William S. Moore

         The collaborative learning environments discussed in this handbook are new and powerful forces in higher education today. But if such environments are new, what is new about them? And if they are in fact powerful for many students, how powerful are they, and in what ways? As educators committed to improving our practice and encouraging student learning, we need to understand and assess collaborative learning in order to judge and refine its efficacy for the diversity of students and contexts in higher education. We need to understand what this student means when she says her "mind exploded," and we need to assess the role of collaborative learning in that explosion.

         While the systematic and widespread use of collaborative learning indeed represents a "re-vision" of the typical assumptions and approaches in higher education classrooms, it is grounded in the fundamental goals of American higher education: critical thinking and analysis, ability to work with others and an appreciation for diverse perspectives, connection-making and integration of learning, and involvement in one's own learning process, among others. These goals are often part of the rhetoric of higher education, but more often than not are either ignored in practice, in terms of both teaching and assessment, or simply assumed to occur as a student persists in her college years.

         Unlike the typical teacher?centered, lecture?oriented approach, collaborative learning environments offer students complex intellectual challenges that explicitly address this wide range of cognitive and affective student learning outcomes. Higher education clearly involves the imparting of a knowledge base, but most faculty and institutions aim ultimately for the goals noted above. Most faculty are not interested in content coverage for its own sake, but in the transformation of learners through engagement with certain content knowledge, with an appropriate knowledge base grounded in a meaningful context, namely, students' lives and experiences. Collaborative learning approaches are designed explicitly to help faculty address these fundamental goals with their students (Gabelnick, MacGregor, Matthews & Smith, 1990).

         What we need, then, are assessment approaches and measures that address and reflect these transformative goals of higher education. Typical evaluation methods most frequently used in lecture?oriented classes-standardized and multiple?choice?format tests-generally assess student knowledge fairly well, but are less effective in assessing the complex learning goals noted above. The complexities of such goals, however, often lead faculty and institutions to use readily accessible academic indicators-grade-point-average, student persistence-as proxy measures, assuming that such indicators correlate strongly with progress toward more complex outcomes. We can take a more direct approach by defining a specific set of outcome dimensions (like the ones above) and identifying-or constructing-a corresponding set of qualitative instruments to address the goals. Both direct and indirect approaches have distinct strengths and weaknesses.

The Perry Scheme: A More Complex Indicator of Learning

         While a variety of alternative approaches is possible, in this chapter I will demonstrate how William Perry's model (Perry, 1970; 1981) of intellectual and ethical development is a particularly appropriate framework to use, both for assessing and for understanding collaborative learning. Collaborative learning environments promote a wide range of cognitive and affective student learning outcomes; the Perry scheme of intellectual and ethical development represents a broad, multidimensional indicator of student progress toward these fundamental outcomes, an indicator that can be used to assess collaborative learning approaches. Assessing students in collaborative learning environments using the Perry scheme framework serves as a critical complement to simpler measures of academic performance and "success" like grade?point?average and persistence.

         The Perry model describes a pattern of increasing cognitive complexity that has proven to be a useful, heuristic model for analyzing teaching/learning concerns and attempting to measure the general education outcomes of college (Mentkowski, Moeser & Strait, 1983; Perry, 1981) and, in particular, the outcomes of the growing national focus on critical thinking (Kurfiss, 1988; Mezirow & Associates, 1990). Indeed, if we want to understand the possibilities and limitations of measuring and teaching thinking processes, we need to understand precisely how college students' cognitive complexity progresses. The model's emphasis on both intellectual and ethical development reflects the critical intertwining of cognitive and interpersonal perspectives at the heart of liberal education-a transformative journey toward more complex forms of thought about the world and one's self. Perry's work underscores the notion that the most powerful learning, the learning most faculty really want to see students achieve as a result of their college experiences, involves significant qualitative changes in the learners themselves:

Overview of the Model

         What is commonly referred to as the "Perry scheme" was derived from over 400 open?ended interviews conducted primarily with Harvard undergraduates during the late 1950's and through the 1960's (Perry, 1970), and since replicated with a wide variety of students and institutions (Moore, 1994; Perry, 1981). Through exhaustive qualitative analyses of the ways in which students described their experiences and transformations over their college years, Perry and his colleagues ascertained a consistent pattern of nine distinct stages, or what Perry prefers to call "positions"-as in positions from which to view the world. Perry referred to this discovery as a "scheme of intellectual and ethical development" because the first part of the journey described by students was primarily intellectual-systematic, cognitive-structural change toward increasing differentiation and complexity of thinking-while the latter part was largely "ethical" in the classical Greek sense-issues of identity and personal meaning-making in an ambiguous, relativistic world. The sequence of positions can be described in four major categories: dualism, multiplicity, contextual relativism, and commitment within relativism (see Appendix I for a more detailed description of the Perry Scheme.).

Connecting the Perry Scheme and Collaborative Learning

         Ken Bruffee (1993, 1984) has observed that a central element of becoming an educated person occurs in conversation and collaboration:

         This collaborative process involves engaging in what Bruffee calls the "normal discourse" of academic disciplines-coming to understand what constitutes a good argument in a given context. Those notions of argument, evidence, context and judgment are precisely what is involved in the Perry scheme of intellectual and ethical development. This connection makes the Perry model an ideal global assessment of the impact of collaborative learning environments on students.

         In terms of understanding collaborative learning processes, what is most critical about the Perry scheme is its reflection of evolving meaning-making about knowledge (learning), self (and peers), and authority (i.e., the teacher). As students' perspectives evolve through the positions of the Perry scheme, knowledge is seen as increasingly conjectural, uncertain, and open to interpretation-thus demanding a focus on analysis, critical thinking, and integrative connection-making. This central epistemology triggers parallel shifts in the learner's views about her role as a student; she moves from a passive receptor of facts to an active agent in defining arguments and creating new "knowledge." The student's tolerance for diversity and openness to teamwork increases as peers are gradually seen to be potential sources of learning. Finally, the student's understanding of the teacher's role shifts from the sole source of "Truth" to an authority with specific expertise who is willing to share both classroom power and his/her knowledge in a mutual learning process. To see how this meaning?making is expressed by students, here are some examples, drawn from students' narrative self-evaluations or Measure of Intellectual Development essays about collaborative learning environments (with particularly salient comments noted in bold face):

·      changes in how learners view and understand knowledge and learning

·      changes in how learners view themselves and their peers

·      changes in how learners view the role of the teacher

Assessing Students' Intellectual Development

         In the past two decades, there has been increasing interest in assessment and instrumentation research on Perry's model (Baxter Magolda, 1992; Baxter Magolda & Porterfield, 1988; Mines, 1982; Moore, 1994). In Perry's original research, and in early replication studies, interviews were used to assess students' cognition. The original interview format used in the longitudinal studies at Harvard was almost completely unstructured by design, asking students "What stood out to you over the past year?" and letting the student take off from there. A number of recent interview studies have moved toward more structured formats than the earlier work (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger & Tarule, 1986; Benack, 1982; Moore, 1994; Slepitza, 1983). While interviews continue to be a rich and valuable means of assessing the Perry scheme, they are limited in their usefulness due to the time, complexity and costs involved in interviewing students, making transcriptions (or videotapes), and analyzing data. For that reason, almost all of the Perry scheme assessment projects done to date on collaborative learning environments and learning communities have used the Measure of Intellectual Development (MID), an instrument consisting of written student responses to an open?ended essay prompt (Knefelkamp, 1974; Mentkowski, Moeser & Strait, 1983; Moore, 1988). The MID must be scored by trained raters, but is still considerably less expensive for assessment purposes than interviews, at the same time retaining some of the open?ended richness of the interview format. The current standard version of the MID is a single essay focusing either on the student's "best class" or "ideal learning environment." Most recently, the MID rating approach has been adapted to written student self?evaluations (MacGregor, 1993; Thompson, 1992) focusing on issues comparable to the ones produced by the essays.

Perry Scheme Assessment in Collaborative Learning Environments

         Washington Center. The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education sponsored a large?scale study involving students enrolled in learning communities at The Evergreen State College and at several community colleges in Washington (MacGregor, 1987). While the students enrolled in these collaborative learning environments started slightly higher on the MID than comparable students enrolled in other courses, their progress-in terms of the Perry scheme-by the end of the experience was dramatically higher than typically seen in undergraduate courses (Moore, 1988).

         The Evergreen State College. Thompson (1992) of The Evergreen State College worked with the Center for the Study of Intellectual Development to apply the Measure of Intellectual Development rating process to the formal narrative student self-evaluations (SSEs) required as part of a student's academic transcript file at Evergreen. This longitudinal study focused on 165 graduates of the college in the late 1980s-students who had entered the college as freshmen and completed all of their work toward a baccalaureate at Evergreen. Findings included comparatively large gains in cognitive development both by the conclusion of the freshman year and by the conclusion of the senior year. Almost two?thirds of the sample registered some level of gain in Perry scheme terms, and one?quarter of the sample made substantial progress relative to what is usually seen in college students (Moore, 1991). Thus intellectual development among students at the College seems to be widespread rather than the result of a handful of individuals making substantial progress. Although Evergreen is predominantly a collaborative learning environment, it has other distinctive features as well-e.g., narrative evaluations instead of grades-and thus one cannot ascribe differences to collaborative learning alone.

         Fairhaven College. Fairhaven College of Western Washington University, like Evergreen, operates largely as a collaborative learning environment, and requires narrative self?evaluations for each class instead of letter grades. In addition, students are required to take a capstone seminar at the end of their overall college program and in this seminar they complete a formal "Summary and Evaluation" paper. All of these student self-evaluations (SSEs) become part of the student's permanent file, and thus are retained by the College. Fairhaven undertook a Perry scheme analysis (using the same Measure of Intellectual Development framework used in the Evergreen study) of SSE materials from a sample of approximately 200 students. Clusters of SSEs were drawn from the beginning, middle and end of students' programs, along with a subsample of "Summary and Evaluation" papers. Preliminary data analyses reflect significant development over time, similar to the results found in The Evergreen State College study. This pattern of substantial progress holds fairly constant over a wide variety of subgroups, including gender, age, and "native" vs. transfer students, with no significant differences found among these groupings. The other consistent finding is that the "Summary and Evaluation" papers display sharply higher ratings than the shorter SSEs drawn from courses at a comparable time near the end of students' programs. This contrast suggests that the reflection and synthesis required by the capstone course and final summative paper promotes developmental movement-or that the form of the "Summary and Evaluation" paper reveals more clearly the complexity that was already there.

         Additional data analyses are in process, exploring in particular individual developmental growth trajectories over time. For more information, contact Marie Eaton, Dean, Fairhaven College, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225?9118, 360?650?3680.

         Daytona Beach Community College. Daytona Beach Community College (Avens & Zelley, 1990) used a specially?designed MID essay prompt as part of a project to assess an interdisciplinary learning community for first?year students called "Quanta." An excerpt from one student's essay follows:

         Quanta students made significant progress as reflected by the MID after one term, and an even sharper jump by the end of their second term together. In addition to the numerical ratings produced by such data, it should be noted that the open-ended richness of the student writing allows additional qualitative analyses of themes or issues relevant to broad program goals. For example, in the student response above, it may be difficult to judge precisely the depth of her content understanding without follow-up probing and dialogue, but it seems clear that at least with this student, the "Quanta" program has achieved an even more significant and difficult goal for the freshman year of college-in Nevitt Sanford's words, "to capture the student's imagination [and] win the student to the intellectual enterprise" (1962, p. 15).

         University of New England. The University of New England has been using the MID to assess a biology learning community for the past four years. Data analyses from the most recent cohort are currently underway, but the trend over the first three years showed an interesting progression. In the first year of the program, the pre/post comparison on the MID showed no difference. In the second year, the MID scores reflected a modest improvement, and in the third year, the pre/post comparison on the MID showed a sharp, significant increase for the learning community students. While some of the difference may be attributable to cohort differences, it seems plausible that as the new learning community was established and refined its impact on students' intellectual development has become comparable to the impact shown by the well?established coordinated study experiences noted earlier. For more information, contact Pam Morgan, Life Sciences, University of New England, Hills Beach Road, Biddeford, ME 04005, 207?283?0171.

         California State, Dominguez Hills. California State, Dominguez Hills, home of the Network for Cooperative Learning in Higher Education, has conducted a large 3?year FIPSE? (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education) funded study of students involved in cooperative learning experiences. Given the size of the project and the other measures being used, the researchers chose to administer the Learning Environment Preferences (LEP) instead of the MID. The LEP (Moore, 1989, 1991) is a newer, checklist?style instrument that is easier to score and thus less expensive than the MID. For more information, contact Jim Cooper, HFA-B-316, California State, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson, CA 90747, 310-516-3961 or 516-3810.

Summary

         As Smith and MacGregor (1991) note in describing their efforts to evaluate learning community efforts in Washington state, "The question usually asked first of any innovative enterprise is, 'How do you know it works?'" (p. 26). While there is considerable evidence from elementary and secondary schools that cooperative and collaborative learning are more successful than more traditional approaches, there has been relatively little research done at the postsecondary level (Goodsell, Maher, & Tinto, 1992). Using the Perry scheme as a central assessment framework represents and reinforces the perspective that assessment activities related to collaborative learning need to emphasize both proving the effectiveness of collaborative learning and improving the quality of teaching and learning in the college classroom (Angelo & Cross, 1993; Ewell, 1991; Musil, 1992). Intellectual development as reflected by the Perry scheme helps faculty think about the deeper goals of higher education and collaborative learning as well as offering guidance for instructional design and assessment approaches. Perhaps most importantly, understanding the perspectives reflected in the Perry model helps us as teachers understand our students better-the risks and transformations embedded in the college experience as described below by the student whose "mind exploded" in her first collaborative learning experience:

Appendix I

The Perry Scheme: Positions 1 to 9

Dualism: Positions 1-2.

The thinking defined by positions 1 and 2 is characterized by dichotomies and dualisms, i.e., We-Right-Good vs. They-Wrong-Bad or some variation. Teachers are seen as sources of "Truth" rather than resources for specific expertise (which Perry characterized as a shift from Authority to authorities), and discrepancies among teachers are generally explained in this dichotomous framework: "oh, I see, this teacher is not teaching the Truth-s/he is a bad Authority." The world thus consists essentially of two boxes-rights and wrongs-and there is seldom trouble in distinguishing between the two. Students whose thinking is characterized by these positions tend to struggle with collaborative learning environments in which the teacher's central role is de-emphasized, unless care is taken to provide adequate structure and support for class activities.

Multiplicity: Positions 3-4.

The world view of position 2 begins to break down in a number of different ways, perhaps most frequently through confrontation with several Authorities, already established as Good Authorities, who happen to disagree. In fact, Perry describes the entire progression across the first five positions as "successive modifications of right-wrong dualism in attempting to account for diversity in human opinion, experience and 'truth'" (1973, p.3). The modification in position 3 represents the first acknowledgment of legitimate uncertainty in the world; instead of two boxes or categories, right and wrong, there are now three: right, wrong, and "not yet known." A learning community composed of several faculty from different disciplines represents an ideal opportunity for presenting students with structured disagreements of this kind. For now, if Good Authorities disagree, obviously they are dealing with an area in which the answers are yet to be found. This acceptance of uncertainty as legitimate, albeit temporary, is a profound departure for the dualistic perspective, and for many students an exciting one. While there are disquieting elements to be sure-e.g., how am I to be tested and evaluated in areas where we have yet to find the answers?-position 3 is a generally positive and functional perspective for most college students. The initial solution to the problem of uncertainty is that "there are obviously right ways, or methods, to find the right answers," and learning becomes a focus on process and methodology.

         A corollary notion in the position 3 quantitative view of the world is that hard work should pay off in good grades, just as an argument is more sound if there is more evidence on its side. The transition from early multiplicity to late multiplicity-position 3 to position 4-is often triggered by the growing realization that hard work is not sufficient in and of itself. More broadly, the area of evaluation is frequently critical as the student begins to understand issues of quality vs. quantity and the application of criteria. The position 4 solution to these evaluation concerns becomes a focus on how to think-independent thinking as a means for making some sense of things, especially in the classroom. The fundamental perspective of position 4 is still dualistic in that there are essentially two areas: a small area of "Rights/Wrongs," and a generally much larger one of "No one knows." The "not yet known" of position 3 has thus in a way become a new certainty of "we'll never know for sure," and what becomes most important is one's own thinking. Self-processing and a sense of the ownership of ideas increases, but there is frequently in position 4 a stance that there is simply no nonarbitrary basis for determining what's right-hence an attitude of "do your own thing" or "anything goes" often prevails in this position. Collaborative learning environments which stress independent thinking and students taking a strong and active role in the learning process run the risk of reinforcing for some students this "anything goes" perspective. Lecture- and teacher-dominated classrooms, on the other hand, risk never providing adequate encouragement for students to risk voicing their opinions and taking stands in the face of opposition and incomplete, ambiguous information.

Contextual Relativism: Position 5 and beyond.

The transition from position 4 to position 5 is perhaps the most significant movement within the Perry scheme because it represents a transformation of perspective-from a vision of the world as essentially dualistic, with a growing number of exceptions to the rule in certain specific situations, to the exact opposite vision of a world as essentially relativistic and context-bound with a few right/wrong exceptions. This transition transforms the student's attitudes about learning and his/her role as a learner in dramatic fashion. The self is finally understood to be a legitimate source of knowledge along with the authority (teacher or textbook) and the discipline. The most significant distinction between the pseudo-relativism of position 4 and the contextual relativism of position 5 is the self-consciousness of being an active maker of meaning. As noted earlier, and as Perry makes clear even in the title of his book (1970), one's task in life is finally understood fully as intellectual and ethical-a question of identity in a world of multiple contexts. Collaborative learning environments particularly promote the firm sense of self students need to make sense-and judgments-in this complex, relativistic world.

Commitment within Relativism: Positions 7-9.

Little work has been done on these upper positions beyond the original study, partly because of their complexity and the necessity of researching them through qualitative interviews, and partly because work with both the Perry scheme and other related models (e.g., Kitchener and King, 1990) suggests that few undergraduate students reflect this post?contextual?relativistic thinking. According to the scheme, these positions reflect elaborations of identity commitments in a relativistic world, characterized by three crucial features:

         ·         chosen in the face of legitimate alternatives;

         ·          chosen after experiencing genuine doubt;

         ·          chosen as a clear affirmation of one's self or identity.

Positions 6 and 7 represent the awareness of the need for and the actual making of a major commitment in one's life, while Positions 8 and 9 focus on the person coping with and synthesizing solutions to the consequences of his/her commitment/s. Initially assuming that making a commitment will take care of everything, one soon discovers that multiple commitments are necessary-e.g., career, partner, lifestyle-and that rather than being always complementary they are sometimes competing or even contradictory. Position 9 finds the individual coming to terms with this complexity in a tentative way, acknowledging that there is no real "answer" but only a willingness to struggle with the process.

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