By their outcomes

shalt thou know them

Oh, OK, let's start with the correction --

Last month's newsletter should have said, "we're paying more attention this year at SCI to the goals, objectives and outcomes we write into syllabi." I'm tempted to say the error (which I won't repeat here) reflects widespread confusion over the terminology. It does. But I shouldn't have added to the confusion. There's a corrected copy archived at

http://www.sci.edu/assessment/newsletter0802.html

so you can replace last month's copy in your files.

In assessment, we're concerned especially with what educators call "outcomes." They are best defined, perhaps, as specific behaviors that can be measured in order to determine what our students have learned. Susan Full, SCI's head librarian and assessment committee member, has provided me with a set of "behavioral terms for stating specific learning outcomes." She made me promise not to say how long she's had them, but I am at liberty to report they date to her student days at Western Illinois University.

They follow from "Bloom's taxonomy," a useful tool for encouraging critical thinking in the classroom. In 1956 educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and others ranked learning goals in order of the complexity of thought that goes into achieving them. Listed below are his cognitive goals, starting with the most basic or "lowest" and stepping up to higher levels of sophistication; after each goal are listed verbs that illustrate specific related behavioral outcomes.

• Knowledge. Defines, describes, identifies, labels, lists, matches, names, reproduces, selects, states, outlines.
• Comprehension. Converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives examples, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes, infers.
• Application. Changes, computes, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, preducts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.
• Analysis. Breaks down, diagrams, differentiates, discriminates, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, points out, relates, selects, separates, subdivides, distinuishes.
• Synthesis. Categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes, designs, reorganizes.
• Evaluation. Appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, citicizes, describes, discriminates, explains, interprets, relates, summarizes, supports, justifies.

What does this have to do with assessment? Two main things that I can think of. One, we are encouraged to incorporate more critical thinking goals into our planning. And two, the verbs in Susan's education school notes from Western describe the outcomes or behaviors we want our students to develop.

Assessment subpanels named

At its September meeting, the Assessment Committee chose the following subcommittees:

General Education (to develop Collegewide learning goals and work with testing to measure attainment of those goals). Steve Stowers, Alice Gutierrez, Bob Blankenberger, Penny Leonhard.

Student Affairs (to work on issues relating to student motivation to take part in Assessment Day in April). Susan Full, Kevin Broeckling, Kathleen Killion.

Faculty Development (to work with classroom assessment and creating an organizational culture receptive to assessment). Scott McCullar, Bob Blankenberger, Pete Ellertsen.

In other action, members of the committee expressed their gratitude to Registrar Helene Bea for the warm white paper stock on which the agenda and minutes were copied.

-- Pete Ellertsen, assessment facilitator

September 2002

• There's a student-friendly primer on Bloom's taxonomy put on the Web by Longview Community College in Missouri. Click here to read it.
• Assessment issues in the United Kingdom, in the form of political pressure on the high-stakes A-level exams taken by secondary school graduates, are in the news this month. Follow the aftermath at http://education.guardian.co.uk/.
• The Illinois State Board of Education does assessment, along with a number of other things, for K-12 teachers. Its website is at http://www.isbe.state.il.us/ -- since we're offering summer classes for teachers, we'll want to check it out.
• An excellent nuts-and-bolts guide to practical assessment! Consider it a CATalyst on Classroom Assessment Techniques. It's the SIU-Edwardsville. site on CATs.
• Another CATalyst: An Introduction to Classroom Assessment Techniques by Diane M. Enerson, Kathryn M. Plank, and R. Neill Johnson of Penn State's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at http://www.psu.edu/celt/CATs.html
• Primary Trait Analysis is discussed in detail, along with other matters, in the website of Raymond Walters College, University of Cincinnati.
• To see the context for our efforts on assessment, accreditation and planning, read NCA's Five Criteria for Accreditation.
• Parkland College. See what another two-year college in downstate Illinois has been doing -- and when.
• Much of the conceptual framework of our assessment plan at SCI is based on Edgar Schein's thoughts on organizational culture, which are summarized and quoted in the above British website. Visit Schein's website at MIT, too.
• Principles. American Association for Higher Education. This Washington, D.C., advocacy group's Web site includes a FAQ page and a universally accepted set of Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning.
  

Committee
Pete Ellertsen, chair
Bob Blankenberger
Susan Full
Alice Gutierrez
Kathleen Killion (student)
Penny Leonhard
Scott McCullar
Steve Stowers
Jeff Mueller (ex officio)
Kevin Broeckling (ex officio)



      

Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter publishedby the Assessment Committee of Springfield College in Illinois. If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact Peter Ellertsen, Becker L-16a, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at ellertsen@sci.edu.