1 / 10

Assessing Critical Thinking through Student Writing

Assessing Critical Thinking through Student Writing. Richard Fliegel and John Holland USC College November 8 th , 2007. Calls for Accountability and Learner-Centered Assessment. “Traditionally, institutional quality is measured primarily through financial inputs and resources.

said
Download Presentation

Assessing Critical Thinking through Student Writing

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Assessing Critical Thinkingthrough Student Writing Richard Fliegel and John Holland USC College November 8th, 2007

  2. Calls for Accountability andLearner-Centered Assessment “Traditionally, institutional quality is measured primarily through financial inputs and resources. In today’s environment, these measures of inputs are no longer adequate, either within individual institutions or across all of higher education.” - Page 14 Spellings Commission Report

  3. USC Writing ProgramGrading Rubric

  4. Facione Critical ThinkingHolistic Scoring Rubric Focuses on assessing evidence of critical thinking, rather than on grading essays along all the dimensions of college writing; builds on Peter Facione’s earlier work in the assessment of critical thinking through standardized tests

  5. Essay PromptTimed Writing Assignment Robert Bellah, a professor of religion at UC Berkeley, has suggested that “a good society is one in which attention takes precedence over distraction.” For Bellah, attention means the ability “to concern ourselves with the larger meaning of things in the longer run, rather than with short-term payoffs.” He argues that when we attend to things in terms of long-term goals, we achieve our greatest human potential and deepest happiness. By contrast, distraction, “the pursuit of immediate pleasure,” pulls our consciousness away from the significant or meaningful. (…) In your view, does contemporary society emphasize short-term fixes rather than long-terms solutions? - Excerpted from the full prompt

  6. Sample Student Essay(Timed Prompt) Each essay was scored at least three times, with each reader unable to see any previous score. A “mask” was used to conceal the significance of prior readers’ scores.

  7. Results of Readingby Trained Holistic Scorers Percentages of students Whose essays were scored in the upper half of the Facione scale by a socialized corps of writing instructors

  8. Results of FacultyRank Ordering of Essays

  9. Results of Faculty RankingFirst Four Essays Only Faculty Ordering of 4 “Anchor Set” Papers

  10. Contact Information Richard Fliegel, Director of General Education and Assistant Dean of Academic Programs USC College fliegel@usc.edu, 213/ 740-2961 John Holland, Director of the Writing Program USC College holland@usc.edu, 213/ 740-1980

More Related