We use the term "content assessment tool" to refer to those instruments that provide information as to the level or depth of mastery that students have regarding particular subject matter. Effective tools of this nature can be as simple and straightforward as homework assignments, quizzes or midterm exams. Nevertheless, even excellent implementations of these traditional assessment tools can often be inadequate in assessing certain aspects or dimensions of student learning, such as:
If detailed information regarding these kinds of aspects of student learning is desired, many of the field-tested approaches described below can be both easy to use and effective.
While most pedagogical approaches to introductory level science seek to provide students with a conceptual understanding of important aspects of the subject matter, many typical assessment tools focus primarily on basic definitions and problems of an algorithmic character. Although this pedagogy has the sound foundation of stressing the "basics" (without which a conceptual understanding is impossible), it also has a weakness of which most faculty are also well aware. Namely, study methods such as rote memorization can often be used successfully (especially by the more capable students) to achieve good scores on exams while minimizing the time the student spends "wrestling" with the key concepts and the relationships among them. Thus, no matter how much the concepts might be stressed in lecture, students tend to focus on the simplest way to perform well on exams. The typical scenario is that a few students do well on the more conceptual or theoretical problems on exams, while the others (those who emerge within this assessment system as the "weaker" students) become confused because they can't see why their memorization-type strategies-which work so effectively for most of the problems-fail to work on the hard problems. Traditional curricula will then rely on the fact that, eventually (perhaps, in the junior year), the conceptual intricacies of the subject matter will rise to the surface and crystallize, at least for those students who are retained in the program.
Alternatively, innovative pedagogical methods such as active and cooperative learning seek to engage students in activities that ensure that they do "wrestle" with the key ideas, and so (in theory) develop a stronger conceptual understanding, even at the freshman level. Nevertheless, if this additional emphasis on concepts is not reflected in the grading and exam structure, these innovative learning strategies may have a minimal or even negative impact, precisely because students may believe that memorization-type strategies are what lead to acceptable exam scores. Thus, there arises the need to develop assessment tools which focus specifically on students' mastery and integration of key concepts. Such tools can be used both to take summative "snapshots" of students' conceptual understanding at, say, midterm or final exam time, as well as to assess the "delta" (change) effect of a particular course or course component. To assess the delta requires pre- and post-"concept testing," that is, testing the students both before and after they have experienced the particular course or course component. Documenting the delta that a particular innovation has a positive impact on students' conceptual understanding is often used to determine whether an innovation is inherently sound and/or well implemented.
The utility of oral exams lies in their ability to assess students':
These are but a few of the higher-order cognitive skills that are naturally assessed in the context of an oral exam. Thus, it may be that oral exams provide the broadest spectrum of assessment of student knowledge. Unfortunately, they are extremely labor intensive, making them an unlikely choice for regular content assessment in courses of moderate size. Nonetheless, they can be ideal for special assessment projects, or when used in a limited capacity in a given course.
Special projects can be used to…
Innovative lab assessments can help students integrate material from a variety of sources. Labs and workshops are ideal settings in which to construct both active and cooperative learning environments. Lab and other reports provide an opportunity to assess students' written command of the material, and so provide information pertaining to dimensions of student learning that may be difficult to assess with typical exam questions.
We use the term "process
assessment tools" to refer to those instruments which provide
information as to what features of a given course affected what
aspects of student learning. As such, these tools rely primarily
on student self-report. Nevertheless, since content tools typically
assess only "what" students learned, the process tools
can be invaluable for assessing whether a particular innovation
or other feature of a course actually helped or hindered particular
aspects of students' learning processes. Tools that rely on student
self-report and which are designed to assess affective outcomes
associated with particular learning process (e.g., students' perceptions
of science as a career; ability to work in groups; enjoyment of
science) are grouped with these process tools.
Perhaps, the most obvious way to understand which factors affected
what and how a student learned is to ask them. As with the oral
content assessment described above, interviews provide the richest
source of information as to how the various components of a given
course interacted to support student learning. Also like oral
exams, they are time-consuming to conduct and even more so to
analyze. Nevertheless, interviews can be used cost effectively
if a small sample of students is interviewed in conjunction with
surveys of the entire class. In this context, the interviews can
be used either to inform the development of the survey, or as
a means of validating and better understanding issues that emerge
in the survey responses. In addition, interviews may be the only
way of exploring certain issues (such as subtle forms of sexism)
that are unlikely to emerge in valid or reliable ways in survey
responses.
Classroom observations are relatively less time-consuming but of relatively limited use. They are helpful in investigating whether certain classroom activities, such as group work, think-pair-share, or problem workshops, are functioning effectively.
Although limited in the types of information they can obtain, attitude and behavior surveys provide a straightforward means of querying an entire class and are especially valuable for large classes. The first step in creating a survey is to review your goals for student learning in the course, and decide on the issues related to these goals that you want to investigate. As mentioned above, another valuable step in creating a survey is to use interviews and observations as sources of relevant issues that merit investigation from a larger sample. Two common types of survey questions are:
