Step 1: Choosing a Class to Focus on.
In your initial Classroom Assessment
Projects, focus on only one class each term. Choose a class that you have taught recently and will teach again soon, one that goes well overall, and one that you are willing and able to experiment with. A typical problem for many first-time Classroom Assessors is thinking too big. Trying to conduct assessments in more than one course is virtually guaranteed to make the firstround overcomplicated and burdensome. Most teachers have little trouble selecting a focus course, but for those who find it difficult at first, the following questions may help clarify the choice.
Have you taught this course before?
Will you be teaching this course again soon?
Overall, do you feel that this course goes well?
Is there some specific, reasonably limited element of the course that you would like to improve?
Will you have the time, energy, and opportunity to carry out an assessment and take appropriate follow-up measures in this course?
If the answer to any of the five questions above is "no," then the course is probably not a promising candidate for an initial Classroom Assessment Project. You may then wish to apply these questions to another class, to determine whether it is a more likely candidate for a first project.
Step 2: Focusing on an Assessable Teaching Goal or Question. Identify a single teaching and learning goal, or a single question about your students' learning, that you can begin to assess through one limited project. Choose a goal or question that focuses on teaching and learning behaviors that can be changed and that you are willing to change if need be.
This second step is the point at which many teachers really begin to find their "way into" the Classroom Assessment Project. In this step, you select a teaching goal or question about some aspect of your teaching and formulate a single, "assessable" question. For some participants, identifying an assessa-ble question is the most challenging step in the entire cycle.
Step 3: Designing a Classroom Assessment Project. Start by imagining what a successful outcome would be. Decide what kind of feedback to collect, and when and how you will collect it. Clearly distinguish the Classroom Assessment from your usual teaching and testing activities. Fi-nally, estimate the amount of time and energy your planned project will require.
In this step, you map out the path by which you will seek an answer to the assessable question and choose the tools that will help you get that answer. After identifying the teaching goal for the lesson or activity you plan to assess, you then examine what you actually do to teach to that goal and what the students are required to do to reach it. In addition, to plan effectively, you should determine what kind of feedback to collect and what kind of strategy or technique might get you that feedback. By the end of this step, you should be able to identify the particular class session in which the assessment will occur and the desired outcomes. Finally, you should be able to clarify what you, as teacher, and your students stand to gain from carrying out the assessment.
To begin with, you need to imagine what a successful project would look like. How will you know whether you have succeeded? What kinds of
Planning and Implementing Classroom Assessment Projects 47
data will qualify as useful.? At this stage, many of the questions teachers raise stem from uncertainty about the differences between Classroom Assessment and the kinds of assessment they normally do through testing. To some faculty, Classroom Assessment appears to be just another name, perhaps simply jargon, to describe procedures they use all the time in classroom teaching. A central and defining feature of Classroom Assessment is that, in this approach, assessment occurs before students receive evaluation of learn-ing on a test or exam, while there is still time to do somethlearn-ing about teachlearn-ing and learning difficulties.
CASE IN POINT
An English composition instructor identified as one of his essential goals "teaching students to successfully and ethically integrate the ideas of others into their own writing." To achieve this goal, he lectures on the topic and gives examples of successful and unsuccessful syntheses. During class discussions, he uses questions, both his own and those that students ask, to assess the students' und erstanding. He then gives a writing assignment and grades the students' papers, assessing the degree to which they have suc-ceeded at integrating th e ideas of others to support their own arguments. His question was "Isn't what I am doing already really the same thing as Classroom Assessment, minus the jargon?"
And the answer was "Yes, but only to a point." As the instructor was lecturing and leading discussion, he was certainly assessing student learning.
But that assessment was at best partial, since not every student participated, and unsystematic, since :it was not planned. It also left few traces that could be reexamined later. The assigned essays, on the other hand, were evaluated systematically and completely. All the students turned their essays in; so there was feedback or each individual's learning. Once the essays were written and graded, however, there was little opportunity to "recycle" them in the learning process. The instructor had often noticed that students failed to incorporate his comments into subject essays.
A Classroom Assessment Project could fit naturally between these two assessment moments: between the sporadic and evanescent attention to feedback during the lecture and discussion and the careful summative evaluation of the essays. In this case, Classroom Assessment might entail giving the students a short, ungraded practice exercise soon after the lecture/
discussion but before the graded essay. Such an assessment would require them to demonstrate their skill in synthesizing. The Classroom Assessment Technique should reinforce the lecture and foreshadow the essay assign-ment. It should serve as an early check on student learning of the skill, providing information that the teacher and the students can use to make some mid-course corrections.
Confusion about the appropriate scope of the project is another prob-lem during the planning phase. Faculty often are interested in learning something that cannot be gleaned from a single assessment carried out
during a single class session. As professionals and adult learners, faculty should set and follow their own agendas. Nevertheless, we have become convinced that it is advisable to begin by going through the whole cycle with a single, simple assessment first, then branching out to plan a more compre-hensive project. It is important to experience both the positive outcomes and the possible difficulties of each phase.
In summary, when you create the plan for your Classroom Assessment Project, you should describe the assessment strategy you plan to use, making sure that your description answers the following questions:
1. What "assessable" question are you trying to answer?
2. What specific Classroom Assessment Technique or instrument(s) will you use to collect data?
3. How will you introduce the assessment activity to students?
4. How will you integrate it into ongoing classroom activities?
5. What technique will you use to collect feedback?
6. Realistically, how much time can you devote to this project?
7. Will that be enough time to accomplish what you are planning?
8. What will a successful outcome look like?
9. What is the minimum outcome that you would consider worthwhile?
10. What steps can you take to "build in" success?