

  3. Problems with assessment Lack of continuity between course goals, content covered, instructional methods, and assessments When overused, one or two methods may not give complete picture of student learning Unweildy assessment systems held onto for too long or abandonded too soon Unclear directions, unknown or shifting standards, and lack of models may leave students guessing about expectations Gap or delay in feedback loop may not allow students to learn from results and make adjustments

  4. Diagnostic, Formative and Summative Assessment

  5. Effective feedback • Good feedback should be: • timely - the sooner the better • encouraging - use positive language, even when commenting on poor aspects of an assessment, and use the sandwich approach (some words to avoid – useless, disastrous, shows little effort - you may be wrong!) • rational - feedback should be in line with clear marking criteria • Providing lengthy written feedback to a large cohort of students can be a time consuming exercise. Consider some of the following to reduce the load: • provide feedback to groups of students – this can help students realize that they are not alone in making mistakes • use statement banks of frequently repeated comments • be selective, for example the best two out of three assignments to count • issue model answers with marked work • wordprocessed overall class reports can be used in conjunction with a class debriefing session • codes written on students' work – instead of individual comments, use a code (a number, symbol or letter) and compile a glossary of codes in Powerpoint to use in debriefing session Source: www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/assessment/effective.html

  6. Traditional Assessment Tests, quizzes, and single-draft papers

  7. Alternative/Authentic Assessment Review of the Literature on Classroom Discourse Analysis Ann Bixby EDU 216 February 3, 2012 Source: Fictitious data, for illustration purposes only ENG 095 Independent Critical Reading Project Metacognitive process/content journal sample (bp) Monday, November 12 Today in class we discussed the final project. I'm a little worried about it. What should I choose? I'd like to read a novel—something fun—but then again, maybe I should choose something that will help me more directly in the future. For instance, I'm taking Sociology 210 next semester. Maybe I could borrow the textbook from someone and then choose a topic that we might be covering. As we learned early in this semester, prior knowledge is a very significant factor in reading/learning. Since I usually don't have time to do "outside" reading while I'm taking a class, I could take this opportunity to strengthen my background knowledge before I get into the Sociology class. Which direction should I take this? Should I read a nonfiction trade book that's related to one of the major topics in the Soc. book or should I research a topic in the library and on the Internet? I could compromise by doing a brief search on WebCat to see what the SCC library has on the topic and if an interesting-looking trade book comes up, then I could do that. If mostly periodicals come up, then I could go down the research path. First step is to find a Soc. book. I think my friend Pat is in that class this semester. I'll talk to her this weekend. I'll just see what happens when I type in "family."

  8. Performance/Authentic Assessment

  9. Using rubrics and models A rubric is a guideline for assessing student performance.

  10. Minimizing student complaints about grading Provide multiple opportunities for students to show you what they know. Consider allowing students to choose among alternative assignments. Clearly state grading procedures in your course syllabus and review with class. Set policies on late work. Avoid modifying your grading policies during the semester. Mix question types on tests. Test early to demonstrate testing style and test often to give students regular feedback. Return tests, papers, and projects as soon as possible. Assess what you really want students to learn.

More Related