Forging Assessment Communities

Creating a Positive Culture of Assessment

Pierre Laroche and Susan Wood

Assessment = Scholarship

“Your state university has been offering instruction in writing for decades, but is that university any better now than before at teaching people to write? Over the years, it has doubtless enlisted wonderful individual talents in that task, but does it now know more—corporately—about how to accomplish it? If it practiced a scholarship of teaching, it would (Marchese, 2000).”

Bridging Theory and Practice

Theory of Assessment Technology of Assessment(RUBRICS)

Assessment-friendly Communities

Steps to building Assessment-friendly Communities

Identify/establish commonly held

criteria to assess

Express individual educational values and expectations connected to the challenge

Call for volunteers to address the challenge

Start with a learning challenge

Assessment Community Rubric

mastered emerging struggling

Call for volunteers

Diverse individuals agree upon challenge and step forward

A few individuals acknowledge challenge and step forward

No group emerges to deal with challenges in an organized way

Express values

Diverse individuals feel comfortable expressing educational values and are willing to listen to others

Individuals want to but are hesitant to express educational values and find it difficult to listen to others

Individuals are unable to express educational values and are unwilling to listen to others

Identify common criteria

The group agrees on a core set of commonly held criteria

The group struggles to agree on a core set of commonly held criteria

The group is unable to agree upon a core set of criteria

Three Examples: Using Rubrics -- Effectively? Example one: Creation of English Program

Rubric

Example two: First attempt to create and use a WAC Rubric

Example three: Second attempt to create and use a WAC Rubric

General Education Assessment Committee

CXC Subcommittee MXC Subcommittee

CTXC Subcommittee EXC Subcommittee

GEAC

General Education Assessment Committee Accomplishments A tool to help teachers design effective

assignments

A tool to help teachers assess their assignments

Creation of four rubrics to evaluate General Education SLO’s campus-wide

Theory of Assessment Practice

Site-Based

Locally-Controlled

Context-Sensitive

Rhetorically-Based

Accessible(Huot, 2002, p. 105)

Using Assessment as Research

What do you want to know?About or from your students?About or from teachers?About or from administrators

How will you go about getting this information?

Who is this information for? What use will be made of this information?

Using Assessment as Research

What form will the information take? Will there be a report? Who will write it?

What verification or corroboration will ensure the accuracy and consistency of the information?

How will the information be collected and how will the way it is collected help to improve the program being assessed?

Using Assessment as Research

Who will be affected most by the assessment, and what say will they have in the decisions made on behalf of the assessment?

What are the major constraints in resources, time, institution, politics, etc,?(Huot, 2002, p. 181)

Responsibility versus Accountability

“It is possible to understand assessment as responsibility rather than accountability, as a necessary and vital part of administering an educational program” (Huot, 2002, p. 173).

Huot, B. (2002). (Re)Articulating writing assessment for teaching and learning. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.