The Assessment Toolbox

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The Assessment Toolbox

• Linda Suskie
• Middle States Commission on Higher Education
• AB Tech
• February 2005

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Today...

• What is assessment?
• The assessment toolbox
• Rubrics (scoring guides)
• Prompts (assignments)
• Multiple-choice tests
• Reflective writing
• Using assessment results to improve teaching

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What is Assessment?

• Deciding what we want our students to learn
• Making sure they learn it!
• --Jane Wolfson, Director, Environmental Science
  Studies Program, Towson University

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The Teaching-Learning-Assessment Cycle
Learning Goals
Using Results
Learning Opportunities
Assessment
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1. Learning Goals

• What is a good learning goal?
• Outcomes what students should be able to do
  AFTER they pass the course
• Observable action words
• Clear no fuzzy terms
• Skills thinking, performance
• Important - meet student/employer needs

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2. Aligning Assignments with Goals
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3. The Assessment Toolbox
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Rubrics

• A list of things youre looking for when youre
  grading tests, papers, or projects
• Often with guidelines or standards for evaluating
  them

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Rating Scale Rubrics

• A scale showing the degree to which the things
  youre looking for are present.

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Descriptive Rubrics

• More detailed descriptions of each possible
  rating.

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Holistic Scoring Guides

• A single score that reflects an overall
  impression of performance
• Scores are defined by
• descriptions or
• model answers

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Write a Rubric!
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Prompts Creating Effective Assignments
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Creating Effective Multiple Choice Tests

• Start with a test blueprint.

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Definitions

• Objective test
• Stem
• Alternatives/ responses/ options

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Multiple Choice

• Advantages
• Efficient
• Fast and easy to score
• Options can diagnose difficulties

• Disadvantages
• Hard to write
• Often requires reading skills
• Guessing
• Cant measure some thinking skills

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Use Multiple Choice Items for...

• Conceptual understanding
• Application
• Identify correct application or example
• Analysis
• Identify correct cause, effect, or element
• Identify why something occurs or is best

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Interpretive Exercise

• context-dependent item
• enhanced multiple choice item
• One new stimulus (paragraph, chart)
• that students must read or examine
• to be able to answer all
• the objective items that follow

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Examples of Interpretive Material

• Reading passage they havent seen
• Description of lab experiment
• Material from historical period (letter, document)

• Description of patients symptoms
• Chart, diagram, drawing
• Any scenario (You are...)

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Use Interpretive Exercises to...

• Apply knowledge and understanding to new material
  or novel situations.
• Identify correct generalization, inference, or
  conclusion.
• Use problem-solving and analysis skills.
• Prepare for standardized tests.

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Writing Good Multiple Choice Items
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More Ways to Make Multiple Choice Tests Effective

• Open-book, open-note
• Throw out items that half your students get
  wrong.
• Review only items that many students got wrong.
• Ask them WHY they got them wrong.

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Reflective Writing
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4. Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching

• Goals
• Curriculum
• Pedagogy
• Assessments

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Look at your learning goals.

• Do you have too many goals?
• Do your goals need to be clarified?
• Are your goals inappropriate or overly ambitious?

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Look at your curriculum.

• Including placement and developmental education.
• Does the curriculum adequately address each
  learning goal?

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Look at your teaching methods.

• How do students learn best?

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Look at your assessments.

• Are they poorly written and misinterpreted?
• Do they match your key learning goals?
• Are they too difficult for most responsible
  students?

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Isnt Poor Performance the Students Fault?

• Sometimes, but usually a minority
• Suskies 50 rule

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Time to Reflect!