Classroom Assessment Techniques or CATs

What are your students learning? How effective is your teaching?

For faculty interested in fine-tuning their effectiveness as teachers in relation to what students actually know and understand, classroom assessment techniques or CATs offer multiple entry points. Designed by inventive instructors to find out 'what' students are actually learning in their classroom and 'how well', CATS vary in complexity from the Minute Paper for assessing students' understanding of a key concept to the Paper or Project Prospectus for assessing students' skill at synthesizing what they have already learned about a topic or field as they plan their own learning projects.

Whatever CAT you choose to use, the merit of classroom assessment is that teaching effectiveness is articulated in relation to student learning. All the CATs-ungraded, anonymous and simple to use-emphasize timely and frequent feedback on the teaching-learning experience for both students and faculty. K. Patricia Cross, one of the authors of the first handbook on classroom assessment, has described classroom assessment as the "zipper" that connects teaching and learning.

Background to CATs
In 1988, Patricia Cross, along with Thomas Angelo, brought together thirty classroom assessment strategies in Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for Faculty. Five years later, the authors published an expanded handbook, Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, which includes a 'teaching goals inventory' so faculty could choose CATs based on expected student learning outcomes as well as detailed accounts of classroom research projects in twelve discipline areas and lessons from using CATs over a six-year period. In 1996, Cross and Mimi Harris Steadman examined the purpose and practices associated with extended classroom assessment and research projects in Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching. Enterprising instructors have also adapted CATs for use in online learning environments. In learning communities, the use of CATs can contribute to the central work of creating and belonging to community where deep transformative learning flourishes.

Selected resources and links
Angelo, Thomas. A. and K. Patricia Cross. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (2nd ed). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Center for Teaching at The University of Iowa - http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/tgi/index.html

Cross, K. Patricia and Mimi Harris Steadman. (1996). Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-1.htm -
An excerpt from the CATs handbook on the purpose and assumptions underlying classroom assessment

http://www.siue.edu/~deder/assess/catmain.html - Inventory of Teaching Goals, Assessment vs. Grades, Using Anonymous Assessments, Assessment of Group Work, Assessing Group Effectiveness and extensive examples of CATs including Self Assessment and Background Knowledge Probe

http://www.iub.edu/~teaching/feedback.shtml - An overview of why and when classroom assessment techniques are useful with eight detailed examples including one-sentence summary, chain notes, application cards, and student-generated test questions

http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/assess.htm - From the National Teaching and Learning Forum

http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Resources/class_assessment.asp - From the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Pennsylvania State University