Assessing non-credit classes: opportunity for growth

Over spring break I heard from Appalachian dulcimer artist Phyllis Gaskins, and it got me to thinking about what an exciting opportunity we've got at SCI to use assessment as a planning tool this summer. What does southern Appalachian music have to do with assessment? Bear with me a minute, and I'll try to explain. But first, some background.

Gaskins plays the mountain dulcimer in the old-fashioned Galax style. She's good at it, and she's placed in the Old Fiddlers' Convention in Galax, Va. (An academic equivalent might be giving a paper at the Modern Language Association's annual conference -- it's where the best of the best compete.) She's also an elementary school teacher, and she's good at that too. Last summer I took her five-day workshop at Warren Wilson College's Swannanoa Gathering, a non-credit summer program in folk arts and music in the North Carolina mountains.

The first day of class, Gaskins had us write down what we hoped to learn during the week and collected the papers. The last day, she returned them and asked us to write what we did learn -- not necessarily the same thing. She collected the papers again, and mailed them back to us this month. "Hopefully now is an even better time (than earlier) to reflect on … summer and autumn progress and plan ahead for more musical growth," she said in a cover letter.

So … there you have it. Gaskins was doing assessment. Everybody does it these days. I know I've benefitted as a student, because it helps me focus and plan how I can grow as an amateur musician.

Warren Wilson College also does assessment on the Swannanoa Gathering. We filled out detailed, two-page evaluation questionnaires, and this year's newsletter details changes in administration, concert scheduling and child care in response. "Those of you who asked on your evaluation forms if we could do something about the weather will be happy to learn that we have arranged to have weather again next summer," the newsletter adds with tongue in cheek.

As SCI moves into continuing education programming this summer, we need to be doing assessment too. We can't do anything about the weather in central Illinois, but we will want to gather the data we need to build on our initial successes and plan for improvements in future summer sessions. So in the one-day workshops I propose to offer, I'm building assessment into my lesson plans. I want to know what went over and what didn't. I also want to know what market there might be for other workshops I could teach, so I'll ask about that too.

Call it assessment, call it planning or call it market research -- it's all the same thing. At any rate, it's an opportunity.

To help you plan

On reserve now at the circulation desk in SCI's Becker Library are copies of the Certificate Renewal Manual and the Illinois Learning Standards put out by the Illinois State Board of Education. They've become second nature for K-12 teachers, and those of us who are offering classes for Continuing Education Unit (CEU) or Continuing Professional Development Unit (CPDU) credit this summer will better be able to serve participants in our classes if we get familiar with them ahead of time.

Oversight and blatant plug

In last month's newsletter I mentioned a couple of initiatives at SCI designed to help our students with career issues, and I suggested we can do more to complete feedback loops -- i.e., get the word out about what we're doing. One service I didn't mention, even though the walls around campus are bright with fliers advertising it, is the Springfield Collegiate Career Fair. Coordinating SCI's part of it are Kim Fontana and the admissions staff, who also work with a Health Fair and prep course for Job Fair. This year's Collegeate Career Fair is from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, April 5, in the PAC Building at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Encourage your students to attend -- our preliminary data suggest it's something they'll find worthwhile.

-- Pete Ellertsen, assessment facilitator

March. 21, 2002
Vol. 2 No. 7

• 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
Barb Bernardi
Bob Blankenberger
Nadine Elchlepp (student)
Susan Full
Alice Gutierrez
Jim Harris
Dave Holland
Jeff Mueller (ex officio)
Kevin Broeckling (ex officio)