Course Assessment
While there are many different tools that faculty can use to assess student learning at the course level, three strategies are particularly effective in helping faculty identify where students are along the learning continuum in order to make changes to the course and/or their teaching, with the goal of improving student learning:
Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
Classroom assessment is a simple method faculty can use to collect feedback, early and often, on how well their students are learning. Its purpose is to provide faculty with information/insight needed to improve teaching effectiveness and learning quality before a student is evaluated for a grade. The most commonly used classroom assessment techniques are the “One-Minute Paper” and the “Muddiest Point”. The following website offers an excellent overview of CATs as well as provides examples of how to best incorporate assessment into your teaching.
http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/catmain.html
Course Portfolios
The course portfolio can focus on a specific course and how a faculty member is teaching it. This is often referred to as making teaching visible. The following links will allow you to see how faculty from other colleges and universities make their teaching visible through the creation of an e-portfolio for an individual course:
http://www.courseportfolio.org
Similar to creating a promotion portfolio, the course portfolio allows the faculty member to reflect on his or her teaching philosophy, teaching strategies, and student outcomes to determine if and where improvement is needed. Faculty can also use the course portfolio with their students and have them create a portfolio demonstrating what they are learning or have learned in a particular course. The student portfolio not only can help a faculty member gage how much a student has learned, the process of reflection in creating a portfolio can help to reinforce learning and support the growth of the student as a self-directed learner.
Analysis of Student Feedback
The result of a semester’s student evaluations can provide faculty with insight about how students experienced both the instructors teaching as well as the course design. The College’s new student evaluation instrument was created against a backdrop of criteria for teaching excellence. This research foundation assures the College that the process of evaluating faculty is not a popularity contest but rather an effective way of gathering information about how well faculty teaching matches up against these standards. Starting in Fall 2007, with the advent of the new online evaluation system, faculty will have many more ways to learn about how to make the best use of the findings of their student evaluations.
The Center for Teaching and Learning offers ongoing workshops on these and other course assessment strategies. In addition, the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs is available to meet with any faculty member who would like to discuss ways in assessment strategies can be designed for a particular course or courses.
