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!