Assessing Education

The main idea from this session was to separate the ideas of summative and formative assessment. Summative assessment is the providing of feedback on how good a particular instance of performance is; for example, a grade on a test. Formative assessment is the provision of feedback on how the instance could have been improved.

We also covered taxonomies of assessment. The focus was Bloom's taxonomy, in which skills range from simple (recall) to complex (create). Ideally, assessments should cover the appropriate levels of the taxonomy based upon the goals of the course.

Analyzing tests I have used for the business analysis course, I noticed that the assessments were largely about recall and understanding. While those are not inappropriate, as I am teaching them some new techniques and ideas, the ability to apply and evaluate based upon those techniques is more important. Because of this, I decided to change my approach to the teaching.

In the past, I have spent a significant amount of in-class time showing an application of the technique, and then suggesting that the try them on their own time. This semester, I instead went through a rapid explanation of the technique, leaving a small example available for reference. Then, I put the students into groups, and had them make drawings themselves. The bulk of the classes were spent in these group sessions. As the students worked, I circulated among them, making suggestions on how to improve their diagrams, and answering questions about appropriate use of certain types of concepts.

I was concerned that I would spend most of my time on basic syntax. However, I was delighted to find that in fact most of my feedback was on the conceptual level, helping them with application and evaluation of their drawings. At the end of a session, I would then display each group's results to the whole class, and provided suggestions for how they could be improved.

I also modified the exams, so that recall was covered as an implicit part of discussion questions that required more active analysis and evaluation by the students.

The final results were extremely good. I was quite pleased, overall, with the quality of the students' work, and think they did a better job in the end than previous classes have done.