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For new (and old) teachers --
This year SCI's Assessment Committee is going to put a new emphasis on faculty development, the kind of nuts-and-bolts advice this newsletter promises. I'll admit it: I didn't get my inspiration from the professional literature on assessment. I got it in large part from a Chinese fortune cookie.
At the very beginning of fall semester, before we could buy lunch in what used to be known as the Quiet Lounge (should we emulate the rock artists and call it "the Lounge Formerly Known as Quiet?"), I got some Chinese take-out from one of the restaurants on North Grand Avenue and with it the fortune cookie quoted above. Typically, fortune cookies don't promise me wealth and happiness; instead, they warn me to shape up, get back to work and try harder. So this one, I liked. Besides, it reminded me of our work on the Assessment Committee. We're good, and our students are learning. So let's prove it. We're required to, anyway, so let's do a good job of it. And let's do it in a way that actually helps us in the classroom.
That was part of my inspiration. The other inspiration came when former Academic Affairs Dean Eldon Brown visited campus a couple of weeks ago. I remember Eldon drafted me for the Assessment Committee in 2000 because assessment is basically a government mandate, and I have a background in political journalism and public relations. Well, I'd waded through a lot of government gobbledygook in newspapering days, but I was dumbstruck when I started dealing with pedagogical gobbledygook. All right, OK, I thought, I understand I'm required to do this for accreditation, but what in blue blazes do they want me to do? In a word, what I needed most was a good stiff dose of faculty development.
We've got a lot of new faculty this year. Just glancing at mailboxes in Dawson Hall, I count at least a dozen over the last year or so in the traditional program. And almost two dozen more in New Horizons and the Benedictine University programs. So it's a good time to go back to some of the basics.
We'll begin with a brief session during October's faculty meeting. Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville has an excellent introduction to Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs for short) linked below. We'll take a look at it. And in this newsletter, which is named Nuts & Bolts after all, we'll go into some of the nuts and bolts of specific CATs as the new school year goes along.
More important than specific techniques, though, is the underlying attitude. Why do we do assessment? Well, for one thing, we're required to by outside stakeholders like government and accrediting bodies. But that's not the real payoff for us as educators. "First and historically, assessment is what we faculty members can do in order to demonstrate to ourselves that we actually do what we say we do," says Douglas Eder of SIUE. "It is our source of in-process feedback." By assessing what our students actually learn, Eder explains, we can analyze "the curriculum (or an assignment, class, or course) into component parts." By doing it as we go along, we can see where we're going with a class and change course as needed.
We'll have more to say about specific techniques in later issues of the newsletter. In the meantime, here's one that gets a lot of favorable mention on our faculty assessment questionnaires. It's called the "one-minute essay," and it's more informative and less cumbersome than some of the other CATs.
Here's the minute essay prompt they use at SIUE, with some variations they suggest in brackets: "In concise, well-planned sentences, please answer the two questions below: 1. What are the two [three, four, five] most significant [central, useful, meaningful, surprising, disturbing] things you have learned during this session? 2. What question(s) remain uppermost in your mind?" I'll read the questions at the end of class, and have students write their answers. I've also used the questions in end-of-semester evaluations.
Here's what I like about one-minute essays: They allow me to compare what I think my main point was with what my students think it was. Let's just say it's not always the same!
I've been talking about classroom techniques here, but assessment is not just for teachers. "In both student and academic affairs," says Eder, "I believe assessment should ask: Who came, what did they learn, what are their impressions, and what subsequent behavior has resulted?" Eder commended Miami University of Ohio, which assesses "such questions as, why do you go to class, why do you drop out, where do you go for help, what did you come in with, how do you learn best, how do your parents feel, how do you spend your time, who is NOT here, how do minority students fare, how do at-risk students fare, are mid-term warnings effective, and what connections do you see between general education and the world beyond the classroom?"
If you think about it, that's a lot like what the fortune cookie said. We're capable, competent, creative and careful at SCI. Let's prove it.
-- Pete Ellertsen, chair, Assessment Committee
Eder, Douglas. "Assessment, Thermodynamics, and the Myth of Sisyphus." Keynote Address, Virginia Assessment Group, Nov. 6, 1998. http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/vagkey.html
Fortune. Chicago: Sam's Fortune Cookies Inc., n.d.
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Classroom Assessment Techniques. 2004. http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/catmain.html
Assessment committee
Since SCI is up for reaccreditation in 2005, Pete Ellertsen agreed to chair the committee for a third term in order to help provide continuity this year. This year's members are: Bob Blankenberger, history and philosophy; Brian Ferguson, chemistry; Amy Lakin, English; Matt Mogle, fine arts; Rick Rossetto, biology; Steve Stowers, math; Barb Tanzyus, math; and Ellertsen, English and mass communications. Kevin Broeckling, dean of students; and Jeff Mueller, dean of the college, serve ex officio.
Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by SCI's Assessment Committee. It is available on line at http://www.sci.edu/assessment/newsarchive.html
If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact any committee member or Nuts & Bolts editor Pete Ellertsen, in Becker L-16A on the SCI campus, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at <ellertsen@sci.edu>.
