Table of Contents
Quick Overview
Before 10/13:
- Explore Unit 6 materials (below)
- Class meets via Webex on 10/13 from 2-3pm JOIN ORT (Required)
- Bring Entry Ticket: Be prepared to write in the chat- One “rose” (something you like/agree with/want to try/already do) and one “thorn” (something that strikes a discordant note with you)
Questions to keep in mind
ORT discussions, WordPress (WP) post comment sections, and your proposal and presentation will require contemplation, which the following questions can facilitate:
- What have you already been doing for DEI in assessment and evaluation?
- What could you implement for DEI in assessment and evaluation?
- What barriers or challenges might prevent you from implementing for DEI in assessment and evaluation?
Background
Assessment- the bumper sticker:
Assessment is learning about student learning.
Assessment- the elevator speech:
What learning is happening, for whom, and under what circumstances? At LCC, we are learners of student learning (with the goal of developing learners).
Many thanks to Dr. Karen Hicks, our Director of Assessment, for crafting the above. Dr. Hicks offers Assessment Help Office Hours. Also, the Committee for Assessing Student Learning (CASL) is one of our Academic Senate standing committees. We invite you to enter in conversations with both if or when you have the opportunity. The following video, What is Student Learning Assessment?, was created by Dr. Karen Hicks in September 2022 as the first module of what will be a series about many aspects of assessment.
Three Approaches to Assessment
Our publishing and assessment services friend, Pearson Education, summarizes three approaches to assessment:
While metacognition as a form of assessment might not be firmly established, the other two – formative and summative – are. The process of metacognition requires individuals to assess and monitor their learning, in addition to reflecting on their performance. There are numerous online resources regarding formative and summative assessment. We invite you to put on your investigator what’s out there for you and your discipline.
Introduction to DEI in Assessment & Evaluation
I asked Dr. Hicks for guidance in a foundational article for exploring DEI principles in assessment. She shared with me Montenegro and Jankowski’s 2020 paper, which is this week’s required reading.
Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).
Possibly Provocative considerations for Equitable Assessment
Please choose two to explore:
- Ungrading. Kohn, Alfie. The Case against Grades. Educational Leadership, 17 June 2021, https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades/. (Original version: November 2011)
- Introduction to Ungrading. Stommel, Jesse. Intro to Ungrading. Jesse Stommel Blog, June 2021, https://www.jessestommel.com/ungrading-an-introduction/
- Minimal Grading. Elbow, Peter. “Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning, vol. 1997, no. 69, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, 1997, pp. 127–40, doi:10.1002/tl.6911. Although this focuses on writing, the concepts can be adapted to other disciplines.
- Labor-based Grading Contracts. Inoue, Asao B. “Workshop Handout – Labor-Based Grading Contracts.” Google Docs, University of Oregon , http://tinyurl.com/uoantiracisthandout. Again, although this focuses on writing, the concepts can be adapted to other disciplines.
- Feedback as Formative Assessment. Hicks, Troy. “Make It Count: Providing Feedback as Formative Assessment.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 14 Oct. 2014, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/providing-feedback-as-formative-assessment-troy-hicks. Please click on by the ‘sign up’ pop-up; you can read the article without signing up.
Equitable Assessment Guides and Checklists
Please choose two to explore:
- The Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University provides guidance in how to ‘center DEI in teaching’, including five tips for equitable assessment.
- The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education provides resources for assessment of student skills and knowledge in an online or digital learning environment while acknowledging that this assessment can pose additional challenges.
- Online and alternative assessment ideas from the University of Western Ontario.
- National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment’s Equity in Assessment page provides a short checklist and several case studies.
Supplemental Reading/Viewing (not required)
- The Community College Research Center (CCRC), Teachers College, Columbia University, recently shared a report regarding how to achieve more equitable student outcomes based on Guided Pathways research. While the report focuses on areas outside the scope of POE, such as new student on-boarding and ongoing student advising to name two, there is a section on teaching and learning. How to Achieve More Equitable Community College Student Outcomes Lessons From Six Years of CCRC Research on Guided Pathways, Community College Research Center
- CATs and a Chart. The Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching at Tufts University provides an Inclusive Assessment chart, which can be used as a self-assessment or reflection. They – like many others – make available a handout on Angelo and Cross’ CATs.
- Transparent Assignment Design. Washington State University’s Office of Assessment for Curricular Effectiveness has created a quick guide to Transparent Assignment Design. In addition to providing some foundation research links, this guide defines TAD, describes its benefits, provides a general template. TAD fits within the Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education project (TILT Higher Ed) research framework. TILT’s Principal Investigator and Founder is Dr. Mary-Ann Winkelmes. The TILT website provides examples and more resources.
- Jesse Stommel’s How to Ungrade
Different Learning styles and how to assess.
I think it is difficult to have a general assessment as we all have different learning styles and methods on how we best learn.
What are the 7 different learning styles?
Image result for assessing learning styles
The 7 styles of the theory are:
visual.
kinaesthetic.
aural.
social.
solitary.
verbal.
logical
Therefore I think to do an excellent although exhaustive job is to first determin how student learn best – if we do that then I think we can make and accurate evaluation.
With that said – that is probaly not practical In the past I have tried different methods on assessing learning & even with myself I feel that the best way to assess learning is to have the student teach a part of the subject. Again the downfall with this is some people are shy, very few people want to talk in public – therefore this is always a work in progress
Larry Lewis
The idea of “ungrading” requires a change in institutional culture as well. At this time, faculty are required to input grades in D2L within 2 days (?) of checking an assignment. I wonder how well D2L can accommodate qualitative feedback only and whether those would be acceptable to admin.
I love the idea of “ungrading” – but yes, it’s the putting into practice and going against the current systems in place that are a “thorn” for me 🙂
“Research shows three reliable effects when students are graded: They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in learning itself.” ~ Alfie Kohn, “The Trouble with Rubrics”
I really liked this, I have often shared with mixed responses that one thing I do not like about rubrics is that they are overly prescriptive and stifle creativity. I do however rubrics have a place in assessment and that they can be used sometimes but not needed for all assignments/activities, and maybe not in all courses.
In out D2L I often use the “blind grading” feature. It relates to the bias info in the documents.
I’ve gone on a journey of exploration with my assessments at LCC. I’ve switched to all multiple choice questions so I can get data on student success but have used a book “best practices of assessment” to build evidence based best practice MC exams. This works okay. I like the data inclusion but I think I need to include multiple modes as well to get at how different types of people show knowledge and to address the elephant in the room of that MC tests have bias in them. I’m thinking of “draw me a diagram of X”, which I recently saw at a conference to address this.
Hi Joe-
I like this idea too – show me a diagram. I also like the idea of students explaining how they got to an answer- which helps with integrity in test-taking situations (particularly online!)
Can assessment ever be truly “fair” and equitable? This is the question I have – the thing that is still a “thorn” for me.
Particularly fascinated by the concept of “ungrading.” Have for several decades thought education, and mathematics specifically, has really gone downhill since the days of sitting on the sand of the Mediterranean Sea. Students moved on when THEY felt comfortable; sometimes forming their learning circle.
The minimal/low stakes has for some time been a part of my system as students are encouraged to work together; everything is discussed thoroughly before submission. This is done daily and graded as participation, 1 or 0. Students have the choice to work to understand the concept or not, ultimately placing them in charge of their own education.
I really liked the example of reducing stereotype threat on the Eberly Center page:
Include statements normalizing struggle and reaffirming available support in the syllabus or project descriptions such as, “Each one of these projects builds on skills acquired in the projects preceding it, so if you get behind it only makes it harder. If you are finding it difficult to complete a project or if you get stuck somewhere along the way, you should contact me right away. I would much rather review material with you and guide you through a process than have you suffer needlessly on your own. Some of the best learning happens when working through a challenge together.” (Drama)
Two things about your post, Jon: (1) I love the idea of “sitting on the sand of the Mediterranean Sea. Students moved on when THEY felt comfortable; sometimes forming their learning circle.” I am going to see how I might be able to implement it in my classes. (2) All the time I tell my students something similar to what you quoted from the Eberly Center (“I would much rather review material with you and guide you through a process than have you suffer needlessly on your own.”). But hardly any students or any groups of students (when group work is involved) take advantage of this offer!
Yesterday’s session was interesting re; data collection. I guess there are different ways of looking at the data. One thing that partly has amazed me wondered about is the students that come from other countries & how they deal with the “language barrier”, meaning how well they can read english and or write and if that poses any difficulties for them. The reason I wonder is I feel if I was put in their position of going to another country and have to deal with the “language” it would be very difficult if not impossible for me.
Those are my thoughts
larry lewis
I’m late to the game on Week 6’s topic, however…
Does anyone remember when we had a speaker come to LCC for Professional Development Days (which it was originally titled), named David Langford? He spoke of assessments in terms of Quality/Not Yet Quality, which always resonated with me. In my field, Graphic Design, when creating a design for a client, or making a pitch for a job, you either “nail it” or you don’t. This idea of quality/not yet quality always seemed like a type of assessment worth exploring for students learning to design. We are training them to be visual communicators who solve problems visually, while being able to verbally express why they did what they did with the design and how it solves the problem. By instilling the idea of the design is quality.. meaning, the student has “nailed it” or design is not yet quality, the student is allowed to improve upon what was designed to try to get to the point of quality. He had also suggested earning 1 point for quality and 0 point for not yet quality. (Of course the objectives and expectations of the project are clearly communicated to the student along the way, and feedback is given throughout the design process as well, so that students that are at the not yet quality level have as many chances as possible to get to the level of quality). We had discussed it within our program, but it never came to fruition.. couldn’t get everyone on the same page. I still think about it and would like to try it. To me, it seems like it would strengthen the student learning experience. If you are interested, you can search David P. Langford and find some old YouTube videos explaining continuous improvement process.
Your comment is making me really think about this idea of Quality/Not Yet Quality. It reminds me of the mastery learning idea I tried many years ago and what writing programs do with their requirement for students to submit drafts of their papers for feedback and improvement. Maybe it’s time to revisit mastery learning in physics!
When I listened to the video presentation by Jeff J., I was surprised to find that almost all of his initial statements and thoughts and feelings could have come from myself, or very closely reflected my own experience over the last several years. I also had been gradually questioning the use of hard deadlines in class, at least for certain types of assessments, especially during the pandemic and lockdown periods, where just about all of us were having various difficulties in our lives related to this, and which had impacts on student learning as well as teaching (everything must suddenly be all on-line, for example). But when a lot of us began to come back to “campus life”, and we had made it through the worst (hopefully) phase of the pandemic, and I was doing more face-to-face instruction again, I started to reconsider this and thought that maybe it was time to have stricter deadlines once again. I thought that students needed to get into a little bit more of a series of regimented habits once again, but I saw that many students were still struggling with a lot of issues that were impacting their learning, and often requested extra time or extensions on things. This left me rather conflicted. I also worried about the situation that, if I left deadlines more open, I would get a flood of work at the end of the semester and not be able to grade everything before grades were due. However, after viewing Jeff’s presentation and other materials for this unit, I find myself “reconsidering my reconsideration” about deadlines. Then, during our discussion, there were a number of suggestions that I found helpful on how to manage the concern about overload at the end, and ways to incorporate more flexible deadlines while not necessarily having to leave everything totally open until the end, etc. But, in general, I glad to find that I was not the only one who had thoughts and conflicts regarding aspects of deadline and assessment flexibility.
(I think I posted this comment in the wrong unit – it should have been for the previous week.)
The following comment isn’t one that I expect “credit” for, as it isn’t a totally serious one that is in response to anything substantial for the course, but …..
“PRAXIS”? Really???
So, there was a paper posted as a resource for Unit 6, by E. Montenegro and N.A. Jankowski (2020), entitled “A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis”
I just had a thought on the use of the final word in this paper’s title.
(Intended tone: somewhat sarcastic and rather “tongue-in-cheek”.)
As a member of the academic community, and, moreover, one who possesses a certain amount of pride in that I work in the area of education and the intellectual edification of others, I may at times tend to chastise and disparage others in their use of more common or dimwitted or vulgar expressions as regular elements of their speech (particularly in educational settings). In contrast to those who tend to regularly make use of such utterings, I often like to make use of a wide and deep but more genteel and sophisticated vocabulary with which to express myself, and to sprinkle my linguistic output with a liberal helping of colorful, unusual, and less ordinary words in order to give my prose a certain concentration of erudition, and to convey various orders and levels of finer meaning whilst in the process of constructing my points and arguments and analyses. However, I must engage in a bit of protestation in regard to the cited article, and state that it is my sincerest belief that any persons who avail themselves of the use of the word “praxis” in their discourse and high-minded attempts to convey an advanced scholarly disposition to others, doth, on the contrary, cross a line into the realm of academically excessive pretentiousness.
LOL!
Two things about your post, Jon: (1) I love the idea of “sitting on the sand of the Mediterranean Sea. Students moved on when THEY felt comfortable; sometimes forming their learning circle.” I am going to see how I might be able to implement it in my classes. (2) All the time I tell my students something similar to what you quoted from the Eberly Center (“I would much rather review material with you and guide you through a process than have you suffer needlessly on your own.”). But hardly any students or any groups of students (when group work is involved) take advantage of this offer!
I am not sure I totally understand the distinction between assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Perhaps the difference is that the former is formative and the latter is summative? Anyway, for years I was opposed to assessment *as* learning, where colleagues might use an exam so students could learn a concept. But the more I think about it, especially in light of Quality/Not Yet Quality idea, I am beginning to see that assessment *can* serve as a learning tool, provided students are gives opportunities for revising and improving their work. I have started to more seriously dabble in this approach this semester, partly as a result of this course, I must say!