Maybe. At the college, we’ve just been through a semester-long revision of our General Education system. In the future we should see several of these cycles, where faculty and staff at the college sit down and ask questions: what do we want our students to know and do? What new? What’s old? What’s enduring or emergent?

We’re attempting to set into place a system of “formative, performance-based” assessment that shapes the curriculum as a whole. In practice, faculty at the college and university have always assessed student performance. Exams, quizzes, tests, mid-terms, whatever–these are measures of performance after a given period of practice and learning.

Does a student vigorously pursue a question? Can they identify and examine metaphor? Can they calculate the change of speed or Riemann sums? These are typical questions. How well a student performs defines the range of their learning. I’ve been practicing this kind of assessment for many years now in the Humanities. This experience has given me the opportunity to try different approaches to measuring what my students are able to demonstrate and thus to assess their performance and my performance as well. It’s been interesting to watch student come at literature, media projects, and analyses in this context.

One of the significant issues I’ve faced has to do with attitude. Mine, not the students. Typically I ask students not to worry so much about making the deadline, but that the deadline is real nonetheless. I’ve also informed my students that they don’t have to complete their papers or exams. They don’t even have to come to class. Why? Because this is true. Students don’t have to complete work, take a test, or come to class. No prison sentence will come of this. They may not pass into hell, either. I used to worry myself to death about students completing their work and doing everything I asked. Now, I try not to. They’ve paid their money and will address their commitments to the degree that they able at a given time.

I typically tell students that if they want to be “assessed” then they should complete their work and come to class and study and study and study. None of this can be forced. The philosophy goes like this: if a student wants their performance to be checked at a given time, typically at those times when I set deadlines on the calendar, they are certainly encouraged to do so by handing in an analysis, research paper, or project. In this procedure, an assessment becomes an “opportunity” for a student to show their ability. Kind of like a fullback demonstrating his ability to dodge linebackers or a scientist given the opportunity to solve a challenging problem in the field. There are little problems to solve along the way, readings for discussion, issues to debate, and practice challenges that build skills to be applied to larger projects in the future, like mastering the router on scrap before tackling the hundred dollar sheet goods. If student participate in these, then the big research paper should come together pretty well, or the big exam should be manageable; the cabinet will fit in the nook and the bridge should sustain its burdens.

Long hours of practice in college cannot be taught, but they can be encouraged, and habits can be changed and become durable. We see students with good and not so good work habits. These habits are shaped and reinforced long before Freshman year.

What are excellent methods for students to show ability in the analysis of literature and what methods of exposure, discussion, feedback, and dialogue best promote student and faculty ability. My World Lit students discussed the wiki as a method that got them thinking by building. It wasn’t always perfect; and neither I nor the students sought perfection. We had excellent discussions in class that probed the nuances of Homer and the Shi Jing and the students had opportunities to demonstrate what they learned.

Much more is to be done. Sure, we can collect data. We have the software for this. We can compare performance across departments by shared ability. We can do all kinds of interesting things that give faculty interesting looks at institutional effectiveness. But what really matters is the relationship students build with faculty and that these relationships lead to cool builds, exciting ideas, and meaningful decisions.

David England and I hit the NEASC meetup on Wednesday, visiting the organization’s annual meeting for a presentation on Thursday entitled “Institutional Research that Supports Faculty Investment in Assessment.”

We arrived in Boston just in time for lunch. After lunch I attended a session called “Measuring Depth of Learning in the Humanities” moderated by Bruce Mallory, CIHE Commissioner. The presenters included Orin L. Grossman, Academic Vice President, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT; Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, President, Marlboro College, Marlboro, VT; David Scobey, Director, Harward Center for Community Partnerships, Bates College, Lewiston, ME. The description for this presentation is:

Faculty in the humanities disciplines find it more challenging to engage in assessment in ways similar to faculty in other disciplines. This session will address these challenges, suggest useful venues and structures, and provide examples of tools and methods for enabling faculty in the humanities to engage in assessment in ways they find most useful and appropriate.

My response to this presentation was mixed. I never really found an explanation for the central focus–the “more challenging” issue–as I find that the Humanities is readily pumped to do assessment, given that it assesses students in interesting and fairly straight-forward ways. Yes, we often probe the abstract, but how we probe is not difficult to understand. The premise here suggests a straw man: that assessment is difficult because the Humanities is not a realm of objective, identifiable abilities. The presenters often fell back on abstract ideas of ability and hence I felt that I was merely listening to cogently presented resistance inspired by Humanities’ abstract subject matter or expectations. Not clear of the nature of this, though, in the context of the session’s description.

David England attended the session entitled “Using Mixed Methods and Longitudinal Studies to Assess Student Learning,” moderated by Jill Reich.

I next attended a session entitled “Setting the Stage for Productive Measures of Learning” moderated by Gai Carpenter. The presenters included David Finney, President, Champlain College, Burlington, VT; Marty Krauss, Provost, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Emile Netzhammer, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Keene State College, Keene, NH. The description for this session was

This session will address how three different types of institutions have progressed over time in their implementation of institution- and program-level assessment, and how they have enabled an investment in the effort on the part of faculty and staff. Presenters will discuss successes and the challenges in building a culture of inquiry and evidence on their respective campuses. The session will also address how these institutions have used accreditation as leverage to support good efforts.

This session was interesting and generated lots of questions from the audience. Krauss, Netzhammer, and Finney provided lots of detail about their involvement with faculty and students in their efforts to develop assessment ecologies. Krauss herself led committees in assessment and managed the typical problems that come with developing institutional effectiveness on a large scale. This was interesting and proves that administrative leaders can play hands-on roles with decisions confronted by faculty and students. Our own president sits on our World Cultures ability group and thus is right in the thick of decisions related to teaching. Netzhammer described his role with faculty and his direct involvement with teaching issues related to assessment.

David England attended the session entitled “Assessing Curricular and Instructional Practices in General Education: Linking Evidence to Improvement,” moderated by James Leheny. David was pretty excited about this session. In the following break, we had a discussion with Richard Vaz, Dean, Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. David was intrigued by WPI’s independent study and collaborative student work. We asked Richard lots of questions about how students enroll themselves in the independent project areas, which are required of faculty and students. We were also intrigued by WPI’s Global Perspectives Program. The idea is pretty simple: take what you’ve learned and apply it. In lieu of a fifth course, independent study projects for students seem interesting.

In any event, we had a nice dinner and then met back Thursday morning for our discussion. To repeat, the title of our talk was “Institutional Research that Supports Faculty Investment in Assessment.” The moderator for our talk was the very professional Julie Alig. Our partners in the four person panel discussion were Cate Rowen, Director of Institutional Research and Educational Assessment, and Susan Etheredge, Associate Professor of Education and Child Study, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Cate and Susan began the presentation by describing how faculty and admin staff have partnered at Smith in their pursuit of comprehensive assessment. The partnership provides faculty with information that they need to make informed decisions about curriculum, teaching, and student performance.

I started my and David’s portion with a brief description of our ability-based model in the context of the existing course-based gen ed model adhered to by CT and provided examples of eLumen assessment screens to demonstrate hands-on example of assessment practice and data, which segued into David exploration of his role in institutional effectiveness: swift response to requests; data synthesis and meaning; the gen ed matrix; and all kinds of other good things.

Both presentation groups elicited lots of questions from a crowd that was well over one hundred strong. One question that always bothers me and I always fumble came from a gentleman in the crowd who asked how we deal with the double work of grading and assessment. My response that we should not see the two practices as separate (so what is the question?) always appears unsatisfactory to people. I don’t believe he was asking about physical data entry work, but was thinking of grading and assessment as two separate activities.

In any event, we were pressed with many questions after the talk by numerous colleagues about eLumen, what we do with data, and how will we assist others in the future. We saw lots of friends from Saint Joseph, Manchester, Mitchell, and Charter Oak and met some new and interesting people. NEASC is a hopping conference and it was well worth the trip and prep work. One of Julie Alig’s last comments was: “You showed people that this is all doable.” We’re getting close but still have lots of work to do.