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Faculty Development
Spring 2004
Workshops on Student Evaluation
As a follow-up to the general session on testing and project evaluation,
several workshops were conducted in small groups to discuss and share
understanding of more specific evaluation issues. These were held concurrently
in Building 10 classrooms, on Tuesday, March 30, 2004.
The first Essay Test workshop was held with three teachers discussing
important issues in developing essay test items, using a handout prepared
by Peter Doolittle of Virginia Polytech (which is on the CAD web site),
a matrix matching course objectives to assessment methods (available
from Dr. Rathbun’s web site), and a typology of essay test questions
with examples. We examined the essay questions that the teachers brought
and identified ways in which the items could be improved. The session
lasted approximately 90 minutes.
The first two workshops both dealt with aspects of grading written
or essay style exams. Points raised included
- a matrix for matching course objectives to assessment methods
- a mismatch between students' level of thought and expressive ability
- the taxonomy of essay question types
- a significant difference across disciplines about what "essay
response" items are
- the grading schemes
- holistic vs analytic scoring rubrics
Project based evaluation
The workshop on Project Based assessment attended by seven teachers
(2 SSE, 1 SHSS, 4 CAD) intended to open the floor to all participants
to discuss aspects of projects that had worked well or not so well.
One possible purpose of the discussion was to determine if projects
succeed in providing a forum for performance by students, for the purpose
of assessing whether or not they have learned specific course components.
Another area of interest was to check students’ ability to actually
learn to develop higher levels of understanding of the course through
the activities demanded by projects.
Evaluation Considerations
- Process vs product
- Individual contributions to the finished product
- Criteria for assessment
- Grading schemes
- Grading objectives
- Time vs effort vs output
Criteria for analysis:
- Group composition
- Instructions
- Weighting of different components
- Variety of tasks
- Reliance on skills not taught in this course
Two examples:
SSK
1202 - Critical Reading and Problem Solving Process
SSK
1202 - Critical Reading and Problem Solving Project Descriptions and
Examples
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