Once you have chosen a focus course and
selected a simple CAT to use in it, let students know beforehand (at the
beginning of the class period or at the prior class meeting)
what you are going to do. Whenever
you announce your plans, be sure to tell the students why you are asking them
for information. Assure them that
you will be assessing their learning in order to help them improve, and not to
grade them. In most cases, it is
best to ask for anonymous responses.
When it come time to use the Classroom Assessment Technique, make sure
that the students clearly understand the procedure.
You may need to write directions for the CAT on the chalkboard or project
them using an overhead projector and transparency.
Let students know how much time they will have to complete the
assessment. The first time you use
a particular CAT, it is helpful to allow a little extra time for responses.
After the students have finished, collect their responses and read
through them quickly as soon as you can. If
you have time to read and analyze the responses fully, immediately after class,
so much the better. However, if you
must put the CAT responses aside for a while, this fast “read-through” will
help you recall exactly what students were responding to when you later read
their answers more carefully.
As a rough technique for estimating time required, you can expect to
spend one or two minutes per response analyzing the feedback. For example, if you were to use the Muddiest Point technique
in a class of thirty students, you would need to budget at least thirty
minutes-one minute per response-of your out-of class time to analyze the
feedback; for the Minute Paper, which poses two questions, you would estimate
sixty minutes; for the One-Sentence Summary, which requires more complex
feedback from students, you would probably need slightly more than an hour. The good news is that, with practice, teachers get faster at
“processing” the data from Classroom Assessments.
Even a cursory reading of the five CATs can provide useful information.
In analyzing feedback from the Muddiest Point technique, for example, you
can simply note how many and which “muddy points” are mentioned and how many
times the same “muddy points” come up.
The same method can be used to analyze feedback from the Minute Paper or
any other CAT that elicits student opinions or questions.
Other techniques, such as Directed Paraphrasing, the One-Sentence
Summary, or Application Cards, prompt responses that can be judged more or less
correct, or more or less complete. Student
responses to this type of CAT can be quickly sorted into three piles: Correct! complete (or “on-target”) responses, somewhat
correct! complete (or “close”) responses, and incorrect! incomplete
(“off-target”) responses. Then
the number of responses in each pile can be counted, and the approximate
percentage of the total class each represents can be calculated.
Teachers also can look for particularly revealing or thoughtful responses
among the on and off target groups.