Projects
76 CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
Results. After watching her usually passive students so obviously engaged, the criminal justice instructor couldn't wait to read their responses. She remained in the classroom for another hour as she skimmed the twenty-five papers. From that first quick reading, she could see that almost all the students knew the correct police procedures that Paul was supposed to follow.
She had expected that. More than half of them, on the other hand, didn't seem to know the rationale behind those procedures. This information gave her a clear sense of where to start in the next class. Whether they agreed with them or not, students needed to understand that there were principles and values being expressed in even the most mundane of regulations and procedures.
What she had not expected was the wide range of answers to the second question, which asked what they would do in Paul's place. Their responses to that question, and the reasoning behind those responses, revealed differ-ences in values, approaches, and levels of moral and intellectual develop-ment that had been hidden from her before. As she read the papers more carefully later, she laughed at herself for wondering whether these students had opinions about ethical dilemmas.
Their responses to the Classroom Assessment proved that they did have opinions, strong ones, and that there were many conflicting views on how Paul should proceed. For example, one student thought that Paul should ask Dave's ex-wife to intervene, since it was "clearly all her fault." Another suggested that Paul set Dave up to get caught drinking on duty, but that he do so in such a way that Dave would never find out. A third student wrote that, without implicating his partner, Paul should ask for a new partner.
Three students thought that Paul should simply continue waiting, hoping the situation would resolve itself somehow; and six students were convinced that Paul should turn Dave in to his superiors before the situation resolved itself.
The instructor was taken aback by this diversity of opinions and underlying values, but she also saw the opportunities for teaching and learning it presented. After her second reading, she abstracted basic catego-ries of responses and tallied the students' answers to the second prompt accordingly. She ended up with seven basic categories. The categories and the number of responses in each were as follows:
What I would do if I were Paul.
6 Turn Dave in, as per police procedures.
5 Keep trying to talk Dave into getting help.
4 Find a recovered alcoholic on the police force to convince Dave.
4 Get out of the situation entirely.
3 Do nothing yet; wait and see.
2 Talk with Dave's ex-wife and/or family.
1 Set Dave up to get busted "for his own good."
She decided against trying to tally the related reasons students gave, however, since they were almost all tautologies - examples of circular
reason-ing. Over and over again students justified their answers by writing "because it's the right thing to do," or "because that's what the law requires." Their manner of reasoning gave her a clear message, once again, that they were not used to thinking about the reasons or values behind choices. She now knew what the students needed to learn. The question was how best to teach it.
Response. The instructor r began the following class by praising and thanking students for their good work on the assessment exercise. She let them know that she had read their responses several times and was ready to share her summary of the results. She told them that their answers to the Everyday Ethical Dilemma would form the basis for that night's discussion.
She began by reporting the area of greatest agreement and success, taking a few minutes to clarify the administratively and legally correct procedures that Paul was supposed to follow. She then asked students what reasons were behind those procedures, what they were supposed to accom-plish. Many students volunteered answers, and most of them were acceptable ones. She wrote several reasons on the chalkboard. At that point, she began to move the class into deeper waters by asking what the values were behind the reasons they had given. It took some explaining before students under-stood the question. When they did understand it, several students were willing to contribute.
They recognized, correctly, that the procedures requiring Paul to report Dave's drinking problem expressed deeply, though not universally, held values in the law enforcement community: values that placed the welfare of the many over the rights of the few, the safety of the community over the privacy of the individual, and the protection of the integrity of the police force over one's loyalty to a fellow officer.
The instructor praised the class and reviewed the clarifying process they had just completed. She summarized the steps in this way: "First, look at the various options. Second, ask what the reasons are for each option. Third, look for the values behind those reasons." Building on that discussion, the students applied this process to the seven options they had suggested for Paul. To minimize defensiveness, the criminal justice teacher made it clear that these were possible courses of action, all worthy of discussion. She asked students not to try to prove which option was the best but, rather, to explore each with open minds.
A difficult, messy, but very exciting discussion followed, with the instructor several times reminding students that these positions were not, at least for the moment, the personal property of anyone. After they had dis-cussed reasons and values, the instructor bowed to popular pressure and let them briefly discuss the feasibility, likelihood of success, and costs and bene-fits of each option. Although she was not certain exactly what the students had learned, she knew that this had been the first authentic discussion that term.
Fifteen minutes before the end of the class, the instructor had a sudden flash of inspiration. She asked the students whether they would quickly respond once again, anonymously, to Paul's dilemma. In the light of their discussion, what would they now do if they were in his shoes and why? She
78 CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
wrote the question on the board, handed out scrap paper, and asked them to write quickly. Although the students were clearly tired, no one objected to the unplanned assessment.
Later that night, as she read the twenty-five responses at home, she quickly tallied them, using the previous categories. The results of that follow-up assessment are shown below; numbers in parentheses are totals from the first tally, for purposes of comparison.
What I would do if I were Paul.
10 (6) Turn Dave in, as per police procedures.
7 (5) Keep trying to talk Dave into getting help.
5 (4) Find a recovered alcoholic on the police force to convince Dave.
1 (4) Get out of the situation entirely.
2 (3) Do nothing yet; wait and see.
o
(2) Talk with Dave's ex-wife and/or family.o
(1) Set Dave up to get busted "for his own good."These results suggested strongly that some of the students had recon-sidered their positions and changed their minds, though she had no way of tracking who had moved from one given position to another. She charac-terized the shift as movement toward accepting more personal responsibility.
Much more interesting, from the instructor's point of view, was the change in the reasons that students gave for their choices. More than half of the reasons given were now expressed in terms that referred to underlying values.
Although the discussion probably had not changed the students' underlying values, it had certainly improved their awareness of and ability to express those values.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION:
ASSESSING STUDENTS' SELF-AWARENESS AS
LEARNERS
Example 7: Assessing Students' Awareness of Learning Goals Discipline: Physical education
Course: Aerobics for Fitness and Fun
Teaching goal: To help students develop a commitment to their own values (TGI Goal 46) Teacher's questions: How aware are students of the learning goals they have for my course? How well do
their learning goals match my teaching goals?
CAT used: Goal Ranking and Matching (CAT 35, Chap. 8)
Exhibit 5.7. Goal Ranking and Matching Exercise.
What do you hope to get out of this course? Will it meet your needs and expectations?
This exercise is designed to help you identify your learning goals and share them with the instructor. After you have completed it, you will learn what the instructor's goals are and see how well her teaching goals match your learning goals.
1. Under the left-hand column below, please list four or five learning goals you hope to achieve by taking this course.
2. Then, using the right-hand column, indicate each goal's relative importance to you.
Make the most important goal 1, the next most important 2, and so on.
Your Learning Goals for the Course Their Relative Importance
To --
1
To
--- 2To -- 3
To
--- 4To
--- 5Background. For several years, a dance instructor had noticed that atten-dance in her large aerobics classes always dropped off sharply after the first few weeks of the semester. Although colleagues assured her that such attrition was, though unfortunate, to be expected, she remained dissatisfied with the retention rate Hoping to increase student interest and motivation, she had experimented over the years with various teaching techniques and approaches, but none of them seemed to make an appreciable difference.
She remained convinced, however, that many students dropped her course because their initial high levels of interest and motivation were being negatively affected by something going on in the class. The instructor had a hunch that students were dropping because their expectations were not being met. In other words, she suspected that what she thought students should learn from the class did not correspond well to what the students expected. She realized that only the students could tell her what their goals were but that many of them probably were not explicitly aware of their own expectations. Therefore, her students would need to self-assess their goals before she could assess them. After working through the Goal Ranking and Matching exercise in a Classroom Research training workshop on her cam-pus, she decided to adapt this CAT to find out how well her students' learning goals for the aerobics class matched her teaching goals.
Assessment Technique. In the second week of the semester, she asked students in the aerobics class to list their five most important goals in taking the course - what they hoped to learn, in other words - and how they hoped to benefit (see Exhibit 5.7). She then asked them to rank those five goals in the order of their relative importance. The instructor handed out large, lined index cards to use in the exercise. While the students wrote down and ranked their learning goals, she did the same for her teaching goals. She then collected the index card,, promised to talk with students about them at the next class meeting, and took the cards home to analyze.
80 CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
She expected the students to rank their goals as follows (although these goals were not her actual teaching goals):
1. To improve cardiovascular fitness 2. To improve muscle tone; to shape up 3. To lose weight
4. To become a better, more graceful dancer 5. To have fun; to enjoy myself
The instructor's most important teaching and learning goals for the course were these:
1. To convince students of the importance of cardiovascular fitness and the value of regular aerobic exercise
2. To help students improve their cardiovascular fitness levels enough, in the short term, to make a noticeable difference in their daily lives 3. To help students develop a regular, sustainable aerobic exercise
pro-gram to maintain lifelong cardiovascular fitness
Results. Much to her surprise, most of her students were not taking aerobics primarily to become more fit, get in shape, or lose weight, although many did mention these goals. The two most often mentioned, most important goals were (1) to improve self-image/self-confidence and (2) to reduce stress/ relax. The content and ranking of students' goals surprised her for two reasons. First, she assumed that students had read and understood the course title and description, both of which stressed the development of car-diovascular fitness and healthy exercise habits. Second, although she had never equated aerobics directly with improving confidence or self-image, many of her students obviously did.
Being a professional dancer in excellent physical condition, the instruc-tor personally found aerobics somewhat less than challenging. She worried that students were dropping the class because it was too easy or because they were not getting a rigorous enough workout. As a consequence, over the years, she had worked to make the class more physically challenging and faster paced. Each week she introduced new steps and new routines, assum-ing that students were mainly interested in gettassum-ing a tough cardiovascular workout.
After assessing her students' goals, the instructor realized she had been teaching the class in a way that many students, given their expressed goals, probably found both threatening and stressful. For students whose goal was to improve self-image and self-concept, the steadily increasing challenge and pacing of the class could easily lead to feelings of failure and lower self-esteem; for students whose goal was to lower stress, the class could easily raise stress levels. In other words, the assessment showed the instructor that her teaching goals and the students' learning goals were inadvertently coming
into conflict, and that this mismatch was probably encouraging students to drop the class.
Response. As she had promised, the instructor shared the results of the goals assessment with her aerobics class. She then presented and explained her teaching goals and admitted her surprise at discovering the mismatch be-tween her goals and theirs. She assured the class that while she still aimed to achieve her goals, she also wanted to help them achieve theirs. She asked for specific suggestions on ways in which the course could help them lower stress and improve self-concept.
The students made a number of suggestions, most of which she found reasonable and thoughtful. After considering them, she decided to incorpo-rate two of the best student ideas. To help lower the stress level, she began teaching simple, less challenging routines first; then, for students who were interested in a more rigorous workout, she presented more advanced varia-tions. By offering a "two -track" workout, she allowed students more choice.
Several students had expressed interest in learning more about self-concept;
so the instructor decided to incorporate readings and discussion on the relationship between body concept and self-concept into the course syllabus.
Follow-Up. On subsequent assessments, the students made it clear that they appreciated the instruct cr's concern, flexibility, and willingness to help them meet their goals. In responding to the students' goals and interests, the instructor discovered new levels of intellectual challenge for herself. As she prepared to teach about body concept and self-concept, she had to read and integrate materials she would not otherwise have encountered and began to see the course in a new light. Her students helped her recognize that the aerobics course could be more than just physically challenging.
In a meeting of het college's Classroom Research group, the instructor admitted that she had never before considered assigning academic readings in an elective, one-unil aerobics course. The students' interest in the read-ings and the level of participation in the subsequent discussion convinced her to incorporate mcre intellectual content in her syllabus. The Goal Ranking and Matching technique became a permanent part of her teaching repertoire, an assessment she used in the first week of all her courses. In her aerobics course that semester, attendance and retention improved and have remained consistently higher than in the past.
SPEECH COMMUNICATION:
ASSESSING STUDENTS' AWARENESS OF THEIR ATTITUDES AND VALUES
Example 8: Assessing Students' Awareness of Ways of Knowing Discipline: Speech communication
Course: Essentials of Interpersonal Communication
Teaching goals: To help students develop an ability to work productively with others (TGI Goal 36)
82 CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES
Teacher's questions: To what extent are students aware of their own preferred ways of learning and communicating? Do they recognize contexts in which their preferred ways of learn-ing are more effective or less effective? How clearly do they understand that others with whom they communicate may not share their preferences?
CAT used: Self-Assessment of Ways of Learning (CAT 36, Chap. 8)
Background. One of the most difficult things for this professor's undergradu-ate students to understand was that the ways that they communicundergradu-ated and learned best were not universally shared. He had long been acutely aware that some of his students seemed predisposed to an argumentative, almost adversarial style of communication, while others shrank in horror from conflict, adopting a much more empathetic approach.
Most students took his class in hopes that improving their interpersonal communication skills would help them succeed in their other courses, their jobs, and their personal lives. He had tried many times to make students aware of these different styles or approaches and the misunderstandings and hurt feelings that usually resulted when they collided. Although he had repeatedly tried to show them that any awareness of their own communica-tion styles could help them achieve their personal and professional goals, his message clearly did not get across to most students. They could learn to identify various communication styles in others, but they rarely seemed able
to monitor or adapt their own.
The student population of his course was usually about evenly divided between men and women, and about one-third were international students.
He knew that some differences in communication style were related to, though probably not determined by, gender and culture; and he had followed with interest, although at somewhat of a distance, the development of theories and a research literature on communication between men and women and among different cultures. But since this was an undergraduate general education course, too much emphasis on the research literature seemed inappropriate.
It was only after hearing Blythe McVicker Clinchy (1990) speak, and going on to read Women t Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, andMind(Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986), that the professor found a useful conceptual scheme to explain these differences. In a nutshell, he found that he could categorize most of his students and himself according to the framework presented in Womenr Ways of Knowing, whether the students were women or men. Some students communicated as though they could really know something only if they got it from an expert source or authority ("received knowing"); others, only if it originated in or agreed with their own personal opinions and/or experiences ("subjective knowing"). A third group of students seemed to learn best by trying to understand and empathize with others ("connected procedural knowing"); a fourth group, by debating and arguing ("separate procedural knowing").
Assessment Technique. To see whether this framework made sense to his students and whether it could help them become more aware of their
preferred or habitual communication styles, he decided to create an assess-ment focusing on these "ways of knowing."
About halfway through the course, after the students had some grounding in various communication styles, the instructor decided to try out his self-assessment technique. He scheduled the assessment for the session in which he lectured on unintentional conflicts in interpersonal communica-tions. Stopping twenty minutes before the end of the two-hour class meet-ing, he handed out a two-page assessment (for a slightly modified version, see Exhibit 5.8) and went over the directions. He asked the students to read the statements on the first page carefully and then to provide the requested background information. He suggested that they answer questions 1 through 4 quickly
-according to their "gut" feelings
-and to spend most of their time answering question 5. He also asked them to try to come up with a brief example for each of the four approaches. At that point, the students had fifteen minutes to complete the self-assessment. Several finished early.
Results.
The speech communication professor took the nearly forty self-assessments back to his office and began tallying up responses. He decided to categorize the responses by gender and nationality. He began by drawing up a simple tally sheet, a four-by-four matrix with very large cells (see Exhibit 5.9), and in the appropriate cells of the matrix he entered the answers each student gave for quest io n 1. He used a copy of this matrix to tally the answers to each of the other questions.
After he had comp leted the tallying, the instructor looked carefully for any big differences between the responses of the men and women, or between the responses of U.S. and international students. He did find some notable differences between the men's and the women's responses on ques-tions 1, 3, and 4. The only differences between U.S. and international students showed up in response to question 2.
In answer to question 1, which asked students which of the four statements reminded them most of themselves, more men saw themselves as
"separate knowers" (A) and more women saw themselves as "connected knowers" (B). The instructor had expected that outcome, but he was sur-prised to see that the majority of his students, both male and female, saw themselves reflected inosi: clearly as "subjective knowers" (C).
Question 2 concerned students' usual approaches in class. The most frequent response, across the board, was "separate knowing" (A), followed by "connected knowing" (B) and "received knowing" (D). "Subjective know-ing" (C), which had been the most common answer to question 1, was now the least common answer to question 2. Once again, more women than men selected "connected knowing," but the difference was very slight. The majority of international students, but almost no U.S. students, chose
"received knowing" (D) in answer to question 2.
In characterizing their most common ways of knowing and commu-nicating in their personal and social lives, his students once again differed by gender. More than three-fourths of the women selected "connected
know-Note: The classroom assessment for ways of knowing is adapted from a workshop exercise presented by Blythe McVjckcr Clinchy at the 10th Lilly Conference on College Teaching, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, November 16, 1990.84 CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES