cirtl class meeting 4: assessment

The College Classroom – Spring 2015

Class Meeting 3: Classroom Assessment

Dave Gross dgross@ biochem.umass.edu

Thursday, February 19, 2015

1:00-2:30p ET, 12:00-1:30p CT, 11:00a-12:30p MT, 10:00-11:30a PT

Peter Newbury

pnewbury@ucsd.edu

@polarisdotca

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Objectives for Today

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 2

By the end of today’s session you will be able to

distinguish between summative and formative assessment

align learning outcomes with formative and summative assessments (backward design principle)

demonstrate the different possible uses of formative assessments

use Bloom’s Taxonomy to evaluate assessments

Thanks to Michelle Withers, West Virginia University; Clarissa Dirks,

Evergreen State College; and Jenny Knight, University of Colorado

To know or not to know…

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 3

“… because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Donald Rumsfeld.

US Secretary of Defense

2001-2006

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To know or not to know…

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 4

How do you know when you know something?

To know or not to know…

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 5

How do you know when you know something?

How do you know when your students know

something?

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 6

How do you know when you know something?

How do you know when your students know

something?

How do your students know when they know

something?

To know or not to know…

Back to Backward Design

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 7

Backward Design

1. What do I want students to know?

2. How will I determine if they know it?

3. What will I do to get them the information?

1. Learning goals

2. Learning outcomes and assessment

3. Activities and exercises

Assessments communicate the

instructor’s intent

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 8

Assessments communicate the

instructor’s intent

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 9

THE MONTILLATION AND USES OF TRAXOLINE

It is very important to learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians found that they could gristerlate large amounts of fervon and then bracter it to quasel traxoline. This new, more efficient bracterillation process has the potential to make traxoline one of the most useful products within the molecular family of lukizes snezlaus.

Assessments communicate the

instructor’s intent

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 10

THE MONTILLATION AND USES OF TRAXOLINE

It is very important to learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians found that they could gristerlate large amounts of fervon and then bracter it to quasel traxoline. This new, more efficient bracterillation process has the potential to make traxoline one of the most useful products within the molecular family of lukizes snezlaus.

QUIZ:

1. What is traxoline?

2. Where is it montilled?

3. How is traxoline quaseled?

4. Why is traxoline important?

Assessments communicate the

instructor’s intent

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 11

THE MONTILLATION AND USES OF TRAXOLINE

It is very important to learn about traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is montilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians found that they could gristerlate large amounts of fervon and then bracter it to quasel traxoline. This new, more efficient bracterillation process has the potential to make traxoline one of the most useful products within the molecular family of lukizes snezlaus.

QUIZ:

1. What is traxoline?

2. Where is it montilled?

3. How is traxoline quaseled?

4. Why is traxoline important?

• An exam communicates what

the instructor cares about

• If you test them on fact-based

knowledge, then that is what

they will study!

Formative vs. Summative

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 12

Formative assessment: to modify teaching and learning

activities during the learning process (i.e., homework,

in-class questions, quizzes)

Summative assessment: to monitor educational

outcomes (i.e., exams, final projects)

EnGaugement

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 13

EnGaugement is “an activity that

simultaneously engages students in

learning and gauges their understanding.”

Handelsman, Miller, Pfund (2007) Scientific Teaching

EnGaugement

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 14

Which organisms are most

distantly related?

1) Bacteria and archaea

2) Plants and animals

3) Plants and fungi

4) Humans and fungi

Which organisms have the

smallest genomes?

1) Animals

2) Archaea

3) Plants

4) Fungi

Handelsman, Miller, Pfund (2007) Scientific Teaching

Types of assessment tools

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Types of assessment tools

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom 16

Quizzes and exams

Homework assignments

Written papers/reports

Oral presentations

In-class activities

Surveys

Observations

Interviews

Blooming the questions

17

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Activity: Sharing and analyzing an exam

question

18 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Share an exam/quiz question…

Where does the question fit in Bloom’s taxonomy?

What action verbs were used in the question?

What was the expected learning outcome?

How could one take this question to a higher level?

9 minutes on the timer,

back to the main room in

10 minutes

Blooming the questions

19 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

What % of higher order Bloom’s

level questions would you like to

find on an typical intro bio exam?

A. 0-20

B. 21-40

C. 41-60

D. 61-80

E. 81-100

Blooming the questions

20 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

What % of higher order Bloom’s

level questions would you like to

find on an typical intro bio exam?

Zheng et al. (2008) Science 319

A. 0-20

B. 21-40

C. 41-60

D. 61-80

E. 81-100

Alignment

21 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Assessment measures both progress

and outcomes. These are tied closely

to learning goals. Assessments should

ALIGN with the learning goals and

with class activities.

Alignment

22 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

All possible material to cover

Alignment

23 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

All possible material to cover

Material focused on

learning goals

Alignment

24 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

All possible material to cover

Material focused on

learning goals

Goal 2, Assessments

Goal 2, Assessments

Goal 1, Assessments

Alignment

25 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Learning or

Course Goal

Outcome or

Objective

(content +

behavior)

Formative Assessment

(in class activity)

Summative Assessment

(exam question)

What will

students

learn?

If they have

learned it, what

will students

know and be

able to do?

What will students do to

learn it?

How will students

demonstrate they

know it or are able to

do it?

Students will

be able to

describe the

transfer of

information

from DNA to

proteins

Students will predict

the new amino acid

sequence that results

from a mutation in a

given gene sequence

Students are given

sequence of DNA and

corresponding amino acid

sequence. Students

identify reading frame

and predict amino acid

changes due to mutations

in that sequence

Students will be

able to predict

changes in

amino acid

sequences

caused by

mutations

Formative Assessment

26 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

“Ongoing assessment plays a key role – possibly the

most important role – in shaping classroom standards

and increasing learning gains.”

Black and Wiliam, Phi Delta Kappan, 1998

Formative Assessments…

27 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

help confront misconceptions.

Formative Assessments…

28 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

As the acorn grows into the tree, from where

does the majority of the biomass come?

A. Air

B. Soil

C. Water

D. Sun

Sprouting acorn (Image by Amphis

on Wikimedia commons CC BY SA 3.0)

An old English oak in Banington, England

(Image by Snowmanradio on Wikimedia

commons CC BY SA 3.0)

Formative Assessments…

29 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

help confront misconceptions.

help students distinguish between what they know

and what they don’t know.

Formative Assessments…

30 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

help confront misconceptions.

help students distinguish between what they know

and what they don’t know.

can aid in the construction of new knowledge.

Formative Assessments…

31 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

help confront misconceptions.

help students distinguish between what they know

and what they don’t know.

can aid in the construction of new knowledge.

allow students and instructors to gauge students’

progress during learning.

Darwin at the Olympics

32 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

(For this exercise, pretend you are a student who is just learning about natural

selection)

Everyone brainstorm to modify the 100-meter dash such

that it would become an example of natural selection.

“Shout out” your ideas.

Darwin at the Olympics

33 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Some representative suggestions:

• “Add hurdles”

• “Make the runners run over rocky, uneven ground to select for the ones with best balance and speed”

• “Release a tiger behind the runners”

• “Kill the losers”

• “Only the first two runners across the finish line can reproduce”

These answers can lead to a discussion in class about which ones

most closely align with Darwinian natural selection in nature.

Activity: Sharing and analyzing an exam

question

34 Learning Outcomes – The College Classroom

Return to the exam questions that you discussed

earlier

With what objective was (or might have been) that

question aligned?

Given that, what kind of an activity could the

students do to help them achieve this objective?

Next week: In the Classroom

Watch the blog for next meeting’s readings and assignments

collegeclassroom.ucsd.edu CIRTL Schedule

35 Classroom Assessment– The College Classroom

References

36

1. Handelsman, J., Miller, S. and Pfund, C., Scientific Teaching, Freeman, New York,

NY, (2007) ISBN 1-4292-0188-6.

2. Zheng, A., Lawhorn, J., Lumley, T. and Freeman, S., “Application of Bloom's

Taxonomy Debunks the ‘MCAT Myth’”, Science 319: 414-415 (2008)

3. Black, P. and Wiliam, D., “Inside the black box: Raising standards through

classroom assessment”, Phi Delta Kappan, 80: 139-148 (1998)

4. Angelo, T. and Cross, P., Classroom Assessment Techniques: a handbook for College Teachers,

Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA (1993)

Classroom Assessment – The College Classroom