June Feature LAT: Best Summary

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

Students individually prepare summaries of the main points at the end of a given unit of content, lecture, reading assignment, or other, and then work in groups to compare, evaluate, and select the “best” summaries.

TEACHING ISSUE:

Students need practice summarizing a reading assignment or lecture to figure out what the main ideas are, what the crucial details that support those ideas are, and what information is extraneous so that they can communicate the gist of the material in ways that they can remember.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Select an assignment that students can summarize succinctly (lectures, video documentaries, online lectures, reading assignments, etc.).
• Decide how you will collect the information from students (simple handout, index cards, blog, etc.).
• Determine the parameters of the assignment and your expectations for the type and length of response, and the criteria upon which you and the students will rate the summary.
• Provide students with the assignment instructions.
• When students have completed the assignment, organize them into equal-sized teams and ask them to select and indicate the best summary from the members of their group.
• Ask student teams to report out, reading the best summary and stating their reasons for naming it the best.

ONLINE USE:

• Assign students to groups and create separate discussion forums for the different groups. Post the assignment, ask students to prepare summaries of the main points, and then ask students to select the best summary to represent the group. Post the top summaries on the main course page or a whole class discussion forum.

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• Collect the students’ responses and evaluate with whatever assessment criteria you have selected. This LAT also has a built-in layer of peer evaluation for additional feedback.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

Best Summary is a good technique for helping students develop the ability to recognize that some information is better than others, even if all information is factually correct. This technique is effective when used for improvement during a content module to spot-check student understanding. It is a technique that instructors can use to gauge where students are in their thinking in order to target their instruction to help students clarify or develop the knowledge they need to be successful.

May Feature LAT: What? So What? Now What? Journal

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

Students write journal entries to reflect on their recent course-related activities or experiences. The questions that comprise the name of this LAT provide students with a structure for critical analysis during these reflections, prompting students to respond to the main questions and relevant subquestions. This LAT is typically done at the conclusion of a learning unit or module.

TEACHING ISSUE:

Students need practice connecting a current experience to previous learning and future plans.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Clarify the content should write and consider these questions and subquestions:
  • What? What happened? Was there a difference between what you expected and what happened? What did you do?
  • So What? What have you learned? Why does that matter? To you? To your peers? To other stakeholders? Is this experience in alignment, informed by, in conflict with class texts or other activities?
  • Now What? How can you apply your learning? What information can you share with others? What would you like to learn more about?
• Determine assignment parameters (how often students should write, how long journal entries should be, and how often you will review journals) and create a handout with instructions.
• Consider who will be involved with the assessment. It’s important for you to review the journal and respond to the entries or students may feel that the assignment is busy work. Peer assessment can also be beneficial so that students have the chance to see each other’s work.
• Distribute the handout, discuss the purpose of the journal, and allow time for questions.
• Ask students to record entries in their journals (either in a notebook or using a web-based blog like Google Blogger).
• Collect the journals.
• This LAT can also be used with a written assignment, art project, poster presentation, oral presentation, discussion, or a combination.

ONLINE USE:

• Use Sakai or a blogging tool for the journal entries (if you use Google Blogger, the entries can be made private so they are only shared with you).

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• The Learning Artifacts for this activity are the students’ journals. They provide evidence of a student’s ability to take in an experience or activity and describe it. They also provide insight into a student’s ability to connect this experience to past learning or to texts in the course. In addition, they provide evidence of a student’s ability to make a plan for the future, which is an indicator of a student’s capacity for lifelong learning. Thus the artifacts yield many different types of information that provide a more holistic view of student learning.
• To assess the artifact, score with a simple +1 system such as:
  • What? = 1 point
  • So What? = 1 point + 1 point for each connection to a lecture or reading.
  • Now What? = 1 point + 1 point for a concrete action plan or evidence of action taken.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

In this technique, students reflect by linking a current experience to previous learning and future plans, which helps them to connect what they know and what they are learning. This encourages students to process information and to synthesize and evaluate their experiences, which can improve their retention of ideas and information. It also encourages students to apply what they have learned to contexts beyond the original situations in which they learned it, which can deepen their learning. When students have an opportunity to reflect on their work, it enhances the meaning of the work. Thus this LAT provides structure, time, and opportunity for deep insights and complex learning.

April Feature LAT: Peer Problem Review

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

In Peer Problem Review, students each receive a problem, try to solve it, and then pass the problem and solution to a nearby student. The student who receives the problem and response then analyzes and evaluates the solution.

TEACHING ISSUE:

Students need assistance with solving problems and evaluating solutions.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Determine how many problems you will need. You will need at least two (one for each student pair) plus some extra problems as “extensions” for students who work quickly and finish before everyone else.
• Draft the problems, making sure to write ones that are important in your field but that can be solved/responded to in a relatively short period (5-15 minutes).
• Develop the assessment instrument (a handout with the problem, a space for solving the problem, and a place for evaluating the solution). This LAT has the added benefit of peer evaluation, which can be helpful to the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of your review.
• Announce the activity and tell the students the parameters, including the amount of time they will have to work on the problem and how much time they will have to evaluate the solution.
• Form pairs, and distribute a different problem to each student in the pair, asking each student to generate a possible solution and record it.
• Ask students to swap problems with the other member of their pair.
• Each student reviews and evaluates the response to the problem he or she holds after the exchange.
• The activity concludes after the problem evaluation. You may consider asking students to report out on their evaluations orally in class.

ONLINE USE:

• Adapt this for the online environment by assigning pairs, assigning problems, and asking pairs to exchange by email (or other methods of their choosing) and then submit the problems and solutions to your through email or Sakai.

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• Collect the Learning Artifact (the solved problems and the evaluation of solutions).
• Create a list of student names and by each name use a simple tally system for assessing the students’ contributions and their accuracy; use a system such as +/-. Record and analyze your responses.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

Peer Problem Review involves two activity stages: solving problems and evaluating solutions. The purpose of the first stage is to provide students with an opportunity to practice effective problem solving. The purpose of the second stage is to help students learn to evaluate potential solutions. It is an effective technique for gathering information that can help you target your teaching to the group’s level of knowledge and ability. It can also help you identify what students know and what they don’t know about solving relevant problems, which can help you determine working groups, recommend additional resources or assistance to students who need it, and so forth. Peer Problem Review can allow you to spot check for student understanding in the middle of an instructional unit. This LAT also works as a pre-post assessment, as you receive information about their starting place and ending place and thus can evaluate change over time.

March Feature LAT: Ethical Dilemma

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

Students review an ethics-based, discipline-related scenario in which someone must choose a course of action between two or more difficult alternatives. Students write an essay response to the case in which they proceed through a sequence of prescribed steps that conclude with their choice of the most ethical decision.

TEACHING ISSUE:

• Students need assistance thinking through their content-related values within the context of “real world” situations.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Choose one specific ethical issue or question upon which to focus.
• Locate or create a short case that poses the essential dilemma realistically.
• Write a series of prompts that require students to take a position on the scenario and to explain or justify that position. Consider the following prompts:
  • Summarize the facts of this case.
  • Define the ethical issue(s) involved.
  • Identify the key stakeholders/actors.
  • List the potential solutions and possible consequences for the stakeholders/actors depending on their choices.
  • Choose the most ethical decision and explain why you chose it (e.g. greatest good, moral rights, fairness/equity, virtuousness, or other).
• Create a rubric for scoring different sections of the paper.
• Create a handout for students that includes the case and also provides them with the assignment parameters and the assessment rubric.
• Announce the activity and time frame, provide students time to complete their research and writing, and collect the assignments.

ONLINE USE:

• Ask students to post their responses on a blog or as an assignment within Sakai.

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• Score the Learning Artifact (the students’ essay response to the scenario) with your rubric. Provide students with your rubric scoring, and describe anything outstanding that you discovered in your thematic analysis. Grade as you would a traditional paper.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

This technique is typically done post instruction, after a unit of content, to document that students can use the information to make informed decisions that individuals face each day. This LAT provides students with a forum to probe the motivations underlying, and the consequences resulting from, ethics-based choices in a safe environment. It gives students practice in evaluating situations they may confront in the real world and prepares them to make better choices when they encounter similar situations in the future. Student answers to the scenario provide faculty with a view of students’ ethical responses to real world situations involving people with different perspectives.

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BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

Students write a limited number of test questions related to a recent learning module and then create an answer sheet, or alternately a model answer and scoring sheet, to accompany the test questions.

TEACHING ISSUE:

Students often come to college unprepared to take exams and have little practice anticipating what might be on an exam.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Because this LAT requires adequate exposure to content to be able to complete the activity, it is typically done toward the end of a learning module but prior to an exam. It is best used as a formative assessment for the intent of helping students improve their knowledge prior to a summative assessment.
• Determine what types of questions students should write (multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, short essay, or other), and determine the length of the quiz the students will create.
• Create a couple of questions yourself as a model to share with the class so they have some idea about what effective quiz questions look like, and provide advice on how to write good questions.
• Create a checklist that helps you track question relevance, difficulty, and clarity, and consider scoring these areas on a scale of 0-4.
• Create a handout for students that explains the activity, present the handout and explain the purpose of the activity, provide students with time to write questions and answer sheets, and collect the Learning Artifacts (test questions and answers). You may wish to consider having students work in groups for this activity.

ONLINE USE:

• Have students submit the test and answer sheet as an assignment in Sakai.

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• Collect the Learning Artifacts, score, and aggregate the data.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

This LAT allows faculty to determine whether students have been able to understand and summarize important content. This activity also allows instructors to gather written documentation of what students think are the most important concepts in the learning module and provides an opportunity to see whether students have misunderstood any information since students create answers for their own questions. It also provides the instructor with information about students’ expectations for an upcoming quiz.

January Feature LAT: Concept Maps

BRIEF DESCRIPTION:

In conjunction with an assigned reading, students complete a written assignment that includes three components: new perceptions or understandings (Insights), resources they have found that amplify the reading’s themes or information (Resources), and an example from the students’ personal experience that relates to the reading (Application).

TEACHING ISSUE:

Students need assistance with summarizing new learning and making applications with the knowledge.

LEARNING ASSESSMENT SOLUTION:

• Identify a reading that requires students to think deeply, research further, and apply learning to their personal life.
• Create assignment instructions. For example:
  • Insight (I): Students write one-sentence bullet points that represent their new understanding of a topic from the reading.
  • Resource (R): Students need to find an additional resource about the topic that amplify the reading such as a book, website, article, etc.
  • Application (A): Students write a brief summary that relates to the reading and an example from their own life.
• Create a system for scoring the work such as a +/- tally or a rubric with the following criteria:
  • Insights: Clarity of the perception or understanding.
  • Resources: Quality of the resource (academic vs. popular source).
  • Application: Appropriate Fit of the reading to the experience.
• Present the assignment, provide students time to work on it, consider providing time for students to report out so they can learn from each other’s ideas, and collect written records of student responses.

ONLINE USE:

• Use Sakai to collect written responses for analyses or use a Forum.

USING RESULTS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:

• Collect the Learning Artifact (students’ written responses) and aggregate the data using your rubric or simple tally.
• Share the results with your Chair for your program’s Annual Assessment Report.

WHY I LOVE THIS LEARNING ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE:

This LAT challenges students to reflect on what they’ve learned, connect what they’ve learned to a personal experience, and search out additional sources that deepens their knowledge and understanding of a topic. IRAs create a written record of student ability to make application of recently received material to new situations and provide faculty with a document that can be used to determine how well students have internalized their learning. By utilizing the results of this activity, faculty can then target their instruction to students’ level of need.