Goals, Activities, and Processes Formative Assessment Surveys Tom Henderson, Washington State University The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (CTLT) at Washington State University (WSU) has developed a series of three online surveys.  The trio of surveys is designed to provide formative assessment of courses that have adapted educational technologies such as WebCT, The Bridge, or interactive video.  The surveys are administered using CTLSilhouette, which is used to host Flashlight Online.  Instructors using technology to delivery their courses are invited to participate in the assessment process.   Specifically, the three surveys are designed to provide a snapshot of the complex inter-relationships between faculty and student goals, the activities instructors use to accomplish those goals, and students’ responses to and perceptions of the effectiveness of those activities and the teaching/learning processes.  GAPs consist of a survey to instructors during the first few weeks of the term asking their goals for their course and their planned activities for that course.  This survey is followed in two weeks by a survey to students, asking students their goals for the course and what activities they think best assess their work.  A second student survey follows approximately 4 weeks later.  Questions in this survey are based on the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education."  Instructors are invited to participate in the process via email.  They are provided summaries of their class's responses (which the CTLT keeps confidential) compared to responses from all respondents.

A few of the interesting and useful findings include:

• Over 80% of instructors rank the goal of improving "critical thinking skills" as extremely important or very important. 

• On the other hand, only 59% of students surveyed identified critical thinking as extremely or very important.
  
  These results support work at WSU to distribute an adaptable critical thinking rubric and strategy to help instructors across all disciplines communicate both the importance and skills involved in critical thinking.
  

• Courses that go through WSU’s formal multidisciplinary design process score significantly higher on questions based on established principles of good practice, such as student collaboration and faculty-student interaction, etc. 
  
  This finding, tied with a cost study showing that development and delivery time are both inversely correlated to design time, is helping to formulate a key strategy at WSU of increasing quality while reducing costs through the design process.
  

• Some instructors are not yet accustomed to using formative assessment tools in their classes, at least not in their online classes.  A telephone survey of instructors who had relatively high response rates from their students showed that just a few actually used the data during that term. 
  
  This finding has alerted us to the need to develop clear strategies to help instructors interpret and apply what they are learning from the GAPs process.

The GAPs surveys have surfaced many other interesting findings.  We are still analyzing survey data.  Flashlight Online (or CTLSilhouette at WSU) is becoming a key method of delivering formative course assessment at Washington State University.  Further information about this semester's GAPs surveys can be found at  http://assessment.ctlt.wsu.edu/fall2001gaps/.  If you are interested in participating or have further questions please contact Tom Henderson, the CTLT Assessment Coordinator, at tom@wsu.edu.

Sources and further information:

  A web page with information about the GAPs surveys is at: http://assessment.ctlt.wsu.edu/fall2001gaps/.

Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education—Special Section pamphlet. The Wingspread Journal, 9 (2), 1-11.

Chickering, A. W. & Ehrmann, S.C., "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever" http://www.aahe.org/technology/ehrmann.htm

Information about the "Teaching Goals Inventory" can be found in:

Angelo, T., & Cross, P. K. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

A short article about using CTLSilhouette (Flashlight Online) for Classroom Assessment Techniques can be found at:

Henderson, Tom (2001) "Classroom Assessment Techniques in Asynchronous Learning Networks." The Technology Source, September/October 2001. Available online at http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=908

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