New Designs for Assesssment

New Designs for Assessment A CCCOnline Training & Professional Development Presented By: Alice Bedard-Voorhees Karen Kaemmerling Colorado Mountain College & CCCOnline March 27, 2009

Where are you today? Source: http://www.colorado-map.net/images/colorado_map.gif

Our Goals for this Session
Present some key ideas behind New Designs for Assessment
Provide some examples
Discuss, share, and brainstorm ideas for assessment

Your Goals?

Assessment is Good Instructional Practice
Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) Seven Principles
of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education:
Good Practice Encourages Student Instructor Contact
Good Practice Encourages Cooperation Among Students
Good Practice Encourages Active Learning
Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback
Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task
Good Practice Communicates High Expectations
Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning

Guiding Ideas
As an ongoing practice during the term, assessment helps faculty and students know what students know and don’t know, and serves to inform instructional strategies along the way (Chickering & Gamsen, 1987).
Summative assessments should be based on outcomes and not peripheral information.
Involving students in assessment design is a way increase their engagement (Weimer, 2002)

Definitions
Formative Assessments: How’s it going? Quizzes, classroom activities, reflections that may or may not be graded, but often award points to motivate the learner.
Summative Assessments: Has the learner arrived? These are is the demonstrations that measures the defined course outcomes and most substantially determine the final course grade.

New Design: Students
Bring students into the process of self-assessment from Day 1 and why knowing about their own learning is a 21 st century advantage.
Expose them to Bloom’s. http://faculty.ccconline.org/index.php?title=Blooms_Taxonomy_Tutorial_FLASH
Help them understand their role as communicators about their own learning as your shared stake in their success.

Formative Assessment: Everyday conversation
How we are doing with the learning should be a conversation that matters to every class session.
Quizzes, reflective journals, classroom assessment techniques, and project conferences are conversational devices that serve this end.

Lower Level Knowledge
Students still need lower level knowledge to achieve a higher level outcome
Examples
Points can be given for rehearsal loops (ungraded quizzes or quizzes that allow multiple attempts)
Assign students to create review games/quizzes for the lower level knowledge.

Faculty Tip
Let technology features help you, so you can give personal feedback where it matters most:
Use anonymous discussion topics as one type of formative feedback.
Use feedback fields in automated quizzes that report to the gradebook.
When the class is off-base and needs correction, communicate a class fix via announcements and email.

Summative assessments are based on outcomes not peripheral information.

Using Publisher Test Banks
Do all items necessarily support the assessment of outcomes for a specific course? (Might only be good for lower level practice)
Are the items correct?

Example
History 102 contains an outcome common to Colorado’s Guaranteed Transfer courses.
Survey Assignment
Timeline Assignment

Colorado Common Course Numbering Objectives for HIS 102
How to break complex and multiple sources of information down into parts to create clearer understanding
How to understand the impact of time and space on perspective
How to develop narrative structures
Identify trends, events, peoples, groups, cultures, and institutions covered in this course
Communicate orally and in writing about the content
Use library resources for historical research
Demonstrate that they can analyze secondary sources and recognize differences in historical interpretation
Identify the perspective of primary sources
Construct historical narratives by identifying patterns of continuity and change and referring to specific primary and secondary sources, maps, and/or artifacts
Demonstrate the ability to select and apply contemporary forms of technology to solve problems or compile information
Acquire information

Survey Assignment
Purpose of the Assignment :
Students create, deliver, and analyze the results of a survey of questions they create about the content in the course.
This assignment is designed for students to explore the digital text and to get familiar with topics we will be covering in this course.
The assignment is also used as an ice-breaker and helps students begin to develop a sense of community and teamwork.
Additionally, we are working on two course competencies speaking about history (which they will do with those students give the survey to) and noting historical trends.

Survey Assignment Tasks
Tasks:
Review the Learning Modules, access the digital text, and look through the chapters and topics that covered in this course.
Write 10 multiple choice questions, no more than one per textbook chapter.
Give that survey to 10 people, 10 or older. Note their age and interest in the questions. Did they ask you after the survey what the answers were? Did anyone score well on your survey? Did you find that most of those you surveyed didn’t know much about the history of the countries we study in Western Civilizations? Was there a question that everyone got right or wrong?
Post survey to the survey Discussion and Report the overall results of how people performed, and what they learned from the experience.
Respond to two classmates posts.
The instructor will select some of the classes best questions for an optional bonus quiz at the end of the semester.

Survey Assignment Rubric Task Maximum Points Posted results and survey in Discussion 20 Posted your overall experience and what you learned about yourself and the course 20 Wrote 10 multiple choice questions 20 Gave the survey to 10 people and noted any trends in the results 20 Responded to two classmates 20

Timeline Assignment
Purpose of the Assignment:
Students will create a timeline tracing the events related to a certain topic.
This assignment meets the course competencies of breaking information into parts, understanding the impact of time and space on perspective, and identifying trends, and using technology to compile information.

Timeline Assignment Tasks
Tasks:
Select one from a list of topics.
Create a time line of at least 15-20 events using either Word or web 2.0 tool at http://www.timerime.com/ (students may also find timelines useful in their studies.)
Summarize the topic timeline is about in one concise paragraph.
Each event or timeline should include a brief description that explains the significance of that date.
Students may post to the word document or link to an optional Timeline Discussion.

Timeline Rubric Task Maximum Points Concisely described topic in one paragraph 20 Timeline is in proper order and makes chronological sense 20 Created time line of 15-20 events 30 Described briefly each event on Timeline 30 Total Points 100

Involving students in assessment design is a way to increase student engagement (Weimer, 2002)

What could you do , use , or create to demonstrate your learning for outcome X ?
Question for the Class:

Possibilities
Student created quizzes or questions
Student contributions to rubrics
Student generated questions for final (especially in a course sequence)
Presentations online or in virtual worlds
Web 2.0 Ways to demonstrate learning

Example: Second Life Slide Show
Assignment: Student was to define question about Second life that related to teaching and learning, then create a slide based on the answer resulting from his or her research.
The Learner’s Question: How is Second Life being used for the study of Literature?

Example: Second Life Slide Show

Immersed in Cellular Structure 148, 149, 34

Cellular Structure Rehearsal and Quiz

Web 2.0 Options
Video & Audio (demonstrated oral competency)
Presentations (PowerPoint ® variations)
Student-created games or simulations
Blogging and Micro-Blogging Posts (reflection, writing for authentic audiences)
Wiki (collaborative/cooperative authorship & tracking)
Social Bookmarks (annotated websites)
Photography (graphics-based)
Mash-up (synthesizing w/ multimedia)

This presentation explores these examples:
Letting Them Show What They Know: Tech Tools for Assessment http://www.slideshare.net/lisamariejohnson/letting-them-show-what-they-know-tech-tools-for-assessment

Bloom’s for Digital Assessment
A rich resource for using Bloom’s with Web 2.0, including rubrics for activities: http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Your Examples?

Brainstorm!

Sources
Angelo, T. A. (1991). Ten Easy Pieces: Assessing Higher Learning in Four Dimensions. New Directions for Teaching and Learning , 46, 18-20. Retrieved on March 23, 2009 from http:// www.uky.edu/Assessment/Docs/Dimensions.doc
Bedard-Voorhees, A., & Johnson, L. M. (2008, March). Letting them show what they know: Tech tools for assessment. Presented at the 2008 League for Innovations in the Community College Conference, Denver, CO. Available March 2009, from: http://www.slideshare.net/lisamariejohnson/letting-them-show-what-they-know-tech-tools-for-assessment
Bedard-Voorhees, A., Johnson, L., and Dobson, P. (in press 2009). Chapter 8: Preparing learners for authentic displays of learning. ( In Online Education and the Humanities. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Chickering, A., and Gamson, Z. (1987) Seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education . Retrieved on March 20, 2009, from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/7princip.htm
Churches, A. (2009). Bloom’s digital taxonomy. Retrieved on March 20, 2009, from http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy
Weimer, M. (2002). Learner-centered teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Contact Information
Alice Bedard-Voorhees
[email_address]
Karen Kaemmerling
[email_address]

New Designs for Assesssment

by S T on Aug 16, 2009

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