Effective teachers use a variety of means, some formal and others informal, to determine how much and how well their students are learning. For example, to evaluate student learning formally, most college teachers use techniques such as quizzes, tests, or examinations; many instructors also use assign-ments such as term papers, lab reports, and homework. These techniques and assignments are the "tools" of formal classroom evaluation. Instructors use these evaluations to make judgments about individual student achieve-ment and assign grades. As we noted earlier, evaluations used to assign grades are known as "summative" evaluations and typically occur at the end of lessons, units, and courses.
To evaluate classroom learning informally, most faculty also have a repertoire of techniques. College teachers pose questions, listen carefully to student questions and comments, and monitor body language and facial expressions. These informal, often implicit evaluations allow instructors to make quick adjustments in their teaching: to slow down or review material in response to questions, confusion, and misunderstandings; or to move on because students have understood a particular concept well. As noted in Chapter One, evaluations used primarily to inform teaching and improve learning, rather than to assign grades, are referred to as "formative."
Classroom Assessment is a systematic approach to formative evalua-tion, and Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are simple tools for collecting data on student learning in order to improve it. CATs are "feed-back devices," instruments that faculty can use to find out how much, how well, and even how students are learning what they are trying to teach. Each Classroom Assessment Technique is a specific procedure or activity designed to help faculty get immediate and useful answers to very focused questions about student learning.
Classroom Assessment Techniques are not meant to take the place of more traditional forms of classroom evaluation. Rather, these formative assessment tools are meant to give teachers and students information on
First Steps 25
learning before and between tests and examinations; therefore, they supple-ment and complesupple-ment formal evaluations of learning. Used effectively, CATs can reduce the uncertainty that faculty and students feel as they face midterms, final examinations, and the calculation of course grades. When teachers and learners both receive regular feedback on student learning throughout the course, there are likely to be fewer surprises at semester's end.
At the same time, Classroom Assessment Techniques can complement the informal evaluation techniques that faculty already use to inform their teaching. First, CATs (an help teachers make informal evaluation more focused and systematiC, thereby improving the quality and usefulness of the data collected. Second, most CATs result in some record of student feed-back, a record that both faculty and students can refer to and learn from.
Typically, when teacher, ask questions or hold discussions, they pay careful attention to students' answers, expressions, and body language. After class, instructors must rely on their memories to guide them as they prepare for the next session. But memory is imperfect and often fleeting, and many impor-tant details can be lost between the moment one class session ends and the next begins. The feedback collected through CATs can serve as a check on and an enhancement of the teacher's memory.
Perhaps a nautical metaphor will help define Classroom Assessment Techniques. Imagine the college course as a sea voyage, back in the days before sophisticated radar and satellite technology. And think of the tests and exams as ports of call along the way. In this metaphor, doing Classroom Assessment can be likened to navigating. The various Classroom Assessment Techniques represent the range of procedures and simple devices the navi-gator could use to determine and double-check the ship's position at sea.
These position checks allow the captain to keep the vessel on course, or to tell how far off course it is and how best to return to the correct route. In a similar fashion, CATs give teachers information to "navigate by," feedback to guide the continual small adjustments and corrections needed to keep student learning "on course."
The CATs presented in this handbook have three basic sources. Some were culled through an extensive review of the literature on teaching meth-ods in both postsecondary and secondary education. Others came from our own teaching repertoires. Still others were developed by college faculty who participated in Classroom Research and Classroom Assessment programs on campuses across the country. A few basic criteria guided our search for and selection of Classroom Assessment Techniques to include in this volume. As we reviewed each potential CAT, we asked the following questions based on those selection criteria:
1. Is it context-sensitive? Will the assessment technique provide useful information on what a specific group of students is or is not learning about a clearly defined topic at a given moment in a particular classroom?
2. Is it flexible? Can faculty from a range of disciplines easily adapt the technique for use Ir a variety of courses and contexts?
3. Is it likely to make a difference? Does the technique focus on "alterable variables"? In other words, does it assess aspects of teacher or student behavior that could be changed to promote better learning within the limits of time and energy available in a semester?
4. Is it mutually beneficial? Will it give both teachers and students the kind of information they need to make mid-course changes and cor-rections in order to improve teaching and learning?
5. Is it easy to administer? Is the assessment technique relatively simple and quick to prepare and use?
6. Is it easy to respond to? Is the feedback that results from the use of the technology relatively easy to organize and analyze?
7. Is it educationally valid? Does it reinforce and enhance learning of the specific content or skills being assessed?
A positive answer to all seven questions meant that the technique was worth considering for inclusion. However, none of the questions could be answered with a simple "yes" or "no," since each allows for a range of responses. Therefore, the reader will soon note that some CATs are more flexible, or easier to administer, or easier to respond to than others. Because we recognize that college faculty have a wide range of instructional goals, teaching styles, intellectual interests, and types of students, we have in-cluded a broad variety of assessment techniques and a range of complexity.
As we assembled the collection, we looked for feedback devices that could provide quantitative or qualitative data, written or oral feedback, and information on individual students, small groups, or entire classes.
Our experiences in the Classroom Research Project convinced us of the importance of providing options in assessment techniques. In the first administration of the Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI) in 1988, we found that every one of the forty-eight instructional goals included in the TGI received the full range of responses. For example, a goal that some teachers rated "essential" was rated "irrelevant" by some of their colleagues at the same institution (Cross and Fideler, 1988). When we administered a revised version of the TGI in 1990, the same pattern of responses emerged in response to the fifty-two goals on that inventory. Individual faculty members do not think in the aggregate, of course, and their goals are often quite different one from the other. Even two instructors of the same sex and age group, teaching in the same department at the same college, may legit-imately have different instructional goals for the same course. We reasoned that since faculty teaching goals differ, so too must the devices teachers use to assess how well they are achieving them. We also recognized that instructors would need to modify and adapt these "feedback devices" to fit the specific demands of their courses and the characteristics of their students. To accom-modate those needs, we included a range of techniques-from simple
"ready-made" devices designed for immediate application, to open-ended
"do-it-yourself" designs that offer flexible frameworks for teachers to adapt.
First Steps 27
THE VALUE OF STARTING SMALL: A THREE-STEP
PROCESS
Because of the enormous variation in faculty goals and interests, we expect that a given college teacher will find certain of the Classroom Assess-ment Techniques included here germane and useful, while another instruc-tor will reject the same techniques as inappropriate and irrelevant. Our hope is that each reader will find at least one or two simple Classroom Assessment Techniques that can be successfully used "off the shelf," and several more that can be adapted or recast to fit that faculty member's particular requirements.
If you are not already familiar with Classroom Assessment, we recommend that you "get your feet wet" by trying out one or two of the simplest Classroom Assessment Techniques in one of your classes. By starting with CATs that require very little planning or preparation, you risk very little of your own - and your students'- time and energy. In most cases, trying out a simple Classroom Assessment Technique will require only five to ten min-utes of class time and le;ss than an hour of your time out of class. After trying one or two quick assessments, you can decide whether this approach is worth further investments of tiime and energy.
Chapter Four presents a systematic and detailed process for carrying out Classroom Assessment. While that nine-step process has been useful to many faculty who practice Classroom Assessment, most of them actually began with much simpler first steps. Below, we offer a streamlined, three-step process designed to minimize time and energy required and maximize the likelihood of success for first-time Classroom Assessment efforts. The suggestions are based on our own Classroom Assessment experiences and on our observations of many other instructors as they began experimenting with this approach.
Step 1: Planning
Start by selecting one, and only one, of your classes in which to try out the Classroom Assessment. We recommend focusing your first assessments on a course that you know well and are comfortable with. Your "focus class"
should also be one that you are confident is going well, one in which most students are succeeding and relatively satisfied. Although this may seem an odd suggestion, it is best not to use Classroom Assessment to gather data on a problematic or difficult situation until you become experienced in the approach. In other words, it is best to minimize risks while you develop confidence and skill.
Once you have chosen the "focus class," decide on the class meeting during which you will use the Classroom Assessment Technique. Make sure to reserve a few minutes of that class session for the assessment. At this point, you need to select a CAT The five techniques listed below are all flexible and easily adaptable to many situations, and simple and quick to apply. They also generate data that are easy to analyze. For those reasons, they make excellent introductory CATs and have been widely used by faculty from many disciplines.
Five Useful "Introductory" CATs The Minute Paper (CAT 6)
The Muddiest Point (CAT 7)
The One-Sentence Summary (CAT 13) Directed Paraphrasing (CAT 23) Applications Cards (CAT 24)
Although each of these CATs is described in detail in Chapter Seven, they can be quickly summarized here. The Minute Paper asks students to respond to two questions: (1) What was the most important thing you learned today? (2) What questions remain uppermost in your mind as we conclude this class session? The Muddiest Point is an adaptation of the Minute Paper and is used to find out what students are unclear about. At the end of a lecture or class session, students are asked to write brief answers to the following question: What was the muddiest point in my lecture today?
The One-Sentence Summary assesses students' skill at summarizing a large amount of information within a highly structured, compact format.
Given a topic, students respond to the following prompt: Who did what to/
for whom, when, where, how, and why? In a course on U.S. government or American history, for example, this CAT could be used to assess students' understanding of the Constitutional Convention.
Directed Paraphrasing assesses students' understanding of a concept or procedure by asking them to paraphrase it in two or three sentences for a specific audience. For example, if you were in a class at this moment, you might be asked to paraphrase "Classroom Assessment" in a way that would be meaningful to your colleagues. Applications Cards assess learners' skill at transference by eliciting possible applications of lessons learned in class to real life or to other specific areas. In an economics course, for instance, the instructor might ask students to come up with applications of "satisficing" in everyday, nontextbook settings. If one of these five simple CATs appeals to you, we suggest that you read through its complete description in Chapter
Seven before using it in your classroom.
Step 2: Implementing
Once you have chosen a focus course and selected a simple CAT to use in it, let students know beforehand (at the beginning of the class period or at the prior class meeting) what you are going to do. Whenever you announce your plans, be sure to tell the students why you are asking them for information.
Assure them that you will be assessing their learning in order to help them improve, and not to grade them. In most cases, it is best to ask for anony-mous responses.
When it comes time to use the Classroom Assessment Technique, make sure that the students clearly understand the procedure. You may need to write directions for the CAT on the chalkboard or project them using an overhead projector and transparency. Let students know how much time they will have to complete the assessment. The first time you use a particular CAT, it is helpful to allow a little extra time for responses.
First Steps 29
After the students have finished, collect their responses and read through them quickly as soon as you can. If you have time to read and analyze the responses fully immediately after class, so much the better.
However, if you must put the CAT responses aside for a while, this fast "read-through" will help you recall exactly what students were responding to when you later read their answers more carefully.
As a rough technique for estimating time required, you can expect to spend one to two minutes per response analyzing the feedback. For example, if you were to use the Muddiest Point technique in a class of thirty students, you would need to budget at least thirty minutes-one minute per re-sponse-of your out-of-class time to analyze the feedback; for the Minute Paper, which poses two questions, you would estimate sixty minutes; for the One-Sentence Summary, which requires more complex feedback from stu-dents, you would probably need slightly more than an hour. The good news is that, with practice, teachers get faster at "processing" the data from Classroom Assessments.
Even a cursory reading of the five CATs can provide useful information.
In analyzing feedback from the Muddiest Point technique, for example, you can simply note how many and which "muddy points" are mentioned and how many times the same "muddy points" come up. The same method can be used to analyze feedback from the Minute Paper or any other CAT that elicits student opinion; or questions. Other techniques, such as Directed Paraphrasing, the One-Sentence Summary, or Applications Cards, prompt responses that can be judged more or less correct, or more or less complete.
Student response to this type of CAT can be quickly sorted into three piles:
correct / complete (or "on-target") responses, somewhat correct / complete (or
"close") responses, and incorrect/incomplete ("off-target") responses. Then the number of responses in each pile can be counted, and the approximate percentage of the total class each represents can be calculated. Teachers also can look for particularly revealing or thoughtful responses among the on-and off-target groups.
Step 3: Responding
To capitalize on time spent assessing, and to motivate students to become
actively involved, you will need to "close the feedback loop" by letting them
know what you learned from the CAT exercise and what difference that
information will make. Take a few moments to think through what, how,
and when you will tell your students about their responses. Responding can
take the form of simply telling the class, "Forty percent of you thought that X
was the 'muddiest' point, and about one-third each mentioned Y or Z. Let's
go over all three points in that order." In other cases, a handout may allow for
a more effective and complete response. However you respond, let the class
know what adjustments, if any, you are making in your teaching as a result of
the information they have provided. Just as important, inform students of
adjustments they could make in their behavior, in response to the CAT
feedback, in order to improve learning. In other words, let students know
that their participation in the Classroom Assessment can make a difference
in your teaching and their learning.
FIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR A
Chapter Four offers a number of specific suggestions to increase success in
SUCCESSFUL START Classroom Assessment. For readers who are just getting started, however, the
five broad suggestions below are the most important
-andenough to keep
in mind at first.
* 1. If a Classroom Assessment Technique does not appeal to your intuition and professional judgment as a teacher, don't use it.
All the techniques presented in this handbook are meant to be suggestions and should be taken as such. We believe that individual college teachers are the most reliable authorities about what is and what is not likely to help them improve teaching and learning in their classrooms.
*' 2. Don't make Classroom Assessment into a self-inflicted chore or burden.
This second suggestion stems from our faith in ongoing, incremental im-provement. We believe that it is more effective and satisfying to try one or two of these techniques in a semester-and fully and thoughtfully work through the process
-thanto try out several CATs, only to become over-whelmed and discouraged. We therefore recommend that you start simple, with quick and easy Classroom Assessment Techniques, and stay simple for some time, building skill and confidence.
* 3. Don 'taskyourstudents to use any Classroom Assessment Techniqueyou haven't previously tried on yourself
By trying out the assessment techniques on yourself first, you can find out whether the techniques are really appropriate, where problems are likely to occur, whether any modifications are necessary, and how long it takes to go through them. In assessment, as in teaching, thoughtful preparation and rehearsal are major parts of successful performance.
*' 4. Allow for more time than you think you will need to carry out and respond to the assessment.
Be forewarned that administering a Classroom Assessment Technique and analyzing the feedback, particularly the first few times, are likely to take at least twice as much time to complete as you first estimate. This is yet another reason to begin with the simplest possible assessments.
* 5. Make sure to "close the loop. " Let students know what you learn from theirfeedback and how you andthey can use that information to improve learning.
First Steps 31