Assessment in Higher Education Series: Introduction
Educators, government officials, and education experts met during an Education Department summit on higher education held over the summer to discuss pressing concerns regarding the education system in the US. While those suggestions presented were wide ranging and varied, all involved agreed that the following are most urgent and should be addressed first:

Begin work on doubling the number of Americans who earn a higher education; align curriculums and standards between high school and college so significantly more young Americans come into higher education prepared for college-level work; simplify the student aid system; and produce more and better ways of measuring how much students learn, and of sharing that and other information about college’s performance with the public. (Lederman 2008: 3).

While we as TAs can do little about standardizing curriculum and nothing about the student aid system, we are able to integrate more and better assessment strategies into our classrooms. Whether we teach recitation sections, lead lab meetings, grade exams, or teach our own classes, assessment can be an important tool—it can also help us improve our classes, our lectures, and our skills as educators.

With this in mind, the TA Project would like to introduce a new series: Assessment in the Classroom. The series will define and describe assessment and assessment strategies, explore the principles behind assessment (which should not be confused with simply grading), and, finally, provide practical resources for you to use in the classroom while you are here at Rutgers and in your careers as future faculty.

What IS Assessment

Assessment is a way of looking at how effective we are as instructors and how much our students learn (although this is not always an accurate measure of student involvement or engagement with the course material).

Brent Ruben, Professor of Communication and Executive Director of the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership, believes that "it is essential to determine, document, and ensure the quality of the work within colleges and universities." We, as instructors, can use the information gathered from assessment strategies to "improve programs and services, day to day decision making, and the equality of the program, department, or institution." As we transition from teaching assistants to faculty members, we can start thinking about and discussing—with other TAs, advisors, and faculty members—"those themes and educational goals, finding those areas of strength and those that could be improved and try to learn from the best."

As part of the movement to promote accountability in higher education, the push is to move more toward learning outcomes assessment by answering the question—How do we know we are doing what we think we’re doing? If we think our students have learned about a laboratory procedure, language ideologies, respiration, evolution, matrix multiplication, or allegory…how do we know? Waiting until the end of the semester (or even end of the month) to find out may not be the best for all involved.

How do I Learn about Assessment?

In the following months, we’ll explore different areas of assessment more thoroughly—mid-semester evaluations, group work, finals and participation, and i-clickers among others—but on a practical, every day level, what can we do to assess what our students are learning what we think we’re teaching them.

To accurately assess learning outcomes of new material, you may find the following, taken from Tom Drummond’s A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in Teaching (reprinted in Mills 2007, and also available online—see bibliography, helpful:

1. Surveys with Exemplifier. Pause, ask directly for a show of hands: "Raise your hand if you agree…disagree…, etc." Ask for a volunteer to speak for each response group (Mills 2007:11).

This exercise goes beyond an identification of those students who were 'right' or 'wrong.' If used correctly, this method lets students rephrase your explanation which will help you identify 1) if they understood the lecture/lab exercise/discussion clearly and if you explained the material well enough, and 2) how they are integrating the material with other knowledge from the class.

2. Halting Time. Present complex material or directions and then stop so learners have time to think or carry out directions. Visually check to see whether the class appears to understand. If they do, continue (Mills 2007:11).

While particularly useful in a lab section, this could be used to assess comprehension in other kinds of classes as well. If you are particularly creative, you could have students free write, draw, or reframe the ideas/material/directions—for example, draw discourse. Explain economy without using 'market,' 'scarcity,' 'resources,' or 'capital'. Demonstrate what atoms do during fusion without words. Be creative with the time!

3. Explication de Texte. By reading and analyzing passages from the text aloud, learners can see higher-order thinking skills and that "criticism" is a legitimate intellectual exercise (Mills 2007:11).

Although we all have a long list of tasks to accomplish during a class, rushing through too many things superficially can be counterproductive to our students. If our students rely on us to cover everything they need (i.e., being in charge of their education), we’ve only taught them dependence. Sometimes, slowing down and modeling the kind of skills we’d like them to learn and apply elsewhere in the class is the best task. During the analysis of a passage done collaboratively, students can see what a more complicated engagement with a text looks like. This sort of apprenticeship learning is helpful to students who have no experience with critical, analytical thinking at the university level.

4. Guided Lecture. Students listen to 15 to 20 minutes of lecture without taking notes. At the end, they spend five minutes recording all they can recall. The next step involves learners in small discussion groups reconstructing the lecture data, preparing complete lecture notes, using the instructor to revolve questions that arise (Mills 2007:11).

This exercise is a great way to turn a passive learning experience (lecture) into an active one. This process improves retention (remembering the material), and also emphasizes the need to pay close attention to the entire lecture, not just pieces. Sometimes it is important to get through the entire argument before early material makes sense. If they focus on the entire lecture portion, their understanding of the material is influenced by the whole picture rather than partial understandings.

5. Immediate Mastery Quiz. When a regular immediate mastery test is included in the last few minutes of the period, learners retain almost twice as much material, both factual and conceptual (Mills 2007:11).

This quiz need not be collected or even graded (in the sense of influencing their grade). An exercise like this works just as well if 'grading' is simply you either 1) announcing the correct answers to the class or 2) eliciting their responses and discussing them. Students are immediately able to discover the main points of your lecture and can figure out if they understood the material correctly.

So while "assessment" and "learning outcomes" sound very complicated, they are easy to incorporate and very useful in finding out how much our students understand. These everyday strategies of assessment help both us and our students: We can discover almost immediately if our explanations were unclear and if the students understand the connections to other course material. These strategies can also guide us in finding new ways to teach our new students old (for us, at least) concepts. These frequent assessment opportunities also help our students figure out if they actually know the material, model new ways of thinking and engaging with the materials, and also show them what we think is important in the material by giving them frequent feedback.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for new assessment strategies, please contact us. Special thanks to Brent Ruben, Executive Director of the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership, Rutgers University.

Bibliography and Additional Resources

Drummond, Tom. 2002 [1994] A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in Teaching. Available at
   http://www.blawp.org/bp.pdf. Accessed 6 September 2008.
Lederman, Doug. "Who Leads." Inside Higher Ed. 21 July 2008.
   http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/21 summit. Accessed 21 July 2008.
Mills, Barbara. 2007. "Eight Ways To Enhance Your Lectures." The National Teaching & Learning
  Forum. 16 (5): 11.
Ruben, Brent, et. al. 2008. Assessing the Impact of the Spelling Commission: The Message,
  the Messenger, and the Dynamics of Change in Higher Education. Available at
  http://www.nacubo.org/documents/business_topics/AssessingImpact.pdf.

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