What Do You Know?

Learning, real learning, is a process of change. When we learn, we change our minds. We develop new skills and new perspectives; we approach problems differently; we make different decisions. We’re building new neural connections, changing our brains.

Our courses are opportunities for students to grow: the powerful learning experiences we provide during the next fifteen weeks may change their minds—and ours.

When we want to gather evidence of learning, then, it helps if we can measure change. That means it’s useful to get a baseline. What do your students know now, at the beginning of the term? What can they do? To gather data on what students know at the start of the semester, you might try an ungraded quiz, a concept inventory, a self-assessment probe, diagnostic writing, or many other methods.

There are additional benefits to probing students’ knowledge now: Richland, Kornell, and Kao (2009) and Little and Bjork (2011) found that pre-testing, before instruction, enhanced student retention of new material. Although (of course) students didn’t perform well on a test covering completely new concepts, a pre-test seemed to pique their curiosity and focus their attention in later instruction. Getting an accurate assessment of students’ prior knowledge also helps us build effective learning experiences. When we find out what our students actually know (rather than what we think they ought to know), we can shape our lessons and assignments to develop their skills, to activate their prior learning, and to help them make connections.

It’s also useful to prompt students to examine how their own thinking is changing. In coming weeks we’ll share suggestions for helping students develop their metacognitive and self-regulation skills.