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FACULTY: Starting a New Semester in the Classroom

January 10, 2007 | Editor
 

Starting a New Semester in the Classroom: How Can Assessment Help?
By Mary Vlisides
What’s great about being a teacher is a new start every semester. Meeting new students and learning from each of them. This is a great reward and sometimes a challenge each semester!

Here are three separate ideas, if you haven’t tried them yet, which will help you get to know your students and help “chart your course�? for the semester.

First Day Student Assessment
Purpose: This is an assessment given to students the first week of class. It requires that students identify themselves by name. This assessment is a tool that can be used to get to know your students. It can help assess their expectations and experiences in college classrooms. The results of the assessment can clarify students’ expectations for the course in terms of study time required, readings, etc. For large classes, in particular, this information could be of value when assessing attrition of particular students. The questions should be modified to fit your needs as an instructor.

Process: Distribute the assessment the first day of class. Provide approximately 5 minutes of class time to answer the questions. Review the assessments and decide if any course adjustments or clarifications for students are needed. If you prefer, you could review the assessment with individual students.

Actual form to download for this assessment is available on the MATC Assessment Resources Blackboard Site under Classroom Assessment Idea of the Month.

Ice Breakers for Online Students
From ON-Course List serve–Skip Downing 3/7/05
FEATURE ARTICLE: “Six Activities for Interactive Online Learning”
by Ryan Watkins, faculty, Educational Technology Leadership,George Washington University

While most of us can see the benefits of including engaging activities in our e-learning courses, specific strategies often escape us. As a result, many online courses lack the very activities that can result in deep learning.

Websites About Myself:
Taking advantage of unique resources available to online students, this activity is a wonderful ice breaker and lets students introduce themselves by identifying websites that illustrate their interests and backgrounds. When students have posted favorite websites, you can then encourage them to discuss similar and different interests with their peers.

Steps:
(a) Have students identify three websites illustrating their interests and explain why they selected each website,
(b) have students post these websites and explanations to a shared discussion board, and
(c) have students explore one posted website from a classmate and provide the classmate with feedback (plus, minus, interesting) about the website.

This can be a great way to get to know students and have students practice assessment of websites and giving feedback in a positive and constructive process.

Background Knowledge Probe
Description: At the first class meeting, many college teachers ask students for general information on their level of preparation, often requesting that students list courses they have already taken in the relevant field. This technique is designed to collect much more specific, and more useful, feedback on students’ prior learning. Background Knowledge Probes are short, simple questionnaires prepared by instructors for use at the beginning of a course, at the start of a new unit or lesson, or prior to introducing an important new topic. A given Background Knowledge Probe may require students to write short answers, to circle the correct response to multiple-choice questions, or both.

Step-by-Step Procedure:

  1. Before introducing an important new concept, subject or topic in the course syllabus, consider what the students may already know about it. Recognizing that their knowledge may be partial, fragmentary, simplistic, or even incorrect, try to find at lease one point that most students are likely to know, and use that point to lead into less familiar points.
  2. Prepare two or three open-ended questions, a handful of short-answer questions, or ten to twenty multiple-choice questions that will probe the students’ existing knowledge of that concept, subject, or topic. These questions need to be carefully phrased, since a vocabulary that may not be familiar to the students can obscure your assessment of how well they know the facts or concepts.
  3. Write your open-ended questions on the chalkboard, or hand out short questionnaires. Direct student to answer open-ended questions succinctly, in two or three sentences if possible. Make a point of announcing that these Background Knowledge Probes are not tests or quizzes and will not be graded. Encourage students to give thoughtful answers that will help you make effective instructional decisions.
  4. At the next class meeting, or as soon as possible, let students know the results, and tell them how that information will affect what you do as the teacher and how it should affect what they do as learners.

By Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross. From Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd ed. (Find more about this pages 121-125.)
All of the above ideas and more can be found through our MATC Assessment Resources Blackboard Site under Classroom Assessment, Ideas of the Month, available to all MATC Faculty.

For more information about these or other assessment ideas contact Mary Vlisides, CETL assessment consultant, 246-6413.