http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/coursedesign/tutorial/strategies.html



On the Cutting Edge - Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
Designing Effective and Innovative Courses
Topical Resources

Cutting Edge > Course Design > Course Design Tutorial > Table of contents > Part 2 index > Assessing student learning

If you have dropped into this Course Design Tutorial from somewhere else, you might wish to start at the introduction, overview, or table of contents.
2.3 Assessing Student Learning
At this stage of the tutorial, you have set overarching goals, organized content, developed a course plan, and selected teaching strategies for specific assignments and activities to help students achieve course goals. In this section of the tutorial, you will decide how to assess student learning in your course. If you have developed activities and assignments, you have already developed some assessment strategies for your course.
What kinds of assessment strategies can you use to determine the extent to which students have met the goals of your course? Assessment of student learning can range from informal assessments of whether students are "getting it" (such as observing a well-informed, articulate discussion of a topic or noticing that students' eyes have glazed over in class), to formal assessments of student learning that contribute to their grades in the course, to research on how students are learning in a specific class. In this tutorial, we focus on assessments used to determine grades, including some informal assessments that might or might not be graded but that provide valuable information about whether students are "getting it". We encourage you to use a matrix of your goals and assessment strategies to make sure that your assessments are aligned with your goals.
________________________________________
Start by downloading the worksheet (Microsoft Word 37kB Jun20 05) that goes with this part, and use it as you work through the sections below.
________________________________________
Task 2.3: Exploring assessment strategies
Below, you will find a list of assessment strategies with links to more information and examples about selected strategies. Keeping the goals of your course in mind, browse the list to find strategies that you could use to assess student learning. Be sure to keep in mind the context and constraints of your course. Go to the course plan that you have developed in Parts 2.1 and 2.2, and add assessments as appropriate. You may decide that the student activities and assignments you have planned are sufficient to meet your goals, or you may decide that you need to add more and/or different strategies. Use the worksheet to check that your assessments are aligned with your goals.
________________________________________
Assessment strategies
The list of assessment strategies below includes only some of the many possibilities. A useful set of assessment resources is available at the Cutting Edge website Understanding What Our Geoscience Students Are Learning: Observing and Assessing. This site includes a page on Assessment Tools and Instruments and a page on Assessment Types. A primer on assessment in the geosciences is available at the Starting Point site.
ConcepTests are conceptual multiple-choice questions used during class that provide immediate assessment of student understanding. More than 300 ConcepTest questions are available on the Starting Point website. Using electronic response systems provides the instructor with immediate feedback about the distribution of answers in the class. Learn more about assessment and ConcepTests here.
Minute papers are one type of classroom assessment technique that will give you an indication of student understanding of a particular topic. A one-minute paper can be used at the end of the class by asking students to write on one of the following questions.
• What was the most important thing you learned in today's class?
• What question do you have about today's class?
• What was the muddiest point of today's class?
Students write their answers on index cards or slips of paper that are turned in at the end of class and can be graded or not. learn more here (more info)

Problem sets can be a useful way to give students practice in solving problems, doing quantitative work outside class time, and practice specific techniques. Problem sets are standard in many science courses and can be an effective assessment strategy in entry-level as well as upper-level courses.
Labs can provide another way to assess student learning. The type of assessment might be a lab report, completion of the lab handout, a research project write-up, or some other assigment.
Concept maps can also be used for assessment. Learn more about assessment using concept maps.
Exams and quizzes are commonly used to assess student learning. They also force students to process information and help prevent students from disengaging in a course. Students need to process information in one way or another to learn. In studying for exams, students read, memborize, organize information, test themselves with questions, and with vary ing degrees of success, process the material for that particular section of the course. Processing inforamtion in a blitz of studying before each exam is not the ideal way to learn material, nor in many courses is it the only way students learn material. Studying before exams is, however, one of the most common ways in which students learn in a course. Exams can include mutiple choice questions, short answers, essay questions, questions about graphs or diagrams, and so forth. If you choose to use exams, it's a good idea to ask yourself how much of the exam requires students to use higher order thinking skills and how much of it requires lower order thinking skills and whether you are satisfied by your answer in light of the goals of your course.
Cooperative exams, also called "two-stage" or "pyramid exams", are exams that are taken by groups of students working together after they have completed the original exam individually. When done in one class period, students take the exam individually for the first part of the class. Then, when all students have turned in the exam, they retake the exam working in groups and, in some cases, in an open-book, open-notes format. Commonly these exams are multiple-choice exams with or without some short answer questions; the cooperative part may also have one or two longer questions. The instructors we know who use this type of exam base the total exam score for each student on 70-75% of the individual exam and 25-30% of the group exam.
Richard Yuretich and Mark Leckie use "two-stage" exams with a significant collaborative component in a 600-student oceanography class that was transformed by modifying lectures to include cooperative learning via interactive in-class exercises and directed discussion. The transformation is described in an article in the Journal of Geoscience Education, Active-Learning Methods to Improve Student Performance and Scientific Interest in a Large Introductory Oceanography Class (Yuretich et al., 2001 ).
Randy Richardson, University of Arizona, also uses two-stage exams in A Geologic Perspective, a large physical science course. He gives an example of one exam (Microsoft Word 86kB Jun20 05), the answer sheet (Microsoft Word 25kB Jun20 05) for the individual part of the exam, the answer sheet (Microsoft Word 25kB Jun20 05) for the collaborative part of the exam, and the instructions (Microsoft Word 29kB Jun20 05)for the exam given to the Disability Center for administering the exam, which explicity lay out the ground rules for the collaborative part of the exam given that he is not present at the Disability Center when the exam starts.
Written and oral assignments such as papers, oral presentations, debates, simulations, and so forth can also be used to assess student learning. In some courses, frequent written and oral assignents can replace traditional exams. In some exam-free courses students prepare one or two short written assignments each week in which they summarize the critical aspects of a reading assignment, relate data ro readings, make comparisions with what they have learned previously, take positions on issues, and analyse or synthesize information and ideas. These assignments then serve as the basis for group or class discussion and oral presentations or require students to pull together information from a series of classes either to solve a problem or to present a summary analysis of a particular topic. The activities that students are engaged in to learn the material are also used to evaluate their accomplishments. This is a type of authentic assessment, an approach to assessment designed to correspond as closely as possible to real world experience.
Grading rubrics
Grading rubrics are written guidelines by which student work is evaluated. They typically articulate items on which student work is judged as well as the standards necessary to achieve certain grades.
Grading rubrics are useful primarily when you have something to grade that isn't simply a matter of right or wrong fro which points can be easily assigned. Thus, they are useful for written work projects and oral work, rather than problem sets or short answer assignments. They allow you to evaluate a number of different facets of a student's work quite easily and rather quickly. Rubrics allow you to lay out specific criteria as well as standards that must be met for a student to earn an A on a particular assignment.
Grading rubrics are useful for encouraging students to give more thorough, thoughful, creative, or well-supported answers. May students produce work that is substsantially correct but of only average insight, thoroughtness, or creativity. Using a rubric, a correct answer of average completeness and insight can be given an average grade (a C+, a B-, a 3, or whatever you believe average work to be worth in your grading scheme), while an above-average grade (and A, a 5, or whatever) can be reserved for truly exceptional insight, throroughness, or creativity. Examples of grading rubrics for written assignments and oral presentations such as might be given at the beginning of the course are included here (Microsoft Word 42kB Jun20 05) and an example of an assignment and associated specific rubrics for that assignment are included here (Microsoft Word 98kB Jun20 05).
Advice for using rubrics
• Establish a standard at the start of the term for what you consider to be average work, and publicize it to the students. Many students believe that if they simply do an assignment, they ought to receive an A. If this is your sense as well, that is perfectly fine, but you should still let students know that. If, on the other hand, you believe that an average job (substantially correct, workmanlike, does-the-job) ought to receive an average grade rather than an outstanding grade, you should let students know that it takes an uncommonly insightful answer to get an A. You should also let them know what you consider to be an average grade.
• Hand out an appropriate grading rubric at the time you hand out an assignment so that students know what your standards will be and what you will be evaluating their assignments on when you grade it. Some instructors include a general grading rubric on their syllabus.
• Take the time to write at least one comment on the rubric as you grade papers - don't let the rubric do all the communicating for you.
• Post examples of average, above average, and superior work, with names suitably removed. A 3 does, in fact, look different from a 4 and substantially different from a 5, and students can benefit from seeing what the difference is between a correct, workmanlike job and a truly exceptional paper.
For additional information about rubrics, see Developing Scoring Rubrics in the Starting Point primer on assessment.

____
???2005 On-line Course Design Tutorial developed by Dr. Barbara J. Tewksbury (Hamilton College) and Dr. R. Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary) as part of the program On the Cutting Edge, funded by NSF grant DUE-0127310.

« Previous Page Next Page »
• Cutting Edge
o Affective Domain
o BiocomplexityCareer DevelopmentCareer PrepClimate Change...click to see 4 more...
o Course Design
 Workshop 07
 Course Design Tutorial

 Tutorial overview
 Table of contents
 Part 1 index
 Part 2 index
 Course plan
 Teaching strategies
 Assessing student learning
 Syllabus
 Part 3 index
 Faculty professional development
 Workshop 02
 Workshop 03
 Workshop 04
 Workshop 05
 Workshop 06
o Data, Simulations and Models
o Discoveries from Mars
o Early Career
o Early Earth
o Energy
o Field Experiences
o Geochemistry
o Geology and Human Health
o Geomorphology
o Geophysics
o Hurricanes-Climate Change Connection
o Hydrogeology
o Introductory Courses
o Leadership
o Metacognition
o Mineralogy
o Ocean System
o Online Games
o Paleontology
o Petrology
o Public Policy
o Rates and Time
o Sedimentary Geology
o Structural Geology
o Student Learning: Observing and Assessing
o Urban Geology
o Visualization
o Web-Based Resources




Last Modified: October 02, 2008 | Printing | Shortcut: http://serc.carleton.edu/9745 | Privacy | Terms of Use | Report a Problem/Feedback


On the Cutting Edge - Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
Designing Effective and Innovative Courses
Topical Resources

Cutting Edge > Course Design > Course Design Tutorial > Table of contents > Part 2 index > Syllabus

If you have dropped into this Course Design Tutorial from somewhere else, you might wish to start at the introduction, overview, or table of contents.
2.4 Creating the course syllabus
At this stage of the tutorial, you have set overarching goals, organized content, developed a course plan, selected teaching and assessment strategies, and begun to develop some specific assignments and activities. In this section of the tutorial, you will develop your course syllabus, considering the issues raised below, the list of what could be included in a syllabus, and reading a few examples of syllabi.
A detailed syllabus gives students a sense of the nature of the course, what they will be expected to do in the course, and how their performance will be assessed. In many cases, the syllabus is viewed as a contract between you and the students. Whether considered a legal contract or not, a syllabus should be clear about policies and procedures related to the course. Some institutions have specific requirements regarding what should be included on the syllabus.
Three Points to Consider
Goals: A syllabus should be more than the course schedule. You've worked hard to articulate the goals for the course and including them on the syllabus makes it clear to the students what they should be able to do when they have completed the course.
Expectations: While syllabi generally include something about your expectations of students (e.g., assignments, due dates, exams), it is helpful to be specific about other things you expect of students (e.g., your expectations for class participation, attendance, class preparation, their responsibility for learning) and why you have those expectations. It is also important to be clear about what students can expect of you (e.g., the time frame in which you will return assignments, how you will handle late work, that you will start and end class on time).
Tone: A syllabus helps to set the tone for the course. Consider your syllabus from the perspective of a student who is considering taking your class. Do you seem approachable? Welcoming? Organized? Excited about the course?
Syllabus components
• Information about the instructor (and TA) including name, office number, telephone number, email, and office hours
• Course title and other course information including meeting times, room number, credits, prerequisite courses or skills, co-requisite courses, course website
• Titles and authors of required/recommended textbooks
• Course goals
• Statement of why students should want to take your course
• Describe how the course relates to students' lives
• Course description, which might include the "big questions" this course will addres and/or how the course fits into the discipline and the curriculum
• Some type of graphic or image that is related to the course content
• Course schedule including dates of field trips and other scheduled meetings outside class time; this might convey the conceptual structure used to organize the course
• Information about assignments and assessments including types of assignments and assessments, nature of exams (take home, open book, in-class) due dates, grading criteria and grading scale, rubrics, and so forth)
• Other course requirements such as attending an office hour or forming study groups
• Description of students' responsibilities in the learning process
• How you hope the students will approach the readings, take responsibility for their learning, the amount of study time expected in the course
• Statement that the syllabus is subject to change
• Policies on attendance, academic integrity, late assignments, missed exams, cell phones
• Important dates such as last day to withdraw from the course
• Suggestions on how to succeed in the course such as strategies for studying, taking tests, and taking notes, information about campus resources
• Statement regarding accommodation for students with disabilities
Sample Syllabi
Sedimentology and Stratigraphy (Acrobat (PDF) 127kB Jun20 05)
Earth's Environmental Systems (Microsoft Word 34kB Jun20 05)
Geology and Development of Modern Africa (Microsoft Word 62kB Jun20 05)
Planetary Geology (Microsoft Word 6.3MB Jun20 05)
Structural Geology (Microsoft Word 43kB Jun20 05)
________________________________________
Assignment 2.4: Creating your course syllabus
Develop your course syllabus, making sure you include your goals, clearly state what you expect from students and what they can expect from you, and consider the tone you want to convey through the syllabus.
________________________________________
Additional resources

Creating a Syllabus from Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis
Syllabus Components, one of the Teaching Resources: Planning and Policies, Arizona State University, Center for Teaching and Learning
Building a Better Syllabus, Nutshell Notes (Teaching tips in a nutshell - One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence), University of Colorado at Denver, Office of Teaching Effectiveness
Syllabus Construction Guide by Lester A. Lefton, University of South Carolina, Institutional Planning and Assessment
Notes from Learning-Centered Syllabi Workshop prepared by Lee Haugen in 1998, Iowa State University, Center for Teaching and Learning
Syllabus Construction by Greyson H. Walker, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Teaching Resource Center
Syllabus Construction Handbook, Chemeketa Community College, Opportunity Center
Designing a Learning-Centered Syllabus, University of Delaware, Center for Teaching Effectiveness

____
???2005 On-line Course Design Tutorial developed by Dr. Barbara J. Tewksbury (Hamilton College) and Dr. R. Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary) as part of the program On the Cutting Edge, funded by NSF grant DUE-0127310.

« Previous Page Next Page »
• Cutting Edge
o Affective Domain
o BiocomplexityCareer DevelopmentCareer PrepClimate Change...click to see 4 more...
o Course Design
 Workshop 07
 Course Design Tutorial

 Tutorial overview
 Table of contents
 Part 1 index
 Part 2 index
 Course plan
 Teaching strategies
 Assessing student learning
 Syllabus
 Part 3 index
 Faculty professional development
 Workshop 02
 Workshop 03
 Workshop 04
 Workshop 05
 Workshop 06
o Data, Simulations and Models
o Discoveries from Mars
o Early Career
o Early Earth
o Energy
o Field Experiences
o Geochemistry
o Geology and Human Health
o Geomorphology
o Geophysics
o Hurricanes-Climate Change Connection
o Hydrogeology
o Introductory Courses
o Leadership
o Metacognition
o Mineralogy
o Ocean System
o Online Games
o Paleontology
o Petrology
o Public Policy
o Rates and Time
o Sedimentary Geology
o Structural Geology
o Student Learning: Observing and Assessing
o Urban Geology
o Visualization
o Web-Based Resources




Last Modified: June 12, 2008 | Printing | Shortcut: http://serc.carleton.edu/9886 | Privacy | Terms of Use | Report a Problem/Feedback


On the Cutting Edge - Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
Designing Effective and Innovative Courses
Topical Resources

Cutting Edge > Course Design > Course Design Tutorial > Table of contents > Part 2 index > Syllabus

If you have dropped into this Course Design Tutorial from somewhere else, you might wish to start at the introduction, overview, or table of contents.
2.4 Creating the course syllabus
At this stage of the tutorial, you have set overarching goals, organized content, developed a course plan, selected teaching and assessment strategies, and begun to develop some specific assignments and activities. In this section of the tutorial, you will develop your course syllabus, considering the issues raised below, the list of what could be included in a syllabus, and reading a few examples of syllabi.
A detailed syllabus gives students a sense of the nature of the course, what they will be expected to do in the course, and how their performance will be assessed. In many cases, the syllabus is viewed as a contract between you and the students. Whether considered a legal contract or not, a syllabus should be clear about policies and procedures related to the course. Some institutions have specific requirements regarding what should be included on the syllabus.
Three Points to Consider
Goals: A syllabus should be more than the course schedule. You've worked hard to articulate the goals for the course and including them on the syllabus makes it clear to the students what they should be able to do when they have completed the course.
Expectations: While syllabi generally include something about your expectations of students (e.g., assignments, due dates, exams), it is helpful to be specific about other things you expect of students (e.g., your expectations for class participation, attendance, class preparation, their responsibility for learning) and why you have those expectations. It is also important to be clear about what students can expect of you (e.g., the time frame in which you will return assignments, how you will handle late work, that you will start and end class on time).
Tone: A syllabus helps to set the tone for the course. Consider your syllabus from the perspective of a student who is considering taking your class. Do you seem approachable? Welcoming? Organized? Excited about the course?
Syllabus components
• Information about the instructor (and TA) including name, office number, telephone number, email, and office hours
• Course title and other course information including meeting times, room number, credits, prerequisite courses or skills, co-requisite courses, course website
• Titles and authors of required/recommended textbooks
• Course goals
• Statement of why students should want to take your course
• Describe how the course relates to students' lives
• Course description, which might include the "big questions" this course will addres and/or how the course fits into the discipline and the curriculum
• Some type of graphic or image that is related to the course content
• Course schedule including dates of field trips and other scheduled meetings outside class time; this might convey the conceptual structure used to organize the course
• Information about assignments and assessments including types of assignments and assessments, nature of exams (take home, open book, in-class) due dates, grading criteria and grading scale, rubrics, and so forth)
• Other course requirements such as attending an office hour or forming study groups
• Description of students' responsibilities in the learning process
• How you hope the students will approach the readings, take responsibility for their learning, the amount of study time expected in the course
• Statement that the syllabus is subject to change
• Policies on attendance, academic integrity, late assignments, missed exams, cell phones
• Important dates such as last day to withdraw from the course
• Suggestions on how to succeed in the course such as strategies for studying, taking tests, and taking notes, information about campus resources
• Statement regarding accommodation for students with disabilities
Sample Syllabi
Sedimentology and Stratigraphy (Acrobat (PDF) 127kB Jun20 05)
Earth's Environmental Systems (Microsoft Word 34kB Jun20 05)
Geology and Development of Modern Africa (Microsoft Word 62kB Jun20 05)
Planetary Geology (Microsoft Word 6.3MB Jun20 05)
Structural Geology (Microsoft Word 43kB Jun20 05)
________________________________________
Assignment 2.4: Creating your course syllabus
Develop your course syllabus, making sure you include your goals, clearly state what you expect from students and what they can expect from you, and consider the tone you want to convey through the syllabus.
________________________________________
Additional resources

Creating a Syllabus from Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis
Syllabus Components, one of the Teaching Resources: Planning and Policies, Arizona State University, Center for Teaching and Learning
Building a Better Syllabus, Nutshell Notes (Teaching tips in a nutshell - One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence), University of Colorado at Denver, Office of Teaching Effectiveness
Syllabus Construction Guide by Lester A. Lefton, University of South Carolina, Institutional Planning and Assessment
Notes from Learning-Centered Syllabi Workshop prepared by Lee Haugen in 1998, Iowa State University, Center for Teaching and Learning
Syllabus Construction by Greyson H. Walker, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Teaching Resource Center
Syllabus Construction Handbook, Chemeketa Community College, Opportunity Center
Designing a Learning-Centered Syllabus, University of Delaware, Center for Teaching Effectiveness

____
???2005 On-line Course Design Tutorial developed by Dr. Barbara J. Tewksbury (Hamilton College) and Dr. R. Heather Macdonald (College of William and Mary) as part of the program On the Cutting Edge, funded by NSF grant DUE-0127310.

« Previous Page Next Page »
• Cutting Edge
o Affective Domain
o BiocomplexityCareer DevelopmentCareer PrepClimate Change...click to see 4 more...
o Course Design
 Workshop 07
 Course Design Tutorial

 Tutorial overview
 Table of contents
 Part 1 index
 Part 2 index
 Course plan
 Teaching strategies
 Assessing student learning
 Syllabus
 Part 3 index
 Faculty professional development
 Workshop 02
 Workshop 03
 Workshop 04
 Workshop 05
 Workshop 06
o Data, Simulations and Models
o Discoveries from Mars
o Early Career
o Early Earth
o Energy
o Field Experiences
o Geochemistry
o Geology and Human Health
o Geomorphology
o Geophysics
o Hurricanes-Climate Change Connection
o Hydrogeology
o Introductory Courses
o Leadership
o Metacognition
o Mineralogy
o Ocean System
o Online Games
o Paleontology
o Petrology
o Public Policy
o Rates and Time
o Sedimentary Geology
o Structural Geology
o Student Learning: Observing and Assessing
o Urban Geology
o Visualization
o Web-Based Resources




Last Modified: June 12, 2008 | Printing | Shortcut: http://serc.carleton.edu/9886 | Privacy | Terms of Use | Report a Problem/Feedback