Category Archives: Musings

Musings on assessment-related matters in higher education.

On the Road Again…

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On the road again…in my head I always hear that Willie Nelson song as I start for the airport.  This fall I think I will be hearing that tune a lot as my travel schedule got a little crowded somehow.  My first trip was to the CREATE conference in Louisville, KY.  It was my first time to this conference and I really enjoyed sessions.  One of my favorites was a keynote speaker, Dr. John Fischetti, Professor and Dean of the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Dr. Fischetti spoke about the challenges higher education faces in the future.  He gave a great analogy about approaching complex problems from a different perspective.  The analogy was about the race to the moon in the 1960’s and the problem that NASA was having with finding rocket boosters strong enough to push the capsule out of orbit.  They never did come up with a rocket booster that could accomplish that task, Continue reading On the Road Again…→

Endings and Beginnings

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We often think of December as the time when a year “wraps up” and things come to a close as we prepare to start a new year, but in the realm of academics, the month of May rivals or exceeds December as a time of closure.  We are wrapping up the academic year, colleagues and friends are retiring, we are posting final grades, and looking forward to a little rest and relaxation during summer.  So, in other words, this is a perfect time to think about assessment! Even as the academic year ends, another semester is already on the horizon, which means another academic year is fast approaching.  Summertime is a great time to take stock of where you are with your assessment initiatives.  Do you need to spend some time analyzing data?  Reevaluating your assessment question?  Tweaking or changing your assessment instrument?  Working with colleagues to develop new assessment strategies? The Office of Outcomes Assessment is the bridge to Continue reading Endings and Beginnings→

Back to Basics: Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy

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A common challenge in college teaching is keeping course objectives, program outcomes and classroom assessments in alignment. As we construct our assessment instruments, course assignments, and test questions, are we also considering where on the cognitive ladder we are asking our students to think? In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of three domains:  Cognitive: mental skills (Knowledge), Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitude), Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (Skills). Within this cognitive domain, Bloom identified six levels from the simple recall or recognition of facts at the bottom level through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels to the highest order thinking characterized as evaluation.  This representation of the levels of thinking is widely known in education circles as “Bloom’s Taxonomy.” Figure 1 – Original version of Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encountered in the classroom require them to think only Continue reading Back to Basics: Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy→

Takeaways on Giveaways

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I recently participated in a conference call with the Regional Assessment Coordinating Council.  We regularly confer as we prepare for the April assessment conference.   One agenda item during this meeting was discussion about the type of “bling” we should offer conference participants this year.  In the past, we’ve provided useful items like insulated travel cups, mugs, tote bags, coasters, etc.  Our call ended with all council members promising to do some further investigating with the intent of sharing their respective findings during our January conference call. So I began to wonder, exactly what kind of “bling” is appropriate for an assessment conference? In pondering this conundrum, my mind wandered just a bit and led me to come up with more of a list of “best ever” giveaway options for assessment folks. I know I would very much like to discover the following tucked inside my conference bag: Magic dust that I could spread on any faculty members resistant to assessment Continue reading Takeaways on Giveaways→

Time and Space

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Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. —John Steinbeck I enjoy discovering quotes. In fact, I have saved a few particularly poignant ones that I would be happy to share if you want to drop by my office. Recently, I came across this one by John Steinbeck. I’m a fan of several of Steinbeck’s books, but, interestingly, I didn’t find this in a book. It appeared in one of those little “inspirational” calendars that are very popular gifts at this time of year and for which it seems wholly appropriate. As I was musing on the quote, it came to me that assessment is very much like a trip that continues “long after movement…have ceased.” When assessing students, the movement generated in the collecting of data on student learning has an impact on the curriculum long after the actual data collection has stopped. With the act of analyzing the data, this movement amplifies as Continue reading Time and Space→

We Are All in the Same Boat

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All of my life, I have heard the phrase, “We’re all in the same boat.”  Growing up on the water in Florida gave me ample opportunity to hear it.  I recently tried to track down the original quote and found references all the way back to Sophocles, so I think it is safe to say that it has been operative for quite a long time. I thought of this phrase recently in chatting with some colleagues from a community college in St. Louis.  The campus is bringing a team here to JCCC in October to visit with our office and the college’s Assessment Council about assessment issues.  They want to know how we are approaching assessment, what is working well, and what doesn’t work.  I believe they are hoping we have a magic pill that we can share that will help them engage more of their faculty in assessment initiatives on campus. It is a conversation I have often with Continue reading We Are All in the Same Boat→

New Beginnings!

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I love the beginning of a new school year.  Everything seems fresh and new.  New students, new classes, and, of course, new assessments! If you are a faculty member, the beginning of the academic year is a great time to consider if assessment strategies from last year accomplished your goals.  Did the rubric measure what you expected?  Did the pre/post test show the gains that your students achieved?  Did students meet the benchmarks you established?  Were the student results well over, or well under the mark? These are some pertinent questions to ponder as you review assessment strategies for the coming year: What student learning did you measure? Did the assessment instrument capture the learning as expected? If not, can the instrument be tweaked? Or Do you need to start over? How are you examining the assessment data? Are you looking beyond averages? Is the data evenly distributed? Are there large gaps in performance? How will you impact the curriculum Continue reading New Beginnings!→