Start by selecting one, and only one, of
your classes in which to try out the Classroom Assessment.
We recommend focusing your first assessments on a course that you know
well and are comfortable with. Your
“focus class” should also be one that you are confident is going well, one
in which most students are succeeding and relatively satisfied.
Although this may seem an odd suggestion, it is best not to use Classroom
Assessment to gather data on a problematic or difficult situation until you
become experienced in the approach. In
other words, it is best to minimize risks while you develop confidence and
skill.
Once you have chosen the “focus class,” decide on the class meeting
during which you will use the Classroom Assessment Technique.
Make sure to reserve a few minutes of that class session for the
assessment. At this point, you need
to select a CAT. The five
techniques listed below are all flexible and easily adaptable to many
situations, and simple and quick to apply.
They also generate data that are easy to analyze.
For those reasons, they make excellent introductory CATs and have been
widely used by faculty from many disciplines.
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The Minute Paper (CAT 6)
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The Muddiest Point (CAT 7)
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The One-Sentence Summary (CAT 13)
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Directed Paraphrasing (CAT 23)
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Applications Cards (CAT 24)
Although each of these CATs is described in detail in Chapter Seven of
Angelo and Cross, they can be quickly summarized here.
The Minute Paper asks students
to respond to two questions: (1)
What was the most important thing you learned today?
(2) What questions remain uppermost in your mind as we conclude this
class session? The Muddiest Point is an adaptation of the Minute Paper and is used
to find out what students are unclear about.
At the end of a lecture or class session, students are asked to write
brief answers to the following question: What
was the muddiest point in my lecture today?
The One-Sentence Summary
assesses students’ skill at summarizing a large amount of information within a
highly structured, compact format. Given
a topic, students respond to the following prompt:
‘Who did what to, for whom, when, where, how and why?”
In a course on U.S. Government or American History, for example, this CAT
could be used to assess students understanding of the Constitutional Convention.
In the study of Native American Indian history this could be a very
subjective and illuminating process to determine the depth of perception and
knowledge of individuals.
Directed Paraphrasing assess
students understanding of a concept or procedure by asking them to paraphrase it
in two or three sentences for a specific audience.
For example, if you were in a class at this moment, you might be asked to
paraphrase “Classroom Assessment” in a way that would be meaningful to your
colleagues.
Applications Cards assess the
learners’ skill at transference by eliciting possible applications of lessons
learned in class to real life or to other specific areas.
In an economics course, for instance, the instructor might ask students
to come up with applications of “satisfying” in everyday, non-textbook
settings. If one of these five
simple CATs appeals to you, we suggest that you read throughout its complete
description in Chapter Seven before using it in you classroom.