Issues of Assessment and Aligning Goals and Assessment.

1. Issues of Assessment and Aligning Goals and Assessment. • Aligning goals, activities, and assessment. • Forms and purposes of assessment. Iain Hay, Ken Foote & Meghan Cope

2. At the end of this session… You will have: • Specified up to six learning outcomes for one of your classes. • Set out assessment tasks associated with those learning outcomes. • Know six reasons for assessment. • Be acquainted with characteristics of good assessment practices. • Be able to distinguish among: • assessment/evaluation/grading • formative/summative assessment • norm-referenced/criterion-referenced assessment • educative/auditive assessment • authentic/inauthentic assessment

3. 3) Assessment “I find it difficult to assess how much students learned on this fieldtrip.” Evaluation “The university decided to evaluate its honors program.” “I need to evaluate my assessment methods.” Terms aren’t always used consistently... 2) Grading “My assessment methods make it easy for me to assign grades at the end of the semester.”

4. 3) Assessment How will you, students, and others know that students have reached these goals? (and hence your objective as a teacher has been met) Goals What do you want students to learn? Three important learning issues to consider in aligning course plans 2) Activities What activities will help students reach these goals?

5. Aligning goals and assessment tasks. • What learning outcomes have you specified for your class? What specificskills and knowledge do you want students to develop? • Try setting out no more than six outcomes for your class, beginning with the phrase: “At the end of this course students will be able to: ….”

6. What kind of assessment? • Now, for each outcome, think about how will you know that students have achieved the learning outcomes you have specified? • To do this, specify the kinds of exercises or tests you plan to use that will allow students to practice and to demonstrate to you their skills/knowledge. • Are these “authentic”? Do they ask students to engage with concepts and ideas the way those concepts and ideas would actually be used in real situations?

7. Exam. Essay. Practical work. Laboratory report. Field report. Poster presentation. Flyer production. Media release. Article review. Group work. Log book. Map production. Role play. Spoken presentation….. See Angelo & Cross (1993) for a wide variety of others. Some examples of assessment task.

8. Question. • What are the purposes of assessment – other than ‘measuring’ learning?

9. Why assess? • Capture student attention and effort. • Generate appropriate learning activity. • Provide feedback to students. • Develop in students ability to monitor own learning standards. • Allocate marks. • Ensure accountability (to show outsiders that standards are satisfactory). Gibbs (1999) • Provide important feedback to instructor

10. Types of assessment. • Formative assessment - teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better. May carry a grade, may not. Might be seen as “diagnostic,” may involve self-assessment. • Summative assessment - attempt to summarize student learning at some point in time, say the end of a course. May be formative in context of overall program. • Both should align with intended outcomes and with teaching content.

11. Wiggins: Educative vs. Auditive Assessment One of the challenges of doing good feedback and assessment is developing procedures that educate and go beyond simply auditing student learning, i.e., did they “get it”? This broader form of assessment is called educative assessment requiring: • Using forward-looking assessment tasks. • Developing clear criteria and standards. • Offering students the opportunity to engage in self-assessment. • Providing high quality feedback.

12. Norm-referenced assessment. • Criterion-referenced assessment. • Increasingly ‘combined’.

13. Norm-referenced assessment. • ‘Grading the curve’. • Set proportion of students receive set grades. • Work assessed relative to other students in class.

14. Criterion-referenced assessment. • Direct link between extent to which specified criteria fulfilled and result achieved. • All students can pass or fail… • Does have some problems (see Hay 1995). • Time spent in advance developing criterion/rubrics, saves time later in scoring assignments • Use of rubrics usually helps apply standards more fairly across all students

15. Should we assess everything our students do or turn in? • Grammar/spelling/typos on papers • Colors/graphics/animations used in ppt presentations • Participation in classroom discussion • Etc., etc.

16. Walvoord and Anderson’s Primary Trait Analysis • Identify criteria or “traits” that will count in the evaluation—focus on the direct link between assessment and goals • For each trait construct a 2 to 5 point scale with descriptive statements. • Try with a sample of student work • Focus on the traits which will make the most difference to improving student learning (making the feedback educative)

17. Another Question. • What are the characteristics of good assessment?

18. Assessment should be … • Timely so that students can use it for subsequent learning and work to be submitted. • Prompt so that students can recall what they did and thought at the time. • Supportive of learning so students have clear indications of how to improve their performance. • Focused on achievement, not effort. The work should be assessed, not the student • Specific to the learning outcomes. • Fostering of independence leading students to being capable of assessing their own work • Efficient for staff to do.

19. Or Fink’s FIDeLity model… Frequent: One or two mid-terms and a final is not frequent. Immediate: If we wait too long, students only pay attention to the grade, not the feedback. Discriminating: Based on clear criteria and standards. Delivered in a user-friendly (or Loving) manner: Assessments must be constructive.

20. What kind of assessment? Now revisit the course you are planning: • What forms of assessment will best allow as many of these ends to be achieved as possible?

21. Useful references. Angelo, T.A. & Cross, K.P. 1993, Classroom assessment techniques: A Handbook for college teachers, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Diamond, R. M. 1998. Designing and assessing courses and curricula: A practical guide, revised ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fink, L. D. 2003. Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hay, I., Bochner, D. & Dungey, C. 2002, Making the grade. A guide to successful communication and study, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford. Juwah, C., D. Macfarlane-Dick, B. Matthew, D. Nicol, D. Ross and B. Smith. 2004. Enhancing student learning through effective formative feedback. York, UK: Higher Education Academy. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id353_senlef_guide.pdf Kearns, R.A. 2003. Understanding assessment criteria. In N.J. Clifford & G. Valentine, eds, Key Methods in Geography, 533-549.London: Sage. Kneale, P. 1999. Study skills for geography students: A practical guide. London: Arnold. Suskie, L. 2004. Assessing student learning: A common sense approach. Bolton, MA: Anker. Walvoord, B.E. and V.J. Anderson. 1998. Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Wiggins, G. 1998. Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.