Faculty knowledge about assessment:
"What assessments are you using in your programs?" |
Assessment used:
1. grades
2. midterms and finals
3. term-end student evaluation of instructor |
Very few departments mentioned program-level assessments directed toward curriculum revision or other questions affecting student completion of programs.
[Conclusion: professional development opportunity] |
From judgments about individual student grades to effectiveness at program level:
· neutral feedback / data about extent of student achievement of learning objectives: instititional effectiveness related to classroom learning
· faculty accessing institutional data about persistence in programs, retention, student readiness for instruction-- "scope and sequence" relevant information |
Both quantitative and qualitative information about student learning in the aggregate, including:
· surveys
· focus groups
· self assessments
· exit interviews · archival data (institutional database) |
| Faculty attitudes toward assessment |
Useless data-gathering/ form filling; would be lots of work and never used, filed in adminstrative black hole
Required by outsiders (accrediting agency) |
· Faculty interest in designing and using assessments to monitor and improve quality of learning
· Faculty curiosity and interest in the scholarship of learning
· Continuous quality improvement appeals to faculty professionalism |
Shift to "Best Practices":
1. From students in isolation ("Academic loner") to collaborative learning /problem based learning /service learning /learning communities
2. From passive learning (lecture format) to active learning (individual engagement, group work, team work)
3. From memory work (lower level Bloom's taxonomy) to critical thinking / inductive / deductive / analysis / synthesis / evaluation and problem solving |
Topics for professional development seminar:
neutral feedback
simulations as assessments
group projects
portfolios
performance assessment
reflective journals
self assessments as measures
measuring thinking skills
alternative assessment |
| Faculty concerns about assessment |
No time to put more effort into assessment
Info could be "used against us." |
Faculty needed time to do this work
Faculty needed to be empowered to define and use assessments as they examined curricular effectiveness and other factors affecting student success |
Work shift: year-long focus on assessment practices within a team of faculty supported by release time
Institutional shift: support of faculty-initiated projects
|
Faculty interests:
tracking / retention
writing assessments
placement tests
student attitudes
student skills achievement
course standards / assessment
|
