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Over the years, I've led
quite a few workshops for faculty about how to use evidence
from their own courses in order to improve their
teaching. Some participants in those workshops had a real
problem understanding this fundamental idea.
Here's a little self-test of whether you
understand one of the most fundamental ideas behind using
assessment or evaluation to improve learning.
Imagine that your friend
Mary is teaching a course at her commuter institution. Early
in the term she began asking students to pair up, exchange
homework online, and critique one another's work. After
that each student could make changes in his or her own
homework if desired, then send it to Mary for grading. Mary
had decided that using e-mail was necessary for this because
most students had no opportunity to meet outside of the
classroom.
Unfortunately results on
the first quiz didn't show the improvement (compared with
last term's score on the same quiz) that she'd been
expecting. She's now written to you for advice. "Before I
try rethinking all my assignments," she writes to you, "I'd
like to get some information from my students that might
give me a clue about what (if anything) is wrong about my
theory or assumptions.
What do you think I should ask my students, or observe
about them, in order to help me decide what to do next in my
teaching?"
Here are two options for
how you might answer Mary's question.
A) Mary, you might
find out how many actually did collaborate online when
doing their homework. If some had trouble, then find
out how many of them use e-mail outside this class. Also
how many of them distrust collaboration as a way of
studying?
B) Mary, many students
assume that this kind of exchange is a waste of time, or
cheating. Explain to them how collaborative learning
might help them learn. And you also should probably work
harder at explaining to them how to use e-mail and how
to attach files.
Don't answer that question.
Instead, here's the question I'd like you to
answer.
Which
of those two answers, A or B, is a better response to the
boldfaced question above that Mary asked you? (Review what
Mary asked before answering. There shouldn't be anything
subtle or tricky about this. If you understand the idea of
using evidence to improve practice, the answer should be
obvious.)
- A is a pretty good answer to
Mary's question, but B is not
- B is a
pretty good answer to Mary's question, but A is not
- Both A
and B are pretty good answers to Mary's question
- Neither
A nor B is an appropriate answer to Mary's question.
I hope you'll answer online
and tell me why you answered the way you did. (Click
here to answer online). If you do, I can tell you and
later readers about typical responses. I hope you'll respond
before 'turning' to the next page - no fair peeking! Once I
get more than just ten responses, I'll add a summary of
responses to date at the end of this article.
Click here to see more of
this article.
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