Taking the Lead in Assessment

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An interesting session to be offered by Rockhurst University faculty during the assessment conference here in April highlights the leadership aspects of their physical therapy program. Leadership is a tricky thing to define and measure because leadership requires both someone to take the lead and someone to follow the lead.  Much has been written on the topic of leadership, going back centuries.  Some view leadership as the person who charges the hill, while others view leadership as convincing followers to charge the hill for you. Look at any book on business published in the last 20 years and you will find a dozen or more quotes about leadership, probably in the first chapter.  Personally, I like this perspective on leadership offered by Wendell Willkie, American lawyer, corporate executive, and 1940 candidate for president: “Education is the mother of leadership.” I think the faculty at Rockhurst University would agree with Mr. Willkie since one of the goals for their Doctor of Continue reading Taking the Lead in Assessment→

Name That Tune

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I have always been fascinated by how our brains work.  Specifically, how my brain can remember all the lyrics from songs in the 1970’s but can’t remember a conversation I had in the hallway with a colleague 20 minutes ago.  I am the perfect lifeline if you are on a game show and need someone to sing “Midnight Train to Georgia” or “More than a Feeling”. At this year’s Regional Community College Assessment Conference on April 22 (#RCCAC16) at JCCC, Heather Seitz, Associate Professor in Microbiology at JCCC, will share her own contribution to national research. In her breakout session on using concept inventories for measuring student learning gains in the classroom, Professor Seitz will provide an overview of the history of concept inventories and discuss the process for creating them. Faculty can use concept inventories to measure the impact of teaching and compare their students’ successes with national data.  Professor Seitz will be sharing some very interesting research as well Continue reading Name That Tune→

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→

Anticipation…

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When I was a kid, I was always anticipating something – Christmas, spring break, summer vacation, my next birthday.  As I got older and the responsibility for those activities fell more squarely on my shoulders, the anticipation took on some other qualities, like anxiety and trepidation.  And, of course, at this stage of life, let’s not even discuss birthdays! But I am experiencing a pleasant form of anticipation again as all the planning and preparation ramps up for the 6th Annual Regional Community College Assessment Conference scheduled for April 22, 2016.  Working with our keynote speaker Dr. Jillian Kinzie, coordinating with colleagues about logistics, marketing the conference, and discussing components of the venue are all serving to build the anticipation and excitement for what I know will be a great conference. Mark your calendar now for the 2016 conference with its timely theme of Assessment: Shifting from Compliance to Ownership so you will also have a great event to anticipate.  Continue reading Anticipation…→

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→