Professors Joseph G. Griswold and Daniel E. Lemons
Effective assessment is a cornerstone of good teaching and yet many instructors
have not developed a systematic approach for doing it in a rigorous and
fair manner. Disagreement over assessment is a primary generator of conflict
and ill-feeling between instructors and their students and the results of
assessment have a strong impact on student attitude and academic performance.
Professionally competent teaching requires good assessment skills.
We have been working individually or together on curriculum development
and assessment for the past fifteen years, with support from the National
Science Foundation the last five years. Our current goal is to develop a
new curriculum for courses in Human Anatomy and Physiology, a subject studied
by over 300,000 students annually in U.S. colleges. This curriculum is to
be disseminated to colleagues across the country. The following are two
important principles we have learned about assessment in college teaching
which we hope will help our colleagues.
Principle 1: Assessment should be employed throughout the learning process.
In simple terms, educational assessment means to check the students' progress
in learning. Examinations and quizzes are the activities which immediately
come to mind when the term is mentioned. However, effective teaching also
provides students with opportunities to test themselves as they are learning,
well before they face a formal test. This formative assessment can
occur in a number of ways.
For example, in a lecture the professor may introduce a concept or principle
and then ask a question or pose a problem which requires the students to
check their understanding by applying what they have learned (or not!).
A serious attempt to do this might require a pause of a minute or two in
which students work with their neighbors and then present their answers,
with all the students writing something down. Another approach is to provide
a list of questions on study sheets or workshop problem sets which are coordinated
with the lecture and encourage students to meet out of class to work on
them. Workshop sessions led by undergraduates who are alumni of the course
and specially trained to be facilitators provide excellent opportunities
for formative assessment.
In laboratories, where students do hands-on investigations, programming
and experiments, there need to be frequent checks of understanding. For
example, in carrying out a protocol for an experiment, instructors often
comment that the students' hands are busy, but their minds are turned off.
They may have no idea why they are doing things a particular way. It is
important for the instructor or curriculum writer to embed steps which require
checks of understanding right in the lab exercise, to be done as close as
possible to the relevant activity. Activities such as observing and describing
an object, work of art or trends in a data set, will seldom yield a completely
satisfactory outcome (from the instructor's perspective), unless it is followed
by formative questioning to determine if students have observed what is
considered important or made the comparisons or links with other material.
A final suggestion - extremely popular with students - is giving practice
examinations. These exercises may be done outside of the class with opportunities
for students to check their own answers and discuss them with classmates.
We have found that this approach has two important benefits. First, it communicates
clearly to students what you think is important and at what level you are
testing. Second, it focuses and motivates students to study. This is because
they know what to expect and can take responsibility for their learning.
Practice testing is fair only if the actual examination reflects the structure
and emphasis of the pretest.
One of the best things you can do for your students to help them learn is
to provide many opportunities for formative assessment. It is unrealistic
to assume they can, without guidance, determine what you think is really
important for them to master.
Principle 2: Align assessment with clearly defined learning outcomes.
Effective instructors are very clear on what they want students to learn
in their courses and are good at communicating. Becoming clear on learning
outcomes is not a trivial process for teachers, yet it is vital for structuring
good assessment. As part of our curriculum work over the past five years,
we have developed a systematic approach, called the Benchmarks Curriculum
Model, for clarifying and communicating our desired learning outcomes and
guiding our entire effort (Figure 1). This
illustration shows how the Benchmarks Model is used in our project and specifically
how it can guide instructors in writing good assessment.
We defined our broad course goals (Step 1) in consultation with other faculty,
especially those who would teach our students after they complete Human
Anatomy and Physiology. When we began the project, faculty from the School
of Nursing provided especially valuable input, but we also looked at nursing
and medical boards, and consulted with colleagues around the country through
our professional organizations. The course goals describe the performance
levels expected of our students when they finish the course. In Human Anantomy
and Physiology students should be able to: (1) explain the body as a dynamically
adapting machine whose systems and processes can be described in terms of
cause and effect, (2) solve problems that range in difficulty from straight-forward
calculations to predictions based on a range of conditions, (3) continue
independent learning about the body, (4) correctly apply the necessary anatomical
and physiology facts, (5) interpret information presented in number of formats,
and (6) comfortably use modern technology - especially computers. These
are, by intention, broadgoals which serve as guiding principles for developing
the specific components of the revised curriculum.
With these broad goals in place, we began a systematic process of unit development.
We first assigned a high, middle, or low level of priority to each of the
content areas taught in the traditional Human Anatomy and Physiology courses
(Step 2). This classification helped determine how much time was devoted
to each area. The areas with the lowest priority may not be covered at all
and it is possible that some topics with a mid-level priority ranking will
be covered in less depth than the high priority areas.
When we begin each new unit of the course, we start with some fundamental
questions which are restated as learning objectives - generally 4-10 per
unit (Step 3). For example, in the skeletal muscular unit, one of the ten
objectives is to "Understand the basic biomechanics involved in producing
movement." Because the term "understand" has no clear, operational
meaning, we go on to write a series of benchmarks (Step 4) for each objective
that defines explicitly what it means in this case to "understand the
basic biomechanics." A benchmark is an operational statement
defining what the student will have to do to demonstrate mastery of the
assigned material. One of the benchmarks for the biomechanics objective
is to "Be able to locate and name the elements of a lever system, diagram
the opposing forces, and define its range of motion." Another benchmark
is "Predict and calculate the muscle force needed to balance or overcome
a given resistance force for a particular lever system." We decided
that understanding biomechanics would be indicated by the student's ability
to do what these, and a few other benchmarks, specify.
Based on our initial experience, we developed a series of model statements
for writing benchmarks (Table 1). These follow
a progression somewhat like Bloom's taxonomy with easier, lower-level benchmarks
at the top and more difficult ones near the bottom. Once the benchmarks
are written using the model statements, we have the basis for designing
the learning activities and the summative assessment (exams and quizzes
which yield a grade that counts). In our syllabus there must be at least
one learning activity designed for each benchmark and no learning activity
can be included unless it addresses a specific benchmark.
With the benchmarks established, we now have a clear basis for writing formative
and summative assessment items. Using them systematically, we can be sure
that assessment will be closely aligned with our objectives and our instructional
activities. We are guided to write assessment items which require students
to trace, contrast and compare, relate, predict, and apply the information
they have mastered according to the relevant benchmark.
Final thoughts: Writing good formative and summative assessments is
a complex skill. At the end of this article are a number of references which
can help instructors benefit from the experience and research of other specialists.
There is another resource available to every instructor - the students.
Talking with them, observing them, and reading their responses to our
assessment items is, in many ways, the ultimate test of our effectiveness.
All of us who write assessment can continually benefit by seeking their
feedback and using it to produce new and better iterations of our questions.
Professor Joseph G. Griswold
Department of Biology
Marshak Science Building, Room J735
(212) 650-8530, -8608
Professor Daniel E. Lemons
Department of Biology
Marshak Science Building, Room J717
(212) 650-8543, -8455
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