This document discusses assessment and evaluation in college classes. It explores the author's past experiences being assessed through multiple choice tests, short answer questions, research papers, and projects. It considers how assessment can help instructors modify their teaching to improve student learning and development. The document outlines goals of reflecting on past learning assessments, defining learning and evaluation, and identifying successful assessment practices. It provides examples of assessment tools like surveys and student summaries that can help instructors develop students. The primary goal of evaluation and assessment should be to help students learn to evaluate their own thinking. Effective teachers engage in self-evaluation and reflection to improve. The document concludes by proposing an activity for redesigning an assessment and evaluation for a course based on reflection and

1. Assessment and Evaluation in College Classes Karen Asenavage LEAD 880 May 15, 2011

3. Short-Answer

4. Research Papers

6. Outcomes of this learning experienceare to: Consider your past learning, assessment, and evaluation experiences. Define learning and evaluation in higher education. Identify and deconstruct assessments and evaluations which were successful and why. Consider someassessment and evaluation practices and tools that encourage learning in higher education Design or redesign an assessment and an evaluation for a course you are teaching or have recently taken.

7. Learning Learning entails primarily intellectual and personal changes that people undergo as they develop new understandings and reasoning abilities. (Bain, 2004, p. 153) It is developmental not merely acquisition or strategy development.

8. Evaluation Obtaining evidence about learning that has and is taking place and Communicatingwith a student about how learning is developing and the changes that are taking place. Resulting in teachers…

9. Modifyingteaching and evaluation to progress learning and change making it more effective. …Focusing upon learning encourages change and development for the student and the teacher.

10. What was the most effective assessment of your learning that you have ever had? Why? Did it evaluate your learning and the professor’s teaching or both? Have you ever evaluated a professor in a form other than a questionnaire?

11. Practices of Student Assessment and Evaluation Know students. Communicate regularly. Communicate in different venues. Gather information to help you develop them: Surveys Summaries of learning Questions students have Small groups

12. Learning objectives shape the nature of the instruction and the assessment. If a learning goal is for students to evaluate and synthesize from several sources and apply that to a case in their profession…is a written short answer or multiple choice exam the best way to gain evidence of their learning?

13. The primary goal of evaluation and assessment is to help students learn to think about their own thinking so that they can use the standards of the discipline or profession to recognize shortcomings and correct their reasoning as they go. (Bain, 2004, p. 160)

14. Teacher Assessment and Evaluation Consideryour own teaching… …Does the teaching (you do) help and encourage students to learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial and positive difference (change) in the way they think, act, or feel without doing them harm? (Bain, 2004, p. 164)

15. Four Key Evaluative Questions 1) Is the material worth learning? 2) Are my students learning what the course is supposedly teaching? 3) Am I helping and encouraging students to learn? 4) Have I harmed my students in the learning process? (Bain, 2004, p. 164)

17. Focus groups

19. Journaling

22. Factors that effect evaluation Asking the wrong questions Student level Student motivation Elective or requirement Type of evaluation Time of day or semester

23. Excellent teachers develop their abilities through constant self-evaluation, reflection, and the willingness to change. Learning and evaluation in the college classroom is about change in the student and in the instructor.

26. Bain, Ken. (2004). What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

27. Bresciani, M.& Wolff, R. (2006). Outcomes-Based Academic and Co-Curricular Program Review. New York: Stylus.

28. Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. New York: JosseyBass.

29. Middaugh, M. (2009). Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating institutional Effectiveness. New York: JosseyBass.

30. University of Adelaide. (2011). Center for Learning and Professional Development. http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/assessment/about/