Wednesday, June 22, 2011
June 21, 2011 Meeting
We spent most of this meeting helping each other figure out how to access resources to complete the Summer 2011 Update on Program Assessment form and actually working on our forms. Thanks to Sharon, we have some great models to look at in our Sharepoint!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Dr. Elizabeth Barkley Workshops
For me, yesterday's workshops led by Dr. Elizabeth Barkley were very thought provoking. As we lead faculty to create engaging assignments that can be assessed for our Intstitutional General Education Competencies and our Program Learning Outcomes, it will be good to keep the principles in mind that she shared. It would also be good to check out her two books for assignment inspiration ideas.
I am noticing that when consultants come, and the audience is multi-discipline faculty, that the "content" of their presentations is going to be best principles for effective teaching and the method is going to be (hopefully) putting those principles into practice using engagement/active learning/collaborative learning techniques (that's what Barbara Millis did for her two presentations during Employee Development Day).
I did come away with some new knowledge:
motivation = value x expectancy
student engagement = motivation x active learning
I had never had the language of positive transfer and negative transfer, but certainly in math, we see this all the time and it is very helpful to be aware of it as you teach so you can alert the students.
I never thought about the fact that we store ideas in memory by similarity and we retrieve them by differences -- I can see how sharing this with math students will be very helpful.
I thought the way she used the MATCH acronym with the quote at the end was a very clever, brain-based learning technique.
I was very impressed with her power points -- minimal words, images, and she used animation appropriately.
She did use a lot of STEM examples (the Title V STEM Grant paid for her to come) as I asked.
It will be interesting to see the compiled ideas from the two workshops on the worksheet. I think the repeated group activity of filling out the worksheet automatically limited the number of SETs that were introduced during the workshop.
At least many people will be aware of her books and hopefully will check out SETs and CoLTs.
I am noticing that when consultants come, and the audience is multi-discipline faculty, that the "content" of their presentations is going to be best principles for effective teaching and the method is going to be (hopefully) putting those principles into practice using engagement/active learning/collaborative learning techniques (that's what Barbara Millis did for her two presentations during Employee Development Day).
I did come away with some new knowledge:
motivation = value x expectancy
student engagement = motivation x active learning
I had never had the language of positive transfer and negative transfer, but certainly in math, we see this all the time and it is very helpful to be aware of it as you teach so you can alert the students.
I never thought about the fact that we store ideas in memory by similarity and we retrieve them by differences -- I can see how sharing this with math students will be very helpful.
I thought the way she used the MATCH acronym with the quote at the end was a very clever, brain-based learning technique.
I was very impressed with her power points -- minimal words, images, and she used animation appropriately.
She did use a lot of STEM examples (the Title V STEM Grant paid for her to come) as I asked.
It will be interesting to see the compiled ideas from the two workshops on the worksheet. I think the repeated group activity of filling out the worksheet automatically limited the number of SETs that were introduced during the workshop.
At least many people will be aware of her books and hopefully will check out SETs and CoLTs.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Meeting Summary June 8th
Carmen Velasquez and some students visited our meeting! We showed the students some of the resources on the web for our General Education assessment efforts this past year. We discussed how to better get this information to students. One idea would be to get the information in a more accessible place on our college web site. Another idea was to connect the six competencies to student efforts in student clubs and activities. We explained some of the details of the assessment process and gave the students the findings files from Spring 11 to give them an idea of the data that we collect. One finding from Spring 11 was that many of the students (47%) in our sample had dropped their courses -- this was unexpected because the students in the sample had taken 45 or more credit hours. Students offered that sometimes students close to graduation are very "GPA conscious" and they might drop classes to preserve a high GPA. It came out in the meeting that these students were not all aware of the 3 peat rule, 120 hour rule, 6 drop rule, and limits on financial aid. We discussed some ways to get this information to students - an idea that was suggested was to make sure these are covered in SDEV. Carmen invited the group to participate in the Student Engagement and Retention Retreat on June 29th.
After the students left, we continued to think about ways to help students focus on learning and not be so "GPA conscious". We talked about the idea that we learn best when we make mistakes -- that C's and B's are OK. It was pointed out that the scholarship application at PAC might be motivating students to drop courses when they are not getting A's -- there is a heavy advantage to having a 4.0 in the rating scale.
We compared the PAC approach to assessing General Education Competencies to the approach taken at some of our sister colleges. We are using a Backwards Design approach that is focused on collegiality and improvement.
We continued to look at drafts this meeting. Anna submitted some edits to the policy and I will update our file in the wiki. When I presented the "Faculty Acknowledgment Form" we had a discussion on its optional use that expanded to a discussion on how to help faculty with the deadlines -- some departments have sharepoint areas where files could be placed to help faculty. We are still thinking about this...
Another draft that we looked at was the worksheet to get faculty ideas for related action plans -- this is just an edit of the one we used last Spring at Faculty Development Day.
Finally, Patrick, Bailey, and I shared what we got out of the reading assignments. Patrick's reading was kind of depressing -- faculty laboring to assess writing skills with little to no support. Bailey shared insights from the reading on data access, and the value of leadership communications concerning assessment. I shared how the focus on learning is supported by assessment -- good stuff in Chapter 1 of Huba and Freed.
After the students left, we continued to think about ways to help students focus on learning and not be so "GPA conscious". We talked about the idea that we learn best when we make mistakes -- that C's and B's are OK. It was pointed out that the scholarship application at PAC might be motivating students to drop courses when they are not getting A's -- there is a heavy advantage to having a 4.0 in the rating scale.
We compared the PAC approach to assessing General Education Competencies to the approach taken at some of our sister colleges. We are using a Backwards Design approach that is focused on collegiality and improvement.
We continued to look at drafts this meeting. Anna submitted some edits to the policy and I will update our file in the wiki. When I presented the "Faculty Acknowledgment Form" we had a discussion on its optional use that expanded to a discussion on how to help faculty with the deadlines -- some departments have sharepoint areas where files could be placed to help faculty. We are still thinking about this...
Another draft that we looked at was the worksheet to get faculty ideas for related action plans -- this is just an edit of the one we used last Spring at Faculty Development Day.
Finally, Patrick, Bailey, and I shared what we got out of the reading assignments. Patrick's reading was kind of depressing -- faculty laboring to assess writing skills with little to no support. Bailey shared insights from the reading on data access, and the value of leadership communications concerning assessment. I shared how the focus on learning is supported by assessment -- good stuff in Chapter 1 of Huba and Freed.
Experiencing a Paradigm Shift through Assessment
Here are my major take-aways from reading chapter 1 in Huba and Freed’s Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses:
• This quote that they include sums up the paradigm shift for me ---“The ultimate criterion of good teaching is effective learning” (Cross, 1993, p 20)
• Students learn when they are engaged, they reflect on what they are learning, they make connections among concepts, and they care about what they are learning.
• I am familiar with Barr and Tagg’s From Teaching to Learning 1995 article in Change Magazine. Huba and Freed take this paradigm shift and shine assessment spot lights on it on page 5 – In the Learner-Centered Paradigm:
o “Teaching and Assessment are intertwined”;
o “Assessment is used to promote and diagnose learning”,
o “Emphasis is on generating better questions and learning from errors”,
o “Desired learning is assessed directly through papers, projects, performances, portfolios, and the like.”
• Huba and Freed advocate a systems approach to promote learner-centered teaching – efforts to change at the course level are connected to change at the program and institutional level. How does our system foster student learning? One area for improvement that Foundations of Excellence surveys uncovered was connecting co-curricular experiences to what is going on in our classrooms – we want to capitalize on all experiences for students across our system to maximize their learning.
• I love this observation on page 12, “As Howard Gardner (1991) points out, the ability to take objectively scored tests successfully is a useless skill as soon as one graduates from college. The rest of one’s life, he says, is a series of projects.”
Huba and Freed go into great detail in this chapter on the stages of the assessment cycle and how to best accomplish each stage. They also trace the history of the assessment movement in higher education up to the publishing date of this book, 2000. The final section of this chapter focuses on the “Continuous Improvement Movement” and “Improvement as Accountability”. We at PAC are experiencing this first-hand with our SACS Compliance requirements this year. In this final section of the chapter, Huba and Freed go into detail about how Learner-Centered Assessment supports attributes of a quality undergraduate education:
• Learner-Centered Assessment Promotes High Expectations
• Learner-Centered Assessment Respects Diverse Talents and Learning Styles
• Learner-Centered Assessment Enhances the Early Years of Study
• Learner-Centered Assessment Promotes Coherence in Learning
• Learner-Centered Assessment Synthesizes Experiences, Fosters Ongoing Practice of Learned Skills, and Integrates Education and Experience
• Learner-Centered Assessment Actively Involves Students in Learning and Promotes Adequate Time on Task
• Learner-Centered Assessment Provides Prompt Feedback
• Learner-Centered Assessment Fosters Collaboration
• Learner-Centered Assessment Depends on Increased Student-Faculty Feedback
I recommend that everyone at PAC read chapter one of Huba and Freed’s Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses!
• This quote that they include sums up the paradigm shift for me ---“The ultimate criterion of good teaching is effective learning” (Cross, 1993, p 20)
• Students learn when they are engaged, they reflect on what they are learning, they make connections among concepts, and they care about what they are learning.
• I am familiar with Barr and Tagg’s From Teaching to Learning 1995 article in Change Magazine. Huba and Freed take this paradigm shift and shine assessment spot lights on it on page 5 – In the Learner-Centered Paradigm:
o “Teaching and Assessment are intertwined”;
o “Assessment is used to promote and diagnose learning”,
o “Emphasis is on generating better questions and learning from errors”,
o “Desired learning is assessed directly through papers, projects, performances, portfolios, and the like.”
• Huba and Freed advocate a systems approach to promote learner-centered teaching – efforts to change at the course level are connected to change at the program and institutional level. How does our system foster student learning? One area for improvement that Foundations of Excellence surveys uncovered was connecting co-curricular experiences to what is going on in our classrooms – we want to capitalize on all experiences for students across our system to maximize their learning.
• I love this observation on page 12, “As Howard Gardner (1991) points out, the ability to take objectively scored tests successfully is a useless skill as soon as one graduates from college. The rest of one’s life, he says, is a series of projects.”
Huba and Freed go into great detail in this chapter on the stages of the assessment cycle and how to best accomplish each stage. They also trace the history of the assessment movement in higher education up to the publishing date of this book, 2000. The final section of this chapter focuses on the “Continuous Improvement Movement” and “Improvement as Accountability”. We at PAC are experiencing this first-hand with our SACS Compliance requirements this year. In this final section of the chapter, Huba and Freed go into detail about how Learner-Centered Assessment supports attributes of a quality undergraduate education:
• Learner-Centered Assessment Promotes High Expectations
• Learner-Centered Assessment Respects Diverse Talents and Learning Styles
• Learner-Centered Assessment Enhances the Early Years of Study
• Learner-Centered Assessment Promotes Coherence in Learning
• Learner-Centered Assessment Synthesizes Experiences, Fosters Ongoing Practice of Learned Skills, and Integrates Education and Experience
• Learner-Centered Assessment Actively Involves Students in Learning and Promotes Adequate Time on Task
• Learner-Centered Assessment Provides Prompt Feedback
• Learner-Centered Assessment Fosters Collaboration
• Learner-Centered Assessment Depends on Increased Student-Faculty Feedback
I recommend that everyone at PAC read chapter one of Huba and Freed’s Learner-Centered Assessment on College Campuses!
Summer 2011 June 7th Meeting Notes
Yesterday we launched our Summer 2011 PAC Assessment Institute! We had a very productive meeting. Everyone received their resource books and a packet of articles and draft documents and we reviewed what we have accomplished at PAC so far and what we hope to accomplish to move assessment efforts forward this summer. We brainstormed messages to PAC faculty regarding assessment and we edited a draft procedure for General Education Assessment at PAC. Finally, the group reviewed and blessed revisions to the Assignment Template format.
Several new ideas surfaced as we considered the procedure draft --
1. A request to get updates on students in our sample that have dropped courses during Fall semesters.
2. A form for chair to give to faculty that have been tapped for assignments. This form would be signed by the faculty as an acknowlegment that the faculty understood the request and the form could be attached to the guidelines document.
Based on yesterday's meeting, we are off to a great start this summer!
Several new ideas surfaced as we considered the procedure draft --
1. A request to get updates on students in our sample that have dropped courses during Fall semesters.
2. A form for chair to give to faculty that have been tapped for assignments. This form would be signed by the faculty as an acknowlegment that the faculty understood the request and the form could be attached to the guidelines document.
Based on yesterday's meeting, we are off to a great start this summer!
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