Finger Lakes Community College hosted an assessment workshop today. It was led by Linda Suskie, a VP with Middle States. She has written a book (Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide; first edition available in Milne and second edition on sale) that I am going to check out. I really believe it will help me make assessment more practical in a number of ways. I think it is going to help me improve how we might assess our outcomes at the classroom level while applying it to our broader departmental goals. I think it will also help me create more effective rubrics for grading papers and essays.
Mostly, I liked the opening conversation we had about assessment. OK folks, let's not make a big deal out of this! Assessment is simply "deciding what we want our students to learn - and making sure they learn it!"
If anyone wants to talk more about how we might be able to do that more effectively and with less work, drop me an email.
cheers,
Andrew