The role of assessment for me, as a learner, is an affirmation of skills or the attainment of some level of proficiency in a subject. A part, and in some cases, a big part of the engagement with the subject matter is based on the assessment process and how the achievement or mastery of the material will be evaluated. As an undergraduate, I was required to take several math and science courses which were very challenging to say the least. Although this logic may be flawed, as a political science major (liberal arts), I assumed the assessments in my science and math courses would be more objective. I felt the cut and dry nature of the science and math curriculum provided a straightforward path to what was needed to pass the “test” and most time it was a test. This is not a diminishment of testing, on the contrary, in the end I greatly valued the achievement that acing a biology or calculus test signaled.
In my limited experience as an instructor (I taught an adjunct government class), assessments were crucial for me and for my students. The government class I taught was a required general education class, i.e., must take in order to graduate and as such, the students were fairly attentive (or captive, if you dislike politics). I mentioned this because whatever the assessments used had to cater to a very diverse crowd. For this class, the students wrote timed essays twice a week on questions about the functions of government and current events. The essay questions enabled the students to make connections between seemingly quiescent institutions and current issues facing them as citizens. The results were mixed, but the essay responses alerted me to gaps in the comprehension of the course reading materials which in turned helped to focus my lectures.
As an aside, I have to comment on Harlan’s assessment video. I laugh out loud when Harlan mentioned Michelle Rhee. What an absolute nightmare for those of us concerned about K-12 education here in Sacramento, where I live, because Rhee is married or will be marrying Mayor Kevin Johnson! I am sure she will be subjecting us to her foundation MichelleFirst, err, I mean StudentsFirst. Here is a nice Eva Peronish response from Rhee about the latest high stake testing scandal, http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/29/rhee_cheating/index.html
I'm curious, how did you grade the timed essays? Were they credit/no credit, or did you give scores based on performance?
ReplyDeleteAll the timed essays started at the beginning of class and lasted 5 minutes. The essays were graded on a 0-10 scale based on performance and because the course was a hybrid online course (the lectures could be viewed on line also), the student could receive 4 points just by turning in a blank sheet with their name provided they stayed for the entire lecture.
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to keep up with the Michelle Rhee issues as well, and it seems to reflect an unavoidable truth about human nature: when you are faced with the opportunity to make money for good test scores, you do all you can to get the good test scores! Even if no cheating occurred, this system of testing, and thereby assessing teachers, is extremely suspect. The very way that these teachers were supposedly evaluated was based upon one method of standardized testing. Yikes! That kind of pressure would be impossible to ignore!
ReplyDeleteAssessments, ideally, would serve the purpose of helping both the instructor and the student to communicate about what is actually learned. Teachers should not feel afraid of the response to this question! Ideally, it would provide an opportunity to improve, rather than a reflection of the quality of the teacher. That's why I like that you had essays that helped you during the duration of the course. (This was also discussed on Kathleen's post.)
Whoa, that is some serious chisme about Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson-I had no idea. Dear lord, what are the implications for the Sacramento schools?
ReplyDeleteBack to your experiences--do you feel that the timed essays actually catered to a diverse crowd? I can imagine that that many assessments (timed essays twice a week) would give quite a bit of feedback to the instructor on how well the students were grasping the material. But do you feel that the students received meaningful feedback as to their individual progress? What form did the feedback take--was it written or a holistic score? And was this a manageable workload for you as the teacher? I ask all of these questions because I sometimes dreamed of schemes to get my students to write essays on a more regular basis--but this desire had to be tempered by how much grading I could actually manage with 150 students. (I tried all kinds of tricks--having the students write two in-class essays, and allowing them to choose which one would be graded while the other received a credit/ no credit grade and so on and so forth.)
I like essays as much as the next person (actually, better than most ;D), but it seems problematic if that's the only assessment method used--particularly if the crowd was as diverse as you say. Not everyone will be good at writing essays, especially those for whom English is not their first language. Even people who are good at essays might have difficulty with timed essays.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do like that the assessment was also an assessment for you, and that you were able to alter the lesson based on what students seemed to be having trouble with.