Building an Assessment Tool
to Meet Your Needs
FLAG homepage
(Since the use of many assessment innovations is tantamount
to the use of teaching innovations, perhaps we need a section
or at least links to sites where faculty can build course innovations
to meet their student learning goals.)
What are your course
goals?
It certainly would be ill-advised to use any of the tools presented
here without a fairly explicit idea of what your student learning
goals for a given course are. Nevertheless, the categories of
tools listed below are chosen for the dual purposes of allowing
those with well-defined course goals to quickly "zoom-in"
on the tools most relevant to their needs, as well as to facilitate
the formation and prioritization of possible student learning
goals.
Organization of These
Pages
Since the process
oriented tools are more generic across the different science disciplines.
They provide a general introduction to the issues surrounding
each topic area listed below. The content
oriented tools, which are often more specific to each discipline,
are then accessed via separate links from each topic page.
- Integration/Synthesis/Mastery
of concepts, theory and practice (e.g., Lecture vis a vis Lab)
- Enhancement of skills
- Assessment of scientific literacy
- Assessment of scientific maturity
- Assessment of changing attitudes towards
science, math, chemistry, physics, learning etc.
- Assessment of other dimensions of student learning
- Assessment of particular innovations/features of your course (This
section has obvious overlap with the dimensions of learning sections
listed above, e.g., the efficacy a problem-solving workshop could
be assessed by assessing students' problem solving/critical thinking
skills. Nonetheless, additional questions specific to the particular
implementation of an innovation could be presented here.)
