Chapter 7 and Angelo, Thomas A., and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Print.
- Concept Maps
- Description
- Students create drawings or diagrams that show connections between major and minor concepts
- Purpose
- Observable assessment of student’s schemata – webs of associates they hold for various concepts
- Can compare teacher and student mental maps of content
- Students build awareness and control over the connections they are making with content
- Can assess prior knowledge
- Step-by-Step Procedure
- Select a concept that is central to content and has lots of conceptual associations
- Practice making a concept
- lay down primary connections
- then lay down secondary and tertiary connections
- draw lines connecting concepts with descriptions of the relationships on the line
- Model how to make concept map in collaboration with students
- think aloud while adding concepts and relationship lines to the map
- ask for students to volunteer topics and relationships
- Give students time to create concept maps of their own on a different topic
- Analysis Steps
- Compare student concept maps with teacher generated ones
- Can code for or scan for similarities and differences in
- primary / secondary / tertiary relationships
- types of relationships among concepts and their descriptions
- Extension Ides
- Use large grid graph paper for concept maps so that students can reasonably use distance among concepts to represent their degree of relatedness
- Assign concept map as a small group assessment
- Ask students to write explanatory essays based on their concept maps
- Pros
- Backs up cognitive research on the value of being aware of one’s mental maps
- Visual way to see students’ mental associations
- Favors visual learners who are at a disadvantage at verbal assessments
- Helps students be aware of mental associations and their ability to grow and change them
- Can serve as a note-taking and pre-writing activity
- Cons
- Comparisons among student responses are difficulty to make
- Non-visual learners may find this activity frustrating
- Caveats
- Clarify how to identify primary, secondary and tertiary relationships and how to use phrases to describe specific relationships by modeling how to make a concept map with students (use think aloud a lot while doing this)
- Description
- Invented Dialogues
- Description
- Students create dialogues between key characters or key people by using actual quotes or by inventing reasonable quotes to represent their points of view
- Purpose
- Students practice capturing the essence of other’s perspectives and styles of communication
- Improve understanding of theories, controversies and opinions
- Students practice creatively synthesizing, adapting and extrapolating beyond the material being studied
- Step-by-Step Procedure
- Select 1 or more controversial issues, theories, decisions, or personalities associated that are associated with important topics in the course and lend themselves to dialogue
- Write a short model dialogue that goes with associated people and topics
- Make transcripts of famous speeches, debates and correspondence available to students
- Prepare a handout that includes instructions, guidelines for using quotes, expectations, etc. Provide guidelines that show how to use quotes to create original dialogue.
- Discuss your model dialogue with the class. Describe how it meets criteria and guidelines. Demonstrate through think aloud how you created the dialogue
- Give time in class to start the dialogue.
- Encourage students in teams to give feedback on dialogues by taking turns reading aloud dialogues and giving warm and cool feedback.
- Analysis Steps
- Can assess dialogues for several qualities
- number and quality of key points
- quality of reasoning in exchanges
- degree to which speakers stay “in character”
- Can assess dialogues for several qualities
- Extension Ides
- Have students work in jigsaw paris. Each is responsible for one point of view and together they combines their research to create a dialogue representing multiple points of view.
- Ask students to act out part of their dialogues live in class or in video.
- Provide specific feedback on dialogues that will help students refine them to finished products. See Writing Workshop article for details.
- Convert key ideas in dialogues into essays
- Pros
- Draws on higher order thinking skills more than essays
- A lot of room for student choice
- Assess students’ knowledge of content and creativity skills
- Can help students internalize theories
- Cons
- Hard and time-consuming for teachers and students
- Students who doubt their creativity may balk at this technique
- Students who are not used to writing balanced written pieces may need extra coaching
- Caveats
- Start with limited topics and modest guidelines
- Don’t be too concerned if first products are not very convincing
- Too many guidelines may stunt creative thinking
- Describe how you thought through challenges while constructing your own dialogues to show students that struggle is normal and tips for overcoming struggle
- Description
- Annotated Portfolios
- Description
- Students create a collection of examples of creative work, supplemented with students’ own commentary of the significance of each selected example.
- Purpose
- Assess how students’s creative work aligns to the learning targets of the course
- Students practice applying content to new contexts
- Students build metacognition of how their work aligns with course goals
- Step-by-Step Procedure
- Choose one of the central topics or problems of the course. Ask students to respond to that topic or problem with 2 of 3 work samples that demonstrate creativity.
- Ask students to write how each work sample responds to the proposed topic or problem. If needed, provide sample annotations for students to use as models
- Have students turn in their works samples and commentary in an folder, binder or envelope.
- Analysis Steps
- Portfolios can be assessed for several factors including:
- Students’ creativity in resolving the topic or problem
- Quality of synthesis in annotations in commentary
- how well do these incorporate information related to course learning targets
- Portfolios can be assessed for several factors including:
- Extension Ides
- Use as an first draft for a final portfolio that students will submit after they’ve had time to respond to descriptive feedback
- Encourage students to add work as the course progresses and update their annotations to show their growth
- Let students develop their own focus prompt for the portfolio as long as it aligns with course learning targets
- Arrange an exhibition to display portfolios. See this article on Learning Fairs.
- Pros
- Students can use images AND prose to show solutions to problems
- Student select personally meaningful examples and connect these to course goals
- Teacher learns what students value and appreciate
- Can help prepare students to present their work to prospective employers
- Cons
- If it’s not carefully integrated into the course, students may see academic value in it
- Take a significant amount of time to assess
- Students may spend too much time selecting pieces and not enough time interpreting them
- Caveats
- Use guidelines to make portfolios more comparable
- Link portfolio to a larger graded assignments to reward students for the time that goes into this
- Description
The strategies above all require students to actively process and make personal connections with content in order to create new products. They all build metacognition – knowledge of how one is learning a course. Being more aware of the connections one is making can give one better control over these relationships so that they can be deliberately cultivated and changed.
Preparation Steps
- Analyze central topics and problems in upcoming projects.
- Decide whether or not any of the strategies above can be used to process the central topic or problem in ways that are helpful and meaningful.
- Develop model products for the selected strategies.
Early Implementation Steps
- Introduce the strategy by showing a teacher-created model and talking through how that model was created. Be sure to model what challenges arose and what strategies were used to overcome these challenge.
- Provide class time for students to work on the strategy and get timely teacher and peer feedback.
- Assess products using rubrics if that’s practical.
Advanced Implementation Steps
- Incorporate works into larger products that be featured in live displays of student work – especially the dialogues and the portfolios.
- Adopt student’s favorite strategies into classroom routines.
