Currently reading up on Classroom Assessment Techniques

I’m currently preparing several courses and this book “Classroom Assessment Techniques” has been on my “to read during the summer” pile since last summer or so… So it was about time I moved it to my desk and dug into it! The book exists in much newer editions, this just happens to be the one I found on a shelf at work…

First off, I really appreciate that they are clear about the assumptions with which they approach Classroom Assessment! They assume that “the quality of student learning is directly, although not exclusively, related to the quality of teaching. Therefore, one of the most promising ways to improve learning is to improve teaching“. Improving teaching means to them to be clear about goals and objectives, and to collect feedback on whether these are achieved. They also assume that “systematic inquiry and intellectual challenge are powerful sources of motivation, growth, and renewal for college teachers, and Classroom Assessment can provide such challenge“. But it can still be done by teachers from all disciplines without extra training, and collaborating on it with students or other teachers increases the benefits, including personal satisfaction. They also make assumptions about student learning; That they need feedback early and often, need to learn to assess their own learning, and we will learn most from questions that we have come up with themselves.

To help with the clear goals, they present the Teaching Goal Inventory, which consists of items like “develop problem-solving skills“, “develop a lifelong love of learning“,”develop a capacity to make wise decisions“. This is great to make intentions explicit!

For people wanting to use Classroom Assessment Techniques in their own teaching, they provide suggestions for a successful start, including “if a CAT does not appeal to your intuition and professional judgment as a teacher, don’t use it” (love it!) and to not put too much pressure on oneself regarding CATs. Start slow, start easy, see how it goes… They also give the very important advice to try CATs yourself before you try them in class, to be aware that both running and responding to CATs probably take more time than anticipated, and to make sure to “close the loop“, i.e. feeding back to students what information came out of the CATs “and how you and they can use the information to improve learning“.

Then there is a huge amount of CATs presented in the following, all with high/medium/low estimates for how long it takes to prepare, run, and analyse the data, and mapped on disciplines as well as teaching goal clusters (such as higher order thinking, academic success skills, discipline-specific knowledge and skills, etc)… Of course there are the oldies and goldies like minute papers, muddiest point, etc, but also some that I had not considered!

Some CATs from the “engineering” suggestions

The background knowledge probe

The idea with this CAT is to establish a baseline of students prior knowledge before a new topic starts, to know what can be built on. This could be done using open-ended questions or MCQs. In the engineering example given, they show 5 images of instruments (voltmeter, ohmmeter, …) and students are asked to read the measurements. Answers can be collected on paper or in a menti; and in the example students show quite some variation in their prior knowledge: some familiarity with some of the instruments, but not with standard notations and vocabulary. Good to know! So in the next class, they did group exercises with the goal that all students can explain all readings; and the teacher explained that due to diversity in prior knowledge some material will be completely new to some while old news to others. So this was useful not just to inform the teacher about where to start, but also to inform students about each others’ prior knowledge and to moderate expectations / explain teaching choices. Plus it serves as a good hook for later learning next time they come across such instruments!

The pro and con grid

This CAT sounds very fancy, especially since it is sold as potentially contributing to e.g. “develop capacity to make informed ethical choices” and “develop a commitment to one’s own values“, but it is basically a list of pros and cons. In the engineering example, students are presented with two designs for a new suspension bridge, one a lot more massive and rigid than the other, and asked to list 3-5 major advantages and disadvantages in the first design compared to the second. This might sound a bit boring and surface-level, but I think this could be a really useful exercise to create engagement on a deeper level.

Approximate analogies

Approximate analogies are of the form “A is to B as X is to Y”. The instructor provides “A is to B”, students add the rest (But one could provide X or Y to make it a bit easier for students, or to make sure they think about an analogy that is somehow interesting for our purposes). For example “mass is to volume as ___ is to ___“, or “voltage is to wattage as ___ is to ___“. The advice here is to come up with several examples, and especially ones from everyday life, before giving this CAT to students. Also it is important to present some example analogies before asking students to come up with some themselves.

Student-generated test questions

This is obviously a great idea to get students to engage with content, but it can have additional benefits: In the example from engineering, students (can be done in pairs or small groups) created lots of low-level questions, and when given that feedback and examples of what the teacher had expected, they said that they had not learnt to solve that type of questions the teacher expected. The teacher realises they were right, postponed the test, taught them better, and they all lived happily ever after! To leave room for this or other unexpected learning, the tip for this CAT is to do it for an exam that is still a couple of weeks away.

S0me CATs from the “personal development” section

Double-entry journals

In this CAT, students take notes on meaningful or controversial ideas and arguments from assigned reading (first part of the journal) and then (for the “double” part) explain personal significance and respond to passage. I think this would be super interesting to see what the key points are and how students think about them! To make it easier, the teacher could also suggest key points or passages. This could be done as ungraded first step in an assignment, and students later expand on it for a graded assignment.

I do realise that this is kinda what this blog is… But I still love the suggestion!

Everyday ethical dilemmas

Students are provided with a short (few lines) case of an ethical dilemma, and asked to respond (can be anonymously). Somehow I expected more from the name…

Goal ranking and matching

At the beginning of a course or new unit, students list learning goals (and possibly rank them by importance for their life), teacher responds to whether they will be happening and when, and what else might be happening. For this, the teacher needs to be clear about goals for the class before they try it, and also about whether/what is negotiable.

I used to do this all the time at the beginning of workshops but completely forgot about it! This is a very good exercise to make sure that goals are (mostly) aligned. This can avoid a lot of frustration down the line…

Some CATs that might be interesting for the GLF

We have been discussing how to use CATs in the upcoming GeoLearning Forum, and I think these are quite interesting options in order to produce participant-generated summaries (in addition to getting a lot of feedback about what seemed to be most meaningful)!

One sentence summaries

This CAT is basically the response to “who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why?”. They used in the beginning of the book for teachers to suss out what their main issue in the course is about, and it is quite cool. The advice here is to allow students twice as much time as it takes the teacher to do the exercise (AND TO TRY IT YOURSELF FIRST!!)! Also very important: introduce the technique before giving students the topic they are supposed to use it on!

In a next step, students can turn the one sentence into 2-3 sentences to make it more pretty…

Word journal

This is a bit similar to the double-entry journal above, except a bit more creative: First, students summarise a text in one word, then write a paragraph explaining why that word was chosen.

This is supposed to be used on short texts (not presentations or events), and with the advice “decide what aspect of the text–main theme, central conflict or problem, core metaphor–you want students to focus on“. I am thinking this might be a bit more difficult than the double-entry because of the required creativity to summarize something in one word… But would also be super interesting to read!

So far so good for today!

Angelo, T. A., Cross, K. P., & Rechnique, C. A. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques. A handbook for college teachers. Josse-Bass Publishers, San-Francisco.