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Who's on first? We want to know
Costello: Well then who's on first? Abbott: Yes! Costello: I mean the fellow's name! Abbott: Who! Costello: The guy on first! Abbott: Who! Costello: The first baseman! Abbott: Who! Costello: The guy playing first! Abbott: Who is on first!
-- Abbott & Costello, radio sketch, http://members.aol.com/ACQtrly/who.html
Well, maybe Bud Abbott and Lou Costello probably aren't the best of all possible role models for us on SCI's Assessment Committee, but they're one of the all-time great comedy acts. Their routines bridged the transition from the burlesque stage to radio, movies and TV during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. For their classic radio sketch "Who's on First," quoted above, they are the only non-baseball players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. In the skit Costello, who is trying out for catcher, discovers the first baseman is named Who, the second baseman is named What, the third baseman is I Don't Know ... and so on. The possiblities are practically endless, and they're milked for all they're worth.
So, maybe Abbot and Costello aren't so bad after all. Especially when we're trying to get to first base with a new part of our assessment plan.
Here's where we stand so far. We have three components, or "phases," running concurrently now. General Education assessment, after a hiatus, is getting under way again this school year (please see story below). And individual teachers have been using classroom assessment techniques for several years now. While we're working on ways to more widely communicate what's being done in the classroom, the use of CATs is probably our strongest component to date. The third part of our program assessment plan is off to a good start, too, as we bring our courses in line with the Illinois Articulation Initiative. Now we are supplementing it with a series of discussions modeled on a program assessment plan that was used successfully in the 1990s in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences of California State University at Chico.
Chico State's program assessment plan involved collegewide discussion among faculty members of three questions. Here they are, as we have adapted them for SCI:
What initially attracted us to the Chico State process was its collegiality. Said behavioral sciences dean James E. Jacob, "these discussions (of the three questions) might likely never have happened if departments hadn't been asked to step back and think about their learning objectives. In this way, the collegial dialogue at the heart of assessment can serve to clarify thinking by making explicit what had been implicit before." While there are obvious differences between SCI and the behavioral sciences college at a 12,000-student university, we like the idea of faculty and staff talking about these issues. And now that we're getting Gen Ed assessment started up again, we can devote more attention to getting more program assessment discussion under way.
So, let us know what you think. Who are our students? What do we want them to learn? What do they want to learn? What's the best way of getting us together -- all of us -- to start talking about these issues?
At the end of the "Who's on First" skit, Costello finally learns the improbable names of all the players on his new baseball team and applies his new knowledge. (We might be tempted, in fact, to say he's moving to a higher order of thinking in Bloom's cognitive domain.) "I throw the ball to first base," he says. "Whoever it is grabs the ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What, What throws it to I Don't Know, I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow - triple play."
Yeah, triple play. That sounds pretty good.
Visit http://www.1hollywood.com/Celebrities/abbott_costello.htm for a fact-filled biography of Abbott and Costello.
SCI panel adopts Gen Ed reading test
At its November meeting, the Assessment Committee adopted the reading component of the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) test developed by ACT Inc. It will be administered to all sophomores April 2 in order to assess learning outcomes as part of SCI's General Education assessment plan (Gen Ed testing is one of three parts of our overall assessment plan). After discussing alternatives and financial considerations, members of the Committee reached a consensus that the reading test would best measure skills that are taught across the curriculum and allow linkages with other ACT Inc. products, including the Compass tests we use for placement of incoming freshmen.
The test lasts 40 minutes and measures learning in two areas: (1) reading skills, including the ability to "recognize main ideas of paragraphs and passages, to identify important factual information, and to identify relationships among different components of textual information;" and (2) reasoning skills, including "ability to determine meaning from context, to infer main ideas and relationships, to generalize and apply information beyond the immediate context, to draw appropriate conclusions, and to make appropriate comparisons." Readings are drawn from prose fiction, humanities, social studies and natural science.
Visit http://www.act.org/caap/tests/index.html for more information.
-- Pete Ellertsen, editor, Nuts & Bolts
Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by the Assessment Committee of Springfield College in Illinois.
Members of the Assessment Committee are: Bob Blankenberger; Susan Full; Alice Gutierrez; Kathleen Killion; Penny Leonhard; Scott McCullar; Steve Stowers; Jeff Mueller and Kevin Broeckling (ex officio); and Pete Ellertsen, chair. If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact any committee member or editor Pete Ellertsen, in Becker L-16A on the SCI campus, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at ellertsen@sci.edu.