Assessment is generally not a favorite subject for many teachers, and this is likely due to a perceived tension between the goals they wish to accomplish as educators and the methods of assessments prescribed by accrediting agencies. With even President Obama calling for improvements in assessing education, this paper seeks to develop an innovative phenomenological-hermeneutic model of assessment, one that focuses on the first-person interpretation of one’s transformative educational experience. After the theoretical framework for developing this model is explained, I present an application of the model through the introduction of “mindful reading assignments.”
Tag: Assessment
When Rubrics Collide: One Writing Tutor’s Experience Negotiating Faculty and Institutional Assessments
This article recounts one undergraduate writing tutor’s experience helping a fellow peer navigate an institutional assessment rubric that seemed to contrast the assessment criteria provided by the student’s instructor. This article presents a reflection on that experience, framed by Hutchings, Huber, and Ciccone’s (2011) work on institutional assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Institutional Assessment and the Intellectual Work of Teaching and Learning in First Year Composition
Institutional assessment initiatives can provide opportunities to make the intellectual work of teaching and learning in composition studies more visible. Reciprocally, the scholarship of teaching and learning’s situatedness within disciplinary norms and values can enhance institutional assessments, providing a check on the tendency to rely on singular, overly generalized mechanisms for capturing course- or program-level data. This article shares one example of the reciprocal relationship that can occur between disciplinary and institutional assessment initiatives.
Challenging Multiple-Choice Questions to Engage Critical Thinking
This article examines a technique for engaging critical thinking on multiple-choice exams. University students were encouraged to “challenge” the validity of any exam question they believed to be unfair (e.g., more than one equally correct answer, ambiguous wording, etc.). The number of valid challenges a student wrote was a better predictor of exam scores than the number of invalid challenges or GPA. The technique also allows instructors to gain insight into the sources of students’ errors that may be useful in improving instruction.
Using the Comfortability in Learning Scale to Enhance Positive Classroom Learning Environments
A goal of higher education is to advance learning. This study examined the role “comfortability” plays in that process. Defined as the level of comfort students experience with their classmates, instructor, and course material, comfortability addresses how secure a student feels in the classroom. Comfortability was assessed multiple times during one semester with undergraduate students and found student comfortability significantly increased across the course of the semester and significantly predicted affective learning. These findings suggest the importance of the classroom environment in the learning process and support the need for faculty to consider “non-academic” factors in addition to course content.
Online Course Quality Assurance: Development of a Quality Checklist
The University of Nebraska at Kearney’s Online Course Checklist is the main instrument for assessing the quality of online courses at UNK. A number of issues were faced when developing and deploying this quality assurance checklist at a small four-year university. The process including development, implementation, and revision is discussed along with the need for faculty buy-in. Special considerations included how to assess the quality of an online course while ensuring academic freedom in accordance with a union contract. The purpose of this case study is to provide a roadmap for institutions that are developing an instrument of their own.
Using the Learning Activities Survey to Examine Transformative Learning Experiences in Two Graduate Teacher Preparation Courses
The Learning Activities Survey (LAS) detected whether, and to what extent, a perspective transformation occurred during two graduate courses in teacher preparation. The LAS examined the types of learning identified as contributing to their transformation experiences. This study examined pre-service teachers’ critical reflection of the course materials and learning experiences in a Capstone course in Reflective Teaching and a course in Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Results suggest that similar learning experiences were identified as triggering a perspective transformation. When learners have the opportunity to engage in critical reflection, they may more easily question their personal perspectives as a result.
Exit Tickets Open the Door to University Learning
Four instructors from a mid-western university implemented exit tickets in their university courses. The exit tickets were based on Marzano’s (2012) four types of exit tickets and were analyzed for patterns. Faculty completed a journal to reflect on what was learned examining the exit tickets. A survey was completed by both instructors and university students to determine the benefits of the use of exit tickets as a formative assessment at the university. Researchers share the processes used for implementing exit tickets and the results of the data collected along with implications for the use of exit tickets at the university.
Using a Learning Styles Inventory to Examine Student Satisfaction with Web-Based Instruction: A 15-Year Study of One Professor’s Web-Based Course Instruction
This article examines Active Engagement, Active Communication, and Peer Engagement learning practices among various student groups. It examines which tools are most important for increasing student satisfaction with web-based and web-enhanced instruction. Second, it looks at how different tools lead to greater satisfaction among different types of students (undergraduate, master’s level, and doctoral level). Data were collected from 491 participants who answered an identical learning styles survey about technology-based pedagogical tools. This study revealed that students enrolled in web-based courses taught by one professor demonstrate high levels of satisfaction in courses that provide active, engaging learning environments.
How Age, Gender, and Class Format Relate to Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Effective Course Assessments
Students’ perceptions of assessment used within the learning environment greatly influence their approach to learning. Therefore, this study aims to explore whether various student or course characteristics (age, gender, course format) impact perceptions regarding effectiveness of assessment type (e.g., exam, participation, presentation) and question format. As faculty develop their courses they may wish to consider these perceptions in order to better facilitate learning and to clearly articulate to their students the benefits of the assessment types that the students see as less effective.