CAT smorgasbord

One decision made at the SCI Assessment Committee's first meeting was to approach faculty development, especially in the area of Classroom Assessment Techniques (known as CATs), as a smorgasbord -- with faculty encouraged to sample a variety of techniques for double-checking student learning. If you were so inclined, you might call it CAT stew.

So as we begin planning workshops and other faculty development opportunities, we're taking orders. What do you want to know about classroom assessment?

At last year's workshops, we heard faculty say they're willing to do assessment but they need to know exactly what to do and how to document it. We're keeping that in mind as we plan this year's, but we still want to hear from you. Do you need to know more about the "one-minute essay," or are you already utilizing the technique effectively? (Last year several faculty reported using it.) Primary Trait Analysis is touted as a way of designing rubrics, or scoring sheets, to make grades reflect assessment criteria. Would a workshop on rubrics, grading standards and PTA be helpful?

Want more ideas? The conventional wisdom is summarized in a book called Classroom Assessment Techniques by Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross. It lists 50, starting with "Background Knowledge Probe" and running through "Exam Evaluations." It's on the open shelf in Becker Library, call No. 328.125 A54. Or visit the websites linked to the electronic edition of this newsletter.

But let us have your ideas. E-mail the editor at ellertsen@sci.edu or, if you're reading the hard copy version of Nuts & Bolts we stuffed in your mailbox, stop me in the hallway or slip a note under my door.

Power of learning outcomes

Student Affairs Dean Kevin Broeckling sends along an article titled "Assessment: Source of Power? Source of Empowerment?" by Dr. Christina Frazier, Southeast Missouri State University in the Oct. 25 edition of Net Results, an electronic publication of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

Reporting on a recent conference in Glasgow, Frazier says the demands of off-campus bureaucracies initially led to "apathy, if not open hostility, towards assessment" among classroom teachers in Scotland and England as well as the United States. But she says assessment can give more of a voice to the faculty and staff who work most directly with students, even though it is most effective when supported by high-level administrators.

"In an integrated model [of assessment], the higher levels initiate the process, establish a broad framework for assessment and provide the necessary resources," Frazier said. "Their role becomes one of communicating expectations with respect to assessment and facilitating and monitoring the process. If they establish specific modes of assessment and prescribe desired levels of achievement, it is done in partnership with the others involved including faculty and student affairs representatives. The individuals closest to the students play a central role in establishing learning outcome goals, designing and implementing the assessment process, analyzing the data, and proposing changes and innovations that address concerns raised by the assessment."

To see the article, go to

http://www.naspa.org/NetResults/article.cfm?ID=490

-- Pete Ellertsen, editor, Nuts & Bolts

October 25, 2001
Vol. 2 No. 3

• CAT scan: An Introduction to Classroom Assessment Techniques by Diane M. Enerson, Kathryn M. Plank, and R. Neill Johnson of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Penn State.
• Here's a nuts-and-bolts primer on Primary Trait Analysis, which can turn grading into an assessment tool. At Raymond Walters College, University of Cincinnati.
• Here's THE nuts-and-bolts guide to practical classroom assessment -- one that tells you what to do and how to do it. Go to the SIU-Edwardsville site on CATs (classroom assessment techniques).
• For background on assessment at California State-Chico, on which we're modeling SCI's program-level assessment strategy, read James Jacobs' report, "A Simple and Effective Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Plan That Works" (italics in the original).
• Edgar Schein's thoughts on organizational culture, on which much of the conceptual framework of our assessment plan is based, are summarized and quoted in a British website. Visit Schein's website at MIT, too.
• There's a very good profile of ACT Inc., the standardized test vendor with whom we're working in Gen Ed testing, in the June 13 issue of Education Week. We're phasing in ACT's COMPASS test this year.
• To see the context for SCI's strategy for implementing our 1996 assessment plan, and we are expected to be doing by 2005-06, read NCA's Five Criteria for Accreditation.
• 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.
  

Assessment Committee
Pete Ellertsen, chair
Barb Bernardi
Bob Blankenberger
Nadine Elchlepp (student)
Susan Full
Alice Gutierrez
Jim Harris
Dave Holland
Jeff Mueller (ex officio)
Kenneth Broeckling (ex officio)