Making the Grade
OK, I admit it. I was a Librarian who didn’t do much in the way of assessment when I taught classes. At the end my my sessions, my follow up typically consisted of a good natured “call if you need me!” speech. Why was I so hesitant about evaluation? Besides the fear of a bad review, I honestly struggled with knowing what and how I should assess mastery of the material. Most questions I came up with to test for knowledge seemed really rote based and, well, boring.
I may have some insight now on why the assessment process was a challenge for me.
“It is relatively simple to test for subject matter content recall and it is difficult to assess independent thinking and creativity.” Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning By Marilyn M. Lombardi
Maybe I just didn’t know how to test for higher level critical thinking skills. Coming up with a checklist to see if the students were able to combine subject terms, limit searches, and send the results to a printer, while important, addressed mechanical issues only. I could check on these skills while walking around the room and checking up on the class during discovery exercises. (Or at least, I thought I had this list covered. Just humor me, OK?)
In a one shot session, I didn’t think I had much of a chance of determining whether students really had a achieved a higher level critical thinking goal. I wasn’t sure I even knew how to phrase a question that would get an answer that deep. So, what should we be testing/measuring students on? Let’s open the floor. How are you evaluating students on their work? How do you teach and test basic to more advanced skills and how do you know you have achieved your goal?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I agree that assessing higher level critical thinking skills is a huge challenge for all of us involved with education. In general, we seem to have become focused on test scores, and end up teaching to the test. Even my graduate students seem inordinately concerned with “will this be on the test” or “how will this affect my grade.” Sometimes I think the speed at which we move has increased to the point that we don’t take the time for reflection and dialog. I build analytic discussion and writing into courses, but it certainly adds to time and energy required for grading–and the subjective nature of the grading leads to a guaranteed email or two complaining about loss of points! Still, I’m sticking with it…