Classroom Assessment Techniques
Classroom
Assessment Techniques (CATs)
Classroom
Assessment Techniques are formative evaluation methods that serve two
purposes. They can help you to assess the degree to which your students
understand the course content and they can provide you with information
about the effectiveness of your teaching methods. Most are designed
to be quick and easy to use and each CAT provides different kinds of
information.
Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
Classroom Assessment
Classroom Assessment is a simple method faculty can use to collect feedback, early and often, on how well their students are learning what they are being taught.
Designing Rubrics for Higher Order Thinking
Professors who teach thinking skills such as arguing, analyzing, synthesizing, drawing conclusions, solving problems, making decisions, and evaluating need to know how well their students can use these skills. Rubrics can be used to evaluate programs, courses, and individual student assignments and projects.
Teaching Goals Inventory
You can fill out the teaching goals inventory online with a few (well, about 53 actually) clicks and automatically see your scores. Your score report will also contain comparative scores from large samples.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques
Classroom
Research and Classroom Assessment respond directly to concerns about
better learning and more effective teaching.
Classroom
Assessment Technique Examples
Background Knowledge Probe -step by step -Minute Paper -Muddiest Point
Teaching
Goals Inventory
The
Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI) is a self-assessment for professors.
Its purpose is threefold: (1) to help professors become more aware of
what goals they want to accomplish in individual courses; (2) to help
professors locate Classroom Assessment Techniques they can use to assess
how well they are achieving their goals; and (3) to provide a starting
point for discussions of teaching and learning goals among professors.
Suggestions:
Using Anonymous Assessments
Unlike
grades, which are identified with particular students, assessments are
almost always anonymous. Occasionally, assessment techniques require
students to organize seriously and spend energy committing their thoughts
to paper. It would be nice if the students could write their papers
anonymously but still be able to get them back after the professor has
read them.
Goal
Ranking & Matching
What
do you, as a participant, hope to get out of a course, seminar, or workshop?
What goals or expectations do you wish to satisfy? This assessment is
best done at or near the beginning of a course because it allows the
professor or leader to adjust the syllabus explicitly to include student
interests.
The
Muddiest Point
The
Muddiest Point assessment should be used with discretion. Focusing on
muddiest points too often can be discouraging for both students and
professors because of the tendency to emphasize the negative.
The
Minute Paper
The
Minute Paper is the single most commonly used classroom assessment technique.
It really does take about a minute and, while usually used at the end
of class, it can be used at the end of any topic. Its major advantage
is that it provides rapid feedback on whether the professor's main idea,
and what the students perceived as the main idea, are the same.
Self
Assessment
Self
Assessment makes the student privately but directly confront personal
attitudes, paradigms, and biases that may unconsciously present a barrier
to learning. At its core, the professor presents students with alternative
ways of looking at a controversial issue and asks them to indicate,
by writing on a 3x5 card, which viewpoint applies to them.
Self
Confidence Survey
A
Self-Confidence Survey helps to identify areas where students feel comfortable
and where they do not. Insofar as self confidence reflects recognition
of one's own competence, brief written reflections on confidence make
apparent those areas where students need fundamental practice and those
where they are ready for more advanced challenges.
Don't be Afraid to Ask the Students
"If
assessment is to improve the quality of student learning, and not just
provide greater accountability, both faculty and students must become
personally invested and actively involved in the process."
Characteristic
Features
Characteristic
Features are those traits that help define a topic and differentiate
it from others. This assessment technique is particularly useful for
seeing whether students are separating items or ideas that are easily
confused. By selecting especially critical differentiators, a professor
can both highlight and assess the students' use of analysis to help
them characterize central concepts.
Background
Knowledge Probe
The
Background Knowledge Learning Probe assesses the mindset and language
of students' private worlds. This allows the professor to prepare a
learning environment where the new knowledge is more likely to stick.
RSQC2
(Recall, Summarize, Question, Comment, and Connect)
RSQC2
stands for Recall, Summarize, Question, Comment, and Connect. RSQC2
is an assessment device that encourages students to recall and review
class information comprehensively. In so doing, it allows the professor
to compare students' perspectives against his or her own.
Transfer
& Apply
Transfer
& Apply is an intentional way of prompting members of a class or
audience to recognize ideas they have learned and consciously transfer
them to applications in their own environment.
Grading
Standards
Published
grading standards make expectations visible, and subject to assessment.
Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment
Don't
be misled by the title of this book. At first glance, one might assume
that it is a book only about grading in the narrow sense of the term.
However, the authors use the concept of grading in a far more ambitious
and important manner.
Writing
Assessment & Evaluation
This
is a sample form for the Writing Assessment & Evaluation.
Group-work
Assessment
Group-work
is a fact of life in the corporate work force. As faculty members become
increasingly aware of external expectations and more interested in active
learning, the need for Group-work Assessment grows. This assessment
should really be used in the early-middle of a project and again at
the end. All groups have their disagreements; early assessment can help
make real problems visible before they fester into disasters.
Assessing
Group Effectiveness
The
synergy possible in a group is remarkable. Frequently, students, workers
in a corporation, professors, and managers could do much more to cultivate
that synergy. There is a need, early and overtly, for Assessing Group
Effectiveness in order to place individual personalities in perspective,
value the differences that arise, and meld diverse approaches into effective
teamwork.
Assessment
of Effective Study Time
Effective
study can be thought of as a function time multiplied by effort. A self
Assessment of Effective Study Time can bring habits of effective study
to the surface by focusing a student's attention on these two factors.
The purpose of this assessment is to increase study effectiveness, not
to evaluate the weight of study relative to a student's other priorities.
The
One-Minute Paper
The
one-minute paper may be used to fulfill either function: ascertaining
students' understanding of a particular class and/or getting a sense
of how students would rate the course. The procedure is simple:
Self-Assessment
Form for Lecture Course
Please
check those items that are applicable to your work in this course so
far this semester: BEFORE LECTURE & AFTER LECTURE
The
Assessment Of Teaching And Learning
The
various modes of assessment can be organized by whether they are formative
or summative assessments and whether they are assessing faculty teaching
or student learning.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques
The
purpose of classroom assessment is to provide faculty and students with
information and insights needed to improve teaching effectiveness and
learning quality. Other FAQ can also be found here.
Less
CAN Be More--Student Preparation for Examinations
I was intrigued
by the phrase "going over my notes," since it was the single
most frequently-mentioned response to my questioning. What is actually
done in the near-universal process of "going over the notes"?
Using
Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning
Instructional rubrics help teachers teach as well as evaluate student
work. Further, creating rubrics with your students can be powerfully
instructive.
An
Introduction to Program Evaluation for classroom teachers
The
evaluation requirement had two purposes: (1) to ensure that the funds
were being used to address the needs of disadvantaged children; and
(2) to provide information that would empower parents and communities
to push for better education. Others saw the use of information on programs
and their effectiveness as a means of upgrading schools.
Creating
Better Student Assessments
The
following are some basic definitions of content and performance standards,
as well as an overview of the issues involved in developing assessments
to measure state content and student performance standards.
What
Are Promising Ways to Assess Student Learning?
In
this newsletter, we are using the concept of performance-based assessment
used by the Office of Technology Assessment, which defines performance
assessment as testing methods that require students to create an answer
or product that demonstrates knowledge or skills. Performance assessments
may include any of the following categories to items:
What
the Research Says About Student Assessment
Any
assessment of student achievement is unlikely to exert significant influence
on instruction unless some stakes are attached to its results or teachers
value the assessment as an accurate reflection of what students know
and can do. "What you test is what you get" is a familiar
refrain within the educational community; as a result, educators are
searching for assessments that promote the type of instruction encouraged
by new content standards.
Authentic
Assessment
Assessments
must reflect the learning goals that define various environments. If
the goal is to enhance understanding and applicability of knowledge,
it is not sufficient to provide assessments that focus primarily on
memory of facts and formulas.
The
Design of Learning Environments
New
developments in the science of learning raise important questions about
the design of learning environments--questions that suggest the value
of rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed.
Peer
Review
Making
peer assessment function as an active, supportive reflection on learning
progress rather than as a token-economy of performance rewards is the
litmus test of collaborative learner-centered teaching approaches.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques
Classroom
assessment is both a teaching approach and a set of techniques. The
approach is that the more you know about what and how students are learning,
the better you can plan learning activities to structure your teaching.
The techniques are mostly simple, non-graded, anonymous, in-class activities
that give both you and your students useful feedback on the teaching-learning
process.
Worksheet:
Learning and Assessment
The
"Worksheet" provides a format for listing the different kinds
of learning and then checking to see if you have the right means for
evaluating that learning.
Feedback
and Assessment: Educative Assessment
When deciding how to provide Feedback and Assessment for student learning,
teachers need to do this in a way that goes beyond grading to also helping
the learning process. This essay provides a model of educative assessment.
These procedures will create EDUCATIVE ASSESSMENT, i.e., assessment
that enhances the learning process.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques (Scoring Rubrics)
Rubrics
(or "scoring tools") are a way of describing evaluation criteria
(or "grading standards") based on the expected outcomes and
performances of students. Typically, rubrics are used in scoring or
grading written assignments or oral presentations;...
Continuous Quality and Classroom Effectiveness
Continuous
quality management (CQI) first moved onto the education scene slightly
more than ten years ago. Some institutions of higher learning, community
colleges in particular, eagerly embraced its general precepts. Most
tried to ignore CQI and it greatest advocate, the American business
community.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques Concept Tests
Many
instructors have become far more satisfied with their SMET course simply
by taking a few minutes during a typical lecture and posing a conceptual
question called a ConcepTest to their students. Eric Mazur, a Harvard
physics professor, developed this method for teaching undergraduate
physics courses.
Classroom
Assessment Techniques: Performance Assessment
Performance assessment strategies are composed of three distinct parts:
a performance task; a format in which the student responds; and a predetermined
scoring system.
In an Age of Assessment, Some Useful Reminders
While
it has often been argued, it is nonetheless worth keeping in mind that
the most important function of assessment is to use it as a major means
for continuous improvement in our teaching and in the instructional
programs we offer on our respective campuses.
The Importance of Information Literacy
What
is information literacy competency? The Presidential Committee on Information
Literacy of the American Library Association stated in 1989 that "to
be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information
is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively
the needed information."
The Critical Incident Questionnaire: A Critical Reflective Teaching
Tool
In this report I will discuss the pedagogical perspective served by
the CIQ, the basic philosophy behind its use, its characteristics, and
its benefits. My comments about this tool are based on my own experiences
with it in two Spring 2000 public communication courses taught in the
California State University, Fresno Smittcamp Honors College and on
my understanding of its use by Stephen Brookfield (1995).
Remediating Prerequisite Deficiencies to Improve Success in Intermediate
Microeconomics
A
major stumbling block to students' success in intermediate microeconomic
theory is an inadequate background in basic quantitative skills and
economic concepts. To address this concern, we develop a Pretest Program
to help improve student performance....
