Retention for What Understanding, Promoting

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Retention for What?Understanding, Promoting
Assessing the Learning in Learning Communities
University of Texas, San Antonio Summer Teaching
Institute May 12, 2003

• William S. Moore, Ph.D.
• Coordinator, Assessment, Teaching Learning
• WA State Board for Community Technical Colleges
  bmoore_at_sbctc.ctc.edu
• 360-704-4346

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Adapted from Dilbert Scott Adams
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Warm-Up Discussion(see Agenda handout)
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College Learning???

• Basically, you learn two kinds of things in
  college
• Things you will need to know in later life (2
  hours)
• Things you will NOT need to know in later life
  (1198 hours). These are the things you learn in
  classes whose names end in -ology, -osophy,
  -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is,
  you memorize these things, then write them down
  in little exam books, then forget them. If you
  fail to forget them you become a professor and
  have to stay in college the rest of your life.

Dave Barry, 1981
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The major aim of the freshman year should be to
win the student to the intellectual enterprise.
Nevitt Sanford, The Modern American College, 1962
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I was taught to regurgitate but never to think
and it was just amazingI was really just narrow
minded, andI got into this classroom with 60
people and three teachers and my mind exploded.
Washington state community college student,
discussing her first learning community
experience
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Key Messages

• Retention is NOT an end in itself
• Disciplinary outcomes matter, but
• We need to be clearer about whats most important
  and why ( assessment is a vehicle for doing
  that)
• We need to understand more fully the new
  scholarship around teaching, learning and
  assessment
• Learning communities, done well, can contribute
  to and reinforce that process

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The Assessment Process

• Beginning with the End in Mind
• Facilitating Student Learning
• Making Judgments about Progress

(CURRICULUM) (PEDAGOGY) (GRADING)
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Beginning with the End in Mind
Curriculum
What do I want to teach?
What do I want students to know be able to do??
Knowledge
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Small Group Discussion I(see Agenda handout)
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Knowledge as a Set of Tools

• Situated or grounded in specific contexts in
  which it is used (and learned within communities
  of practice)
• Expertise as body of knowledge organized around
  big ideas, not isolated facts

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Knowledge as a Tool One Example
Able high school students can know a lot of
history but still have little idea of how
historical knowledge is constructedWhat seemed
to distinguish historians from students in this
study was not knowledge but broader, more
sweeping ways of knowing and thinking about
historical evidence
Sam S. Wineburg, 1991
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A variety of approaches that link or cluster
classes during a given term, often around an
interdisciplinary theme, enrolling a common
cohort of students. The primary focus is on an
intentional restructuring of students time,
credit and learning experiences to foster more
explicit intellectual connections between
students, between students and their faculty, and
between disciplines.
LearningCommunities
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Learning Communities Can Be Structured As
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F.I.G.s Freshman Interest Groups
Goal The creation of small effective academic
learning communities in a large college setting.
Vehicle Triads of courses offered around an area
of interest, an interdisciplinary topic, or
courses related to a specific major. Each F.I.G.
has a peer advisor, a more advanced student who
convenes the group weekly to form study groups,
to learn about campus resources, and to plan
social gatherings.
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1st-Year Learning Communities at Temple University
Linked-course learning communities typically
feature Core curriculum (general education)
courses or introductory courses in majors. Pairs
typically include a first-year writing course.
Some links include a freshman seminar.
PreCalculus General Chemistry 35 Students
American Womens Lives College composition 22
Students
Introduction to Academic Discourse Learning for
the New Century (Freshman Seminar) 17 Students
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Learning Clusters Goal Coherence, thinking and
writing skills in a community setting
LaGuardia Community College

• All day-time enrolled students in Liberal Arts AA
  Programs take one of these 12-credit clusters.
• Cluster enrollment is limited to 30 students.
  Students travel from class to class as a
  self-contained group.

English 101 (3 credits) Writing the Research
Paper (2 credits) Integrated Hour (1 credit)
Work, Labor and Business in American Life
Freedom and Seeing
Intro. to Philosophy (3 credits) Intro. to Art
(3 credits)
Intro. to Social Sci. (3 credits) Work, Labor
Business in American Lit. (3 credits)
OR
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Coordinated Study Model
The learning community is engaged full-time
(15-18 credits) in interdisciplinary, active
learning around themes. Faculty development
occurs through co-planning and team-teaching
across disciplinary boundaries.

• Faculty teams of 3-4 co-plan around an
  over-arching theme, or around related
  content/skills subjects
• Usually full-time load for both faculty and
  students
• Therefore, scheduling of class time becomes quite
  flexible opportunities for BLOCKS of time for
  lectures, discussions, field trips, workshops
• Frequent use of book seminars, collaborative
  learning, and student projects

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Facilitating Student Learning
Curriculum
Pedagogy
How do I teach the material?
How do I promote learning most effectively?
What do I want students to know be able to do??
Knowledge
Learning
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Small Group Discussion II(see Agenda handout)
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Learning as Transforming Understanding
Being able to repeat facts and plug numbers into
formulae to get the right answers is handy, even
essential. But it is not what education is
fundamentally about Learning should be about
changing the ways in which learners understand,
or experience, or conceptualize the world around
them
Paul Ramsden
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Deep Learning
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Elements Fostering Meaningful Lasting Learning

• Collaborative work around authentic, situated
  activities
• High challenge, low threat settings involving
  practice, reinforcement, and rich, timely
  feedback
• Opportunities to make choices, follow natural
  curiosity, and reflect on ones own learning

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One ApproachCooperative Learning

• Positive interdependence
• Individual and group accountability
• Structured interactions
• Teamwork skills and group processing

Karl Smith, Univ. of Minnesota, Ksmith_at_umn.edu htt
p//www.ce.umn.edu/smith
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Making Judgments about Progress
Curriculum
Pedagogy
Grading
What do I want students to know be able to do??
What kind of tests should I give?
How do I judge student performance?
How do I promote learning most effectively?
Knowledge
Learning
Assessment
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Small Group Discussion III(see Agenda handout)
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Good assessment tasks are interchangeable with
good instructional tasks.
Lorrie Shepard The role of assessment in a
learning culture, 2000
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Adapted from Peanuts, by Charles Schulz
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A Sampling of Assessment Approaches

• Research papers, essay tests
• Self-evaluations
• Interviews
• Performance tasks (e.g., cases, problems, etc.)
• Multiple-choice tests
• End of seminar surveys
• Course evaluations
• Student tracking studies

• Projects, field work
• Standardized tests, surveys
• Peer evaluations
• Portfolio collections of work
• Video analyses
• Focus groups ( SGIDs)
• Student characteristic profiles

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The best assessment tools are the minds of
teachers and learners
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Authentic Assessments

• Involves engaging, potentially multi-stage tasks
• Reflects contexts found in specific field of
  study or in adult life
• Asks student to produce a quality product and/or
  performance
• Designed around explicit, public criteria

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I dont remember the teacher covering any of
this!!
Interdisciplinary Performance Test Instructions
Read each question carefully. Answer all
questions. Time limit 4 hours. Begin
immediately.
MUSIC Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and
perform it with flute and drum. You will find a
piano under your seat.   BIOLOGY Create life.
Estimate the differences in subsequent human
culture if this form of life had developed 500
million years earlier, with special attention to
its probable effect on the English parliamentary
system. Prove your thesis.   SOCIOLOGY Estimate
the sociological problems that might accompany
the end of the world. Construct an experiment to
test your theory.   PHILOSOPHY Sketch the
development of human thought estimate its
significance. Compare with the development of any
other kind of thought.
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Core Principles of Assessment

• Assess the things that really matter, not just
  the things easily assessed
• Emphasize the quality and quantity of
  conversations about assessment evidence
• Use a variety of approaches and multiple
  indicators

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Lessons from LC Case Studies (1)

• Emphasize both formative summative assessments
• Focus on student learning leads to focus on
  faculty institutional learning
• Timing, pace volume of assessment critical
• Process is inherently messy and non-linear (and
  thats OK! ?)

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Lessons from LC Case Studies (2)

• Assessment requires shared responsibilitiescant
  just be Joes/Janes job
• Need to understand and attend to political
  context
• Need to be public, not secretive about the work
• Reflection/documentation extremely helpful

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Web Resources(see handouts)
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LCs Influence Intellectual Development

• How learners
• understand knowledge and learning
• view the role of the teacher and their own role
  in learning
• view themselves in connection to the world around
  them

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Dimensions of Effectiveness for LC Programs (see
handout)
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Key Themes/Lingering Questions?
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In Conclusion
I know I have not succeeded in answering all of
your questions. Indeed, it feels as though I have
not completely answered ANY of your questions.
The answers I have given often serve simply to
raise a new set of questions. In some ways it
seems clear that you are as confused as ever.
However, youll be happy to know that I believe
firmly that you are now confused on a much higher
level and about much more important things than
before!
Adapted from John McMahon, Seattle Central
Community College