Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student
Learning
In 1992,
the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) published a document on
the principles of good practice related to assessment. In 2005, the AAHE,
was disbanded due to lack of funding. For 20 years, the AAHE was a leader in
fostering research to discover and promote best practices in higher
education. These principles listed below are originally from the AAHE
document, and later developed more fully in Banta, et. al. (1996). They are
excerpted and summarized here.
Principle One: The assessment of student learning begins with educational
values.
Assessment is a vehicle for educational improvement. We use the information
we get from assessments to guide our decision-making about educational
practices. It enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we want for our
students. Educational values should drive what and how we choose to assess.
When done well, assessment can become a process to improve what we really
care about.
Principle Two: Assessment is most effective when it
reflects understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and
revealed in performance over time.
Assessments should show actual student performance over time to demonstrate
change and growth that have occurred as students integrate what they have
learned.
Principle Three: Assessment works best when the
programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.
Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment
that is focused and useful.
Principle Four: Assessment requires attention to
outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those
outcomes.
Assessment can tell us more than just student progress. It can tell us
about the teaching, courses, and environment for learning that help students
reach particular outcomes.
Principle Five: Assessment works best when it is
ongoing, not episodic.
The point is to monitor progress towards specific goals. This may mean
tracking of individual students, cohorts of students, collecting examples of
student performance over time, or using the same instrument each semester.
Principle Six: Assessment fosters wider improvement
when representatives from across the educational community are involved.
Participation by a wider group such as student affairs educators, learning
center staff, librarians, students, alumni, trustees, employers, and
administrators can provide a better-informed approach to data collection and
results interpretation that ultimately strengthens programs and student
learning.
Principle Seven: Assessment makes a difference when
it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really
care about.
Assessment approaches should produce relevant, credible data that is
meaningful to the educational decision-making process.
Principle Eight: Assessment is most likely to lead
to improvement when it is part if a larger set of conditions that promote
change.
Assessment's greatest contribution comes on campuses where the quality of
teaching and learning is visibly valued and worked on. The push to improve
educational performance is a clear priority of leadership and budgeting
supports this improvement process.
Principle Nine: Through assessment, educators meet
responsibilities to students and the public.
Accountability is here to stay. The spirit of accountability should be our
obligation and commitment to continued program improvement.
Read
more
Banta,
T.W., Lund, J. P., Black, K.E., & Oblander, F.W. (1996). Assessment in
practice: Putting principles to work on college campuses. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Visit
http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/faq/al-aahe.htm for definitions of
assessment and resources for assessing general education outcomes.
Classroom Assessment Techniques
Described by Patricia Cross & Thomas Angelo in their 1994 text, Classroom
Assessment Techniques, CATs, as they are commonly known, are informal
measures used by faculty and students to gauge their learning progress
during a course. Simply put, CATs are used to find out what students know so
that students can modify their learning strategies and instructors can make
more effective instructional decisions.
Classroom assessment is a strategy that directly links teaching with
learning. Bright & Joyner (2004) examined over 250 research studies on the
use of CATs. They found that this type of assessment led to significant
learning gains for students. “When teachers understand what students know
and can do, and when teachers use that knowledge to make more effective
instructional decisions, the net result will be greater learning for
students and a greater sense of satisfaction for teachers.”
Engaging Students
CATs are meant to engage students in their own learning, by giving students
regular and timely feedback about:
They
help students to become partners in the learning process. Typical examples
of CATs are the One-Minute Paper, which asks students to briefly summarize
the most important points of the lesson, and the Muddiest Point, which asks
students to write down one aspect of the lesson that needs further
clarification. CATs are usually done anonymously. Faculty take the
information and then modify the next day's lessons accordingly as well as
share ideas and further insights on issues that aren't yet understood.
Read
more
Visit this website:
http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/assess.htm
Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1994) Classroom assessment techniques: A
handbook for college teachers, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Bright, G.W. & Joyner, J.M. Classroom Assessment in Secondary Mathematics;
NRC Assessment of Learning Workshop Proceedings of The National Academies,
May 16-18, 2004
http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/12407
Assessment of Learning Spaces
The EDUCAUSE E-book entitled, Learning Spaces, begins, " Space - whether
physical or virtual - can have an impact on learning. It can bring people
together; it can encourage exploration, collaboration, and discussion. Or
space can carry an unspoken message of silence and disconnectedness."
How do the spaces we teach in and ask our students to learn in impact the
way we design instruction and impact the learning outcomes for our students?
In planning for future spaces, what can guide our decision making process?
What resources can we use to better navigate the design process? The text
highlights three important areas for consideration to ensure meaningful
educational outcomes for our courses: our changing students, improved
informational technologies, and an understanding of the learning process.
This article will briefly summarize information from the text on each of
these considerations and look at some guidelines for creating new learning
spaces that take these factors into account.
Our
Changing Students
Today's learners tend to favor active, participatory, and experiential
learning. Students today are highly social in both face-to-face (F2F) and
online environments. Instant messaging, MySpace accounts, and cell phones
are common venues that students use to stay connected.
Multi-tasking is a skill students are very versed in. Students may well be
able to answer e-mail, talk on the cell phone, have an iPod connected to one
ear, and skim a reading all at the same time. For anyone who has attended
an online meeting or webinar lately, this idea doesn't seem so farfetched.
In fact, most webinars have a chat space open while the presentation is
happening. Participants are often asking follow-up questions and networking
around common questions while at the same time looking at broadcasted
PowerPoint slides and listening to the speaker. I'm sure that e-mails are
being checked (and sometimes instant messages and voicemail) at the same
time. So, this multi-tasking environment is already part of our culture.
A
significant number of students currently have a confidence level with the
web environment, both as users and creators of content. Use of blogs,
YouTube, and virtual environments for gaming and socializing (There.com,
SecondLife.com) are just some of the places our students visit frequently to
find out information, to meet others, to learn things, and to have fun.
Improved Informational Technologies
The article states that technology is becoming more capable, affordable, and
mobile (9.2). Developers are getting better at considering user preferences
when developing tools and applications. Technology use should assist the
learning process and help us to make learning more visible. Imagine a
classroom that is wired so that students can retrieve information as needed,
share it with others locally or at a distance, collaborate on projects,
create products that evidence their learning, and present it in a multitude
of forms, all without leaving the same room.
The
Learning Process
Learning can be made meaningful for students when they become active
participants in the process. Creating classrooms that allow students to
interact with the content, each other, and with the instructor in
significant ways will enhance their learning and deepen it. Allow students
to take on different roles in class (listener, critic, mentor, presenter).
Give them different modes for social interaction (group work, discussion
boards, wikis, blogs, interviews). Incorporate technology that supports your
learning goals, but that also mimics what students do in their lives outside
the classroom. There are many collaboration tools widely available now that
can be used to satisfy the social needs of students in the learning process
and that also support your instructional goals. Environments that are able
to "provide students with experiences that stimulate the senses, encourage
the exchange of information, and offer opportunities for rehearsal,
feedback, application, and transfer are most likely to support learning."
(2.4)
Intentionally Created Spaces
Given the changing demographics of our students, the improved technologies
at our disposal, and increased awareness of the learning process, what
aspects of design should be taken into account as funds are allocated for
new learning spaces? Learning spaces should be designed with learning theory
and the needs of current students in mind. Some of these elements are:
Flexibility - chairs and tables on wheels allow for the quick
rearrangement of space to allow for a diverse set of activities within a
class period.
Comfort - provide ample surface area to support student laptops, books,
and other materials to be used in class. Take into account differing body
types and sizes when ordering furniture. Tablet arm desks are not one size
fits all.
Sensory stimulation - humans respond to color, appropriate lighting,
ambient sounds, and interesting visual stimulation. These should be taken
into account in the design process.
Technology support - technology in classrooms should be seamless,
flexible and accessible. Cumbersome and unreliable technology should fall to
the wayside as better technologies with more user friendly interfaces are
developed. Wireless capabilities and smaller devices will travel with us,
making it possible to "hold class" anywhere we find ourselves
De-centeredness - spaces should it make it possible for the
co-construction of knowledge, avoiding the impression that there is a
"front" or "privileged" area within the room. Planning schemes should look
at the campus as a whole, and find ways to encourage learning in informal as
well as formal spaces, such as the area around faculty offices, in the
library, living spaces, and in corridor niches.
A recent
study by Kuh et. al., found that institutions that did exceptionally well in
engaging students in learning, were those that took serious consideration of
the design of learning spaces and the physical environment in general. The
importance of integrating into learning space design what is known about
current students, how people learn, and the kinds of environments that
stimulate learning is evident.
Read
more at:
http://www.educause.edu/books/learningspaces/10569
The DesignShare Awards
Take a look at winners of
an international design competition for the best learning spaces, judged on
excellence in design to
promote learning that stimulates the learners and provides rich learning
opportunities for students. Past DesignShare Award
winners can be viewed here.
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