Preface
This Handbook provides a set of assessment tools for college teachers and staff involved in collaborative learning and in learning communities. We describe approaches we have found effective in our own classrooms-approaches which reflect our concept of assessment as an integral part of the teaching and learning process.
The Handbook is divided into two sections. Articles in the first section address assessment in collaborative learning environments, while those in the second section discuss assessment of collaborative learning environments. We assume that readers are involved in collaborative learning settings either as beginners or as long-time practitioners, and may be looking for ways to improve their practice, account for it, or both. As the sections of the Handbook indicate, we see the need for assessment approaches that both "prove" and "improve" learning.
Many of the articles in the first section of the Handbook focus on pragmatic classroom concerns such as restructuring courses, evaluating student work, balancing individual and group work, eliciting student input, and teaching student self-evaluation. While specific strategies and approaches are described, this work goes far beyond a tool bag of techniques. Collaborative learning, learning communities and assessment all reflect a dramatic shift of perspective about the learning process and the roles and responsibilities of teachers and learners. As we struggle to deepen our understanding of the many ways our students construct their learning, we begin to see that learning, teaching, and assessment are intricately intertwined. Good assessment invites students to engage with their learning and with each other, and provides opportunities for both faculty and students to be reflective about the learning process. The same could be said of good teaching, and of collaborative learning. For many of us, seeing and using assessment as a continuous thread which runs through the fabric of educational experiences-rather than as an isolated, end-of-unit event-has been transformative.
Not all of our colleagues share these perspectives, however. We are sometimes called upon to document that these innovative strategies work with our students on our campus. For this reason, we have included articles in the second section of this Handbook to describe different approaches to assess the impact of this work. We look at quantitative and qualitative methods to assess student intellectual development, persistence and achievement, and to assess what teams of faculty have learned from their experiences teaching in learning communities.
We're pleased to offer the product of our joint efforts to you now. Writing this Handbook was a two-year collaboration by members of a working group on the Washington Center's Evaluation Committee, an ongoing statewide task force in Washington working on improving learning community programs at colleges throughout the state. We discovered that we were sharing many effective approaches to assessment-approaches we wanted to share more widely. Thus, this Handbook. The idea grew (and grew!) out of this group until we committed to the project and to becoming learners with each other...testing ideas, responding to drafts, and revising our work, all the while enjoying the challenges and rewards of thinking and working together. We hope you will adapt these ideas to your own settings, let us know what is useful, and send new ideas our way! Assessment, teaching, and learning are continuously evolving; this work should evolve, too.
Special thanks to these additional contributors to the Handbook:
Thad Curtz,
The Evergreen State College
Jim Harnish, North Seattle Community College
Kim Johnson-Bogart, University of Washington
Michael Kishner, North Seattle Community College
Anne Goodsell Love, University of Akron
Ann McCartney, Shoreline Community College
Linda Moore, Skagit Valley College
Pat Russo, State University of New York, Oswego
Margaret Scarborough, Edmonds Community College
Rita Smilkstein, North Seattle Community College
Vincent Tinto, Syracuse University
Gail Wilke, North Seattle Community College
Mike Witmer, Skagit Valley College
Susan Wyche-Smith, Washington State University
We are particularly grateful to the two individuals who did the final editing and pulling-together of the manuscript for the printer: Candace Byrne, humanities faculty member at College of the Sequoias in California who was a Visiting Fellow at the Washington Center during the summer of 1994, and Kathe Taylor, senior policy associate at the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board, who served as the Washington Center's Interim Associate Director during the 1994-95 year. Also, warm thanks to Audrey Streeter, Evergreen Grants Coordinator, who made all this prose so readable.
The Washington Center Assessment Handbook Writing Group:
Roger Arango,
Heritage College
Trish Barney, Skagit Valley College
Valerie Bystrom, Seattle Central Community College
Marie Eaton, Western Washington University
Kristi Francis, Everett Community College
Nel Hellenberg, Spokane Falls Community College
Randy Johnson, Centralia College
Bruce Kochis, North Seattle Community College
Robert Larson, Seattle University
Anne Martin, Edmonds Community College
Judy Moore, Yakima Valley Community College
Eric Mould, Yakima Valley Community College
Bob Petrulis, Bellevue Community College
Claudia Questo, Green River Community College
Bernard Steckler, Seattle University
Sherry Sullivan, South Puget Sound Community College
Mary Lou Rozdilsky, Edmonds Community College
Lynn West, Spokane Community College
Jean MacGregor,
Co-Director of the Washington Center and
Chair of the Handbook Writing Group
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Annotated
Table of Contents
Assessment in and of Collaborative Learning Developed and edited by the Washington Center's Evaluation Committee |
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| Preface .............................................................................................................i | |
| Annotated Table of Contents ...........................................................................iii | |
| Introduction:
Going Public: How Collaborative Learning and Learning Communities Invite New Assessment Approaches Jean MacGregor .................vii |
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| Three intertwined movements, collaborative learning, learning communities, and assessment, are transforming undergraduate education. The two collaborative models, student collaborative groups and learning communities, present special challenges for assessment because they lead to growth in student learning that can't be measured by conventional means. This Handbook demonstrates how some faculty, administrators, and researchers are meeting those challenges. | |
| I. Assessment in Collaborative Learning | |
| A. Restructuring Courses | |
| 1. |
R(E)volutionary
Processes: Assessment and Learning Community Planning Instructors from three disciplines spent a summer designing a coordinated studies course called "Search for Self," linking reading, writing, and general psychology courses. The team grounded their planning by first identifying the student outcomes they expected, and focused on which activities would promote and what assessments would demonstrate students' success at reaching those outcomes. |
| 2. |
The Evolution of a Biology Course: From Student Passivity to Student Accountability Judy Moore and Eric Mould .......................................................IA2 When two instructors who had been lecturing multiple sections of introductory biology felt themselves going stale, they redesigned their curriculum so that students learned actively through collaborative group work. In this article, they describe the process of transforming the class to a more student-centered format, and describe the ways they built in assessment activities. Data show increased retention and better grades for students who experience the new, collaborative approach. |
| B. Assessment and Evaluation of Student Work | |
| Introduction: Bruce Kochis ................................................................................1Bi | |
| 1. |
Grading in Collaborative Classrooms Bob Petrulis............................................IB1 Grading in collaborative classrooms raises many complex issues. This instructor outlines salient concerns and illustrates a range of possible approaches suggested by colleagues in the field. |
| 2. |
Making Group Work Count Sherry Sullivan .......................................................IB2 In this course on cultural pluralism, the instructor made extensive and varied use of group work, counted the group work significantly in the grading scheme, and designed a series of activities to help students self-assess their group experiences. |
| 3. |
Making Examinations More Collaborative Jim Harnish ...................................IB3 This faculty team in a coordinated studies program helps student groups design exam questions, respond to them, and critique their responses to develop criteria for acceptable answers. Although students complete this preparation collaboratively, they take the exam individually. |
| 4. |
Making Time for Peer Review Michael Kischner ..............................................IB4 A writing instructor guides students through a process that results in their giving meaningful suggestions for improving each other's writing. |
| 5. |
Group Projects and Group Grading: Work in Progress Roger Arango .............IB5 When students produce projects collaboratively, how should they be graded? This instructor of public administration describes a group project he designed and then graded in three ways: he gave a group grade, students graded their own effort, and students graded others in their groups. |
| C. | Classroom Research |
| 1. |
Classroom Research: An Introduction Bruce Kochis ........................................IC1 The classroom research approach championed by K. Patricia Cross and Tom Angelo proves useful in many settings as a formative, ongoing method of receiving and responding to student feedback. It's a method whereby instructors get what they ask for-and sometimes more. |
| 2. |
Ask Them: Assessing What Students Already Know Rita Smilkstein ...............IC2 Her background in learning theory has convinced this instructor to begin where students are, since such a beginning grounds new knowledge and enables students to construct connections for it. Instructors can use various strategies to assess where students are beginning, no matter how much or how little background knowledge students bring to the class. |
| 3. |
Inkshedding Susan Wyche-Smith ......................................................................IC3 Inkshedding is a method for eliciting quick, anonymous, written student responses to a specific or an open-ended prompt, responses which are then published for the whole class to review. Inkshedding can be productive in a variety of situations, and it benefits both students and instructors. |
| 4. |
Mid-Course Adjustments: Using Small Group Instructional Diagnoses to Improve Teaching and Learning Ken White ...................................................................IC4 The Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) is a structured interview process offered midway through a term to ask groups of students in a given course what helps them learn in that course and how improvements could be made. |
| D. | Assessment of Seminars |
| 1. |
Approaches to Assessment
in the Collaborative Learning Seminar/Discussion Contributors to this article explain their assumptions about the practice of seminars and offer several models for assessing seminar process in order to help students engage in the active ways that result in effective seminaring. |
| 2. |
Circumscribing Seminar Space Margaret Scarborough .......................................ID2 Creating effective seminars takes careful preparation and continuous assessment. A veteran of the seminar approach explains how to prepare students to seminar and how to set up an assessment of the seminar process that cultivates students' lively engagement in the seminar. |
| E. | Student Self-Evaluation |
| 1. |
Teaching Self-Assessment Thad Curtz ...............................................................IE1 Self-assessment encourages students to reflect on their learning and results in their consciously improving how they learn. Because self-assessment is new for most students, instructors can implement strategies to support the development of students' abilities to assess their own work. |
| 2. |
Writing Portfolios:
What Teachers Learn from Student Self-Assessment Examples from students' self-reflective essays, created to organize and explain their selections for end-of-term writing portfolios, reveal how much students learn from such reflection. Careful attention to students' reflections invites instructors to change their approach so that it encourages the process of learning that students describe. |
| 3. |
Sample Self-Evaluation Prompts .....................................................................IE3 Most faculty use student self-evaluations to help students reflect and write on questions such as, What did you learn? How well did you learn it? What are the next steps in your learning? These sample prompts illustrate ways to elicit those responses. |
| II. | Assessment
of Collaborative Learning: Assessing the Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning Environments |
| A. |
My Mind Exploded:
Intellectual Development as a Critical Framework for Understanding and
Assessing Collaborative Learning Faculty who teach in collaborative environments in a variety of institutions have used the Measure of Intellectual Development to assess what changes the collaborative environment promotes in students' cognitive and affective development. The MID is particularly suited to measure the complex results of the collaborative learning common in learning community models. |
| B. |
Post-Program Interviews Valerie Bystrom ...........................................................IIB When faculty undergo a conscious and deliberate process reflecting upon their challenges and successes in coordinated studies programs at Seattle Central Community College, they consolidate the lessons they have learned, lessons which may help subsequent planning, other faculty in their institutions considering coordinated studies programs, and colleagues throughout the learning community network. |
| C. |
Assessing Learning Community Effectiveness: An Institutional View Gail Wilkie IIC North Seattle Community College has used several quantitative methods to assess the impact of learning communities from an institutional perspective. Data on student retention, student performance, student development, and faculty/student ratios compare learning communities with traditional stand-alone courses. |
| D. |
Assessment of Collaborative Learning Programs: The Promise of Collaborative Research Vince Tinto, Anne Goodsell Love, and Pat Russo ....................................IID Three researchers conducted a two-year study to assess student learning and student persistence in three exemplary learning community programs. Their multi-person, multi-method research design proved rich in both process and results, and the researchers offer some recommendations for replicating such richness. |
| E. |
Simple Approaches
to Assessing Collaborative Learning Environments Faculty and/or institutional researchers can use readily available data to design simple studies to assess collaborative learning environments. Such data can be used to compare student retention and grade distribution in collaborative and traditional lecture environments. |
| III. |
APPENDICES Bibliography on Assessment, Collaborative Learning, and Learning Communities Glossary of Terms Brief Biographies of Authors |