Assessment is a hot topic in higher education these days, especially at universities — including WSU — that are preparing for an accreditation process. But, a leading assessment expert is in
“The only reason to do assessment is to improve the things you care about,” said Tom Angelo, co-author of “Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers.” Angelo, a professor of higher education, earned his doctorate from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.
Improving student learning is what most faculty care about, Angelo said, so that must be the focus. “Our core business must be to promote learning more effectively than students could do on their own,” he said.
Speaking to about 100 faculty and staff Wednesday, April 11, at the Smith Center for Undergraduate Education, Angelo discussed “Pressures, Promises, Pitfalls and Pathways: Lessons from Twenty Years of Assessment in U.S. Higher Education.”
Angelo, who also is meeting with small groups and conducting a two-day seminar on campus, is director of the University Teaching Development Centre at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. His trip to Pullman is sponsored by The President’s Teaching Academy, the Provost’s Office, and others.
Mary Wack, dean of the Office of Undergraduate Education, said she thought the Angelo’s visit was both inspirational and informative. “People were really pumped up,” she said. “He articulated points that we’ve discussed internally for quite a while, but it was really great to hear them validated.”
More of the same
Assessment first became a hot issue in education back in the early 1980s, he said, when reports such as “A Nation at Risk” warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity.” Since then, he said, “very dedicated, very committed” people have worked to turn that tide, but “there’s very little evidence that we are doing a better job.”
The problem, he said, is that efforts were not supported across the campus and they were episodic, tending to peak right before accreditation. In some cases, he said, faculty members were making changes, but their efforts were not research-based. In most cases, he said, efforts were additive instead of transformational. “We were doing more of the same,” he said. “Instead we needed to transform educational practice.”
The parrot test
During the lecture, and in earlier meetings, Angelo talked of submitting course requirements and expectations to “the parrot test.” If a student can pass a course by parroting back information that has been memorized, he said, then the quality of the student’s learning experience is neither very deep nor very meaningful.
To create a meaningful learning experience, he said, faculty must assess — or establish a baseline of — what students already know, what they think they know that is wrong and what they want to know. From there, he said, faculty can move on to assessing what students are actually learning.
Unless faculty ask, he said, they don’t know.
Not unprepared — unchallenged
Angelo, who taught at the University of Akron several years ago, said that during his tenure there faculty and administrators decided to look more closely at why a comparatively high percentage of African-American students were dropping out in the first year. Previously, he said, faculty had always assumed that they were dropping out because the university was too academically challenging and that, unfortunately, the high schools were just not doing their jobs.
Instead of being struggling students, Angelo said, the students who were leaving were among the most prepared, most able students. They weren’t leaving because they couldn’t survive, he said, they were leaving because they wanted more challenge.
“That was stunning news to our faculty,” he said.
Angelo told that story in connection with data from the National Survey of Student Achievement that shows that about 6 in 10 WSU freshmen make it to graduation.
“What do you know about those students who leave?” he asked. “Who leaves, who stays and why?”
Little studying required
According to the 2007 NSSE data, WSU students report studying an average of 10 to 15 hours per week, about half of what a student taking 12 credit hours is supposed to spend studying outside of class.
If students are passing their classes on 10 to 12 hours of study each week, he said, they aren’t being challenged.
“People learn because they work it,” he said, it takes brute force and thousands of hours. “To be world class in anything requires 25,000 to 50,000 hours of practice,” he said, but according to the NSSE, some students are graduating from WSU with just over 1,000 hours of study.
“The amount of effort your students tell you they are putting in is not anywhere near what it takes to become world class,” he said.
But again, Angelo did not recommend increasing time on memorizing facts or principles, but on pushing students to be reflective learners and self-directed and resourceful learners.
And the key to that, he said, is designing more challenging courses that truly demand the kind of thinking and learning that faculty say they want to encourage. “There has to be no other way out,” he said. “Students will study hard and learn deeply,” but there has to be “virtually no escape.”
Charismatic teacher myth
Earlier in the day, Angelo had spoken of “the myth of the charismatic teacher.” Charismatic teachers are great, he said, and it is nice if everyone has at least one during his or her academic career. But, he said, the institutional mission cannot be sustained by those inspirational few, nor should it be.
“It’s not how (gifted) the teachers are,” he said, “it’s how well the course is designed.”
When looking at retention issues, he said, research shows that universities have about three weeks to engage a student, and that holds true for whether the student is struggling or whether the student is highly capable. So, he said, those first-year courses are hugely important and must be very carefully considered and constructed, and they must work in concert.
At universities that are doing the first-year well, he said, those first-year classes are often the responsibility of a university-wide unit. “No department can fix that by itself,” he said.
Seven Transformative Guidelines for Doing Assesments as If Learning Matters Most
* Build shared trust
* Build a shared language
* Build shared motivation
* Design backward and work forward
* Think and act systematically
* Take a scholarly approach
* Don’t assume, ask
