|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CATs: Getting started (2) --
Mission, goals, IAI drive classroom assessment
At the first of the month I was invited to speak on classroom assessment techniques (CATs for short) to a faculty meeting at Ursuline Academy. As so often happens, I came away from the session with a better understanding than I had going in. Partly it proves the old saying you don't really learn a subject till you try to teach it. But partly I think it has something to do with common values and a shared mission. If you get a group of teachers together in a room, sooner or later the conversation is going to turn to what's best for the kids.
When I was asked to speak to Ursuline's faculty, I wasn't sure what I could say to a group of high school teachers. K-12 school reform has been politicized and crippled by unfunded government mandates to an extent we can't imagine -- so far -- at the college level. But, as it turned out, we had a lively, informative exchange. They brought laptop computers; we visited a Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville website that has a lot of good information about CATs (I'll be sharing some of it at an SCI faculty meeting this month); and we talked about what works, and what doesn't work, in the classroom. It turned out we had a lot in common: What K-12 teachers do with lesson plans and learning standards handed down by the State Board of Education, we're learning to do in higher ed with detailed syllabi and competencies set by the Illinois Articulation Initiative. I learned a lot.
Again, I think it gets back to our mission as educators. It's not by accident that good assessment practice begins with an institution's mission statement, goals and values. The American Association for Higher Education says: "Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations -- those derived from the institution's mission, from faculty intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals" ("Nine Principles"). In practice, we use all of these things in deciding what we need to do in our classroom and what methods we'll use to assess how well we did it.
Please plan to attend a faculty meeting Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, at 5:15 p.m. in the Presidents Room (L15). We will cover practical information on CATs available on the internet.
Some of our senior faculty at SCI like to base lessons on the "Goals of the College" available on line in SCI's assessment website. Especially useful is the goal of: "Preparing individuals to live full, satisfying, and responsible lives in the complexities of the modern world by developing skills in communication, computation, and problem solving; by developing powers of reflection and critical judgment, and by developing a global awareness of historical and current events." We like it because it gives us specific, measurable goals we can carry into the classroom. In conjunction with the course-specific outcomes mandated by the Illinois Articulation Initiative, we can translate it into measurable learning outcomes -- the specific things our students need to learn, like the Modern Language Association form for an in-text citation, what caused the Wars of Augsburg or how the integration of computer hardware, software and peripherals help create and combine artistic and design ideas.
So all right, already, you're thinking now ... but what do I do?
I'd start by looking back over the syllabus, not just the schedule of assignments but especially the goals, objectives and desired outcomes for the course.
Then I would take a good, hard look at the IAI's website -- called iTransfer and available on line at http://www.itransfer.org/.
At SCI we've been bringing our syllabi into line with IAI for several years now, and it's an important part of our assessment plan. (IAI, as you probably know, is an agreement "identifying common curriculum requirements across associate and baccalaureate degrees" at Illinois colleges and universities. There's more about it in the SCI catalog [53-55], and a lot more at iTransfer.) Our emphasis on IAI means our courses are designed to give our students what they need to know in order to transfer successfully to Benedictine University or another four-year school. So it's important.
Once you're on the iTransfer home page, you can find the course you teach by going to the pull-down menu for faculty and advisers. Click on "IAI course descriptions," and you will go to a webpage with links to GECC (General Education Core Curriculum) and IAI Majors. To find your course, match the IAI prefix on your syllabus (or in our catalog) with the corresponding prefix on the iTransfer course descriptions page. For example, English 111 carries the designation IAI C1 900 at the end of our catalog entry. Click on the link under "IAI GECC" for "Communication (C)" core courses, and you'll find it. Other courses you'll find under "IAI Majors." My introductory mass communications course, for example, is designated IAI MC 911, and I can get to it by clicking on the "Mass Communication (MC)" link.
Almost all of the IAI descriptions include a statement along these lines: "Upon successful completion of the course, the student will be able to ..." Find it. When you do, study that list of things your students will be able to do on completing the course. Those are the learning outcomes you want to: (1) adapt as needed to conform to our statements of mission, goals and values; (2) teach; (3) use assessment techniques to measure how well your students mastered them; and (4) document the changes you make in your teaching as a result of doing the assessment. That's the part of assessment that makes the whole system work: It makes us better classroom teachers.
OK, OK, you're probably still saying, so now I've read IAI, so what do I do now? But this month's issue of Nuts & Bolts is getting much too long to read at one sitting, so I'd better wind it up now. I hate to leave it at that. I really do. It's too much like the old movies where the heroine was left tied to the railroad tracks at the end of each episode. But, wait, we've got a faculty meeting coming up.
I hope to see you all Oct. 28 at the faculty meeting. We won't screen The Perils of Pauline, but we will talk briefly about where CATs fit into our overall assessment and reaccrediation picture at SCI so you'll know what we're all expected to do. And I'll introduce you to a website with some very good, practical information about classroom assessment.
A footnote on syllabi. Beginning spring semester, we all will be required to state an assessment plan in our syllabi. This idea originates with the Curriculum Committee's guidelines for developing new courses, and the Assessment Committee has voted to recommend to the Dean of the College a similar policy for existing courses. Here's a statement I use in my mass com. courses, right after the section on the Americans with Disabilities Act: "IX. Assessment. Goals, objectives, and learning outcomes that will be assessed in the class are stated in this syllabus. Instructor will use pre-tests and post-tests, background knowledge probes, directed paraphrasing, reflective essays or other Classroom Assessment Techniques as deemed necessary in order to provide continuous improvement of instruction. Students are required to take part in all assessment measures." Please feel free to copy-and-paste it, renumber it, adapt it as you see fit and use it in your classes.
-- Pete Ellertsen, chair, Assessment Committee
Second of a series on classroom assessment techniques for new (and old) instructors. Next: The one-minute essay.
Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by SCI's Assessment Committee. 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 Pete Ellertsen (chair), English and mass communications. Kevin Broeckling, dean of students; and Jeff Mueller, dean of the college, serve ex officio. The newsletter 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>.
