Assessment as a Way of Understanding & Improving Student

Learning

William S. Moore, Ph.D.

Policy Associate, Assessment, Teaching & Learning

WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges bmoore@sbctc.ctc.edu

360-704-4346

College of the SiskyousJanuary 12, 2007

As you can clearly see

on slide 397…

•Courtesy of “Dilbert” & Scott Adams

Oh, no—not

another case of

PowerPoint

poisoning!!!

Overview of Workshop

• Understanding the Context

• Beginning with the End in Mind

• Facilitating Student Learning

• Making Judgments about Progress

• Putting the Pieces Together

• Exploring other Questions

• Focusing on Assignments as Assessments

“Assessment is…”

Accreditation: Caught between Competing Worldviews?

Compliance: “prove”

Self-reflection; “improve”

WHY?

WHO?

WHAT?

ACCOUNTABILITY ASSESSMENT

“Them” (external)

Measures & answers

“Us” (internal)

Evidence & better-informed judgments

AC

CR

ED

ITA

TIO

N

The Promise of Assessment

• Create a new notion of educational excellence for higher education

• Reframe our understanding of accountability

• Revive/strengthen a sense of campus community by focusing on significant, collective purposes

Collective Sense of Purpose

Assessment...requires us to work together, and to do unfamiliar things like setting common goals and standards, devising methods of assessment, interpreting the results, and using them to improve and coordinate our teaching. [It thus] possesses all the appeal and efficiency of committee work, in particular the kind visited upon us by administrators.

Robert Holyer, Change, Sept./Oct., 1998

Beginning with the End in Mind

Underlying Perspectives Drive Key Questions

What do we want students to know & be able to do??

Knowledge

Curriculum

Knowledge as a Set of Tools

• “Situated” or grounded in specific contexts in which it is used (and learned)

• Expertise as body of knowledge organized around “big ideas,” not isolated facts

Making Judgments about Progress

Evidence

How do we judge

competence on key outcomes?

Assessment

What do we want students to know & be able to do??

Knowledge

Curriculum

Underlying Perspectives Drive Key Questions

A Sampling of Assessment Approaches

• Research papers, essay tests

• Self-evaluations• Interviews• Performance tasks

(e.g., cases, problems, etc.)

• Multiple-choice tests

• Projects, field work• Standardized tests,

surveys• Peer evaluations• Portfolio collections

of work• External assessor

ratings• Focus groups

Core Principles of Assessment• Assess the things that really

matter, not just the things easily assessed

• Emphasize the quality and quantity of conversations about assessment evidence

• Use a variety of approaches and multiple indicators

Facilitating Student Learning

How do we judge

competence on key outcomes?

What do we want students to know & be able to do??

Knowledge Assessment

Curriculum

Underlying Perspectives Drive Key Questions

Learning

How do we promote

learning most effectively?

Pedagogy Grading

Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:

•Things you will need to know in later life (2 hours)…

•Things you will NOT need to know in later life (1198 hours). These are the things you learn in classes whose names end in ‘-ology’, ‘-osophy’, ‘-istry’, ‘-ics’, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them you become a professor and have to stay in college the rest of your life.

College Learning???

Dave Barry, 1981

Learning as Deep

Understanding

• Collaborative work around authentic, “situated” activities

• “Learning to be” vs. “learning about”

• Teacher’s roles: modeling, scaffolding, fading, coaching

Putting the Pieces Together

• Course

• Department/Program

• Institution

Multiple Levels of Assessment

General Education Assessment Decisions:

• Definition: what matters?

• Focus: individual students or programs?

• Level of emphasis: what’s a program?

• Nature of evidence: direct or indirect?

• Approach: external or embedded?

Student Learning Institutional Outcomes Effectiveness

Observing & judging

performance based on explicit criteria

Providing feedback based

on those judgments

Reflecting regularly on the strengths & weaknesses of the

institution

Asking fundamental questions about learning and the

conditions for learning

Scary Issues Around Assessment

• Assuming “accountability” leads to real improvement

• Getting lost in administrivia

• Worshipping numbers• Obsessing over

“objectivity” & “being scientific”

Every complex question has a simple answer…

And it’s wrong.

H.L. Mencken

A Sampling of Assessment Resources/Gatherings

• The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges

http://www.rpgroup.org/• Academic Quality Improvement Program

http://www.aqip.org/• Western Assessment Conference

http://business.fullerton.edu/events/AssessmentConf/• International Assessment & Retention Conference

http://www.naspa.org/assessment/index.cfm • Partial listing of other assessment conferences

http://www.assessmentconferences.com/• WA Assessment, Teaching, & Learning site

http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/e_assessment.aspx (annual conference, regular e-newsletter)

ExploringOther Questions

Focusing on Assignments as Assessments

Clarifying ‘Good Work’:Making Implicit & Private Judgments

Explicit & Public

• Review concrete examples of real work

• Develop shared notions of quality • Define what constitutes adequate evidence of

quality

• Discuss learning experiences that help foster the desired performances

Good assessment tasks are

interchangeable with good

instructional tasks.Lorrie Shepard

“The role of assessment in a learning culture,” 2000

The best assessment tools are the

minds of teachers and

learners