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What Every Instructor Should Know About Assessment
Links to Valuable Online Resources
- Dialogue Series
- Western's Dialogue series was designed to stimulate conversation, provide information, and foster university-wide collaboration to improve teaching, learning, and assessment at Western Washington University.
- Program Assessment Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Program Improvement
- Western's guide for faculty and staff on writing program assessment plans, in a downloadable pdf format.
- Course Assessment Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Course Improvement
- Western's guide for faculty and staff on writing course assessment plans, in a downloadable pdf format.
- Virtual
Resource Site for Teaching with Technology
- This Web site is a resource for faculty seeking direction
in appropriate ways to use Web-based technologies to accomplish
key learning strategies. The guiding principle of this project
is to go beyond technical skill towards a full examination
of the teaching/learning issues in technology-enabled instruction.
The site consists of two modules; Module 1 provides information
about the selection and use of various Web-based media; Module
2 focuses on delivery.
- Visible
Knowledge Project
- The Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) is a five-year project
aimed at improving the quality of college and university teaching
through a focus on both student learning and faculty development
in technology-enhanced environments. The Project involves over
70 faculty from 21 campuses nationwide.
- Policy Center on
the First Year of College
- This interesting listserv is designed to help gather and
share information on best practices and procedures for assessing
the first college year; the website also features invited remarks
by several experienced researchers.
- The Teaching, Learning,
and Technology Group
- The TLT Group mission is to provide materials and services that motivate and enable institutions to improve teaching and learning with
technology, while helping them cope with continual change.
See also the Flashlight Program, dedicated to evaluating the role of technology in assessment and learning.
- Bloom's
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
- "Bloom's taxonomy," developed nearly fifty years ago, is
still a useful guide for thinking about teaching and learning.
This site, and others linked to it, includes lists of suggested
verbs for describing practically any learning objectives. See
especially "How
to Write Learning Outcomes", with detailed suggestions
for faculty from the context of of the NCGIA GIS core curriculum
from UCSB. The table of verbs at the bottom of the page
is particularly valuable for crafting course learning objectives.
- 9
Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
- The nine principles form the basis for distinguising good
assessment practices from the not-so-good.
- "What Do We Know About Students' Learning and How Do We Know
It?" by Patricia Cross.
- If we are to take learning seriously, we need to know what to look for (through research), to observe ourselves in the act of lifelong learning (self-reflection), and to be much more sensitively aware of the learning of the students that we see before us everyday.
- "Implementing
the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever"
- A discussion of the Seven Principles for Good Practice in
Undergraduate Education in the context of communication and
information technologies, by Steve Ehrmann and Arthur Chickering.
- Organizing
for Learning : A Point of Entry" by Peter Ewell
- A condensed summary of what is known about learning,
promoting learning, and institutional change.
- "The New Conversations About Learning: Insights From Neuroscience
and Anthropology, Cognitive Science and Work-Place Studies"
- An in-depth exploration of the implications of new knowledge
about learning for the organization and practice of higher
education, by Ted Marchese.
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