Anchoring Assessment in
Intellectual Curiosity about
Graduate, Professional, and
Doctoral Students’
Chronological Learning
Peggy Maki
Education Consultant
Assessment Editor and Writer, Stylus
Publishing, LLC
October, 2009
URI
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Assessment:
A systematic means of ascertaining the
fit between our expectations (what we
intend) and students’ actual
achievement of those expectations.
The assessment process is guided by
and anchored in intellectual curiosity
about the collective efficacy of our
educational practices.
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Positions of Inquiry into
Student Learning
Students
Educators
Graduate,
Professional,
Doctoral
Program
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Educators’ Positions of
Inquiry
– Pedagogy
– Curricular design
– Instructional design
– Educational tools, such as use of
technology or technology-based
instruction
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How do students become acculturated to
the ways of thinking, knowing, and
problem solving that your advanced
degree values?
– What evidence along the continuum of
students’ studies demonstrates that they
are becoming acculturated to their
profession or field of study?
– How do students track their learning and
when do they critically reflect on that
emerging learning?
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What pedagogies or educational experiences
develop the knowledge, understanding, habits of
mind, ways of knowing and problem solving that
your graduate, professional, or doctoral program
values?
How do you educate students to become
“experts”—what are the pedagogies that foster
expertise in your field?
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How do faculty and staff intentionally build upon
each other’s courses and educational experiences
to achieve your expectations for student learning?
Which teaching strategies, educational processes,
or educational experiences promote graduate,
professional, and doctoral student learning
outcomes? How do you vary these strategies,
processes or experiences for different ways of
learning?
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Students’ Positions of Inquiry
• Position students when they matriculate
• Map the chronology of learning (student
orientation); in turn, students map
• Involve students in recognizing how they
learn (learning inventories) so they stretch
over time
• Distribute learning outcome statements
upon matriculation
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• Hold students responsible for “thinking
about their thinking and learning” through—
– Critical self-reflection on their learning
(how have they repositioned their
understand or perspectives, for
example?)
– Self-reflection on others’ assessment of
their work
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– Analysis of their work over time—
progress toward desired outcomes
– Analysis of strengths and weaknesses
(scoring rubrics)
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• Provide representative examples of texts
graduate students produce
• Integrate assessment “along the
continuum of learning,” not only at the
end, to provide feedback towards high
achievement of outcomes—
• Example: performing and visual arts
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Program’s Position of Inquiry
• Research on Learning
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Disciplinary and Professional
Developments
• Learning-Centeredness
• Learning Organization
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Gather Evidence
Interpret
Results
Mission/Purposes
Learning Outcomes
How well do
Grad students
achieve our
outcomes?
Enhance teaching/
learning;
inform decisionmaking, planning,
budgeting
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Examples of Learning Outcome
Statements
• Applies disciplinary techniques,
technologies, and strategies that promote
required or desired change
• Considers how and why organizations
engage in change from simple adaptive
changes with responses that are well within
traditional boundary decisions to more
radical alterations when the survival of the
organization is at stake
(ISU)
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• Demonstrates a commitment to the
profession, engaging in professional
service, both within the graduate’s
immediate community and within the
broader community of mathematical
scholars
• Communicates the power of mathematical
ideas to audiences as diverse as the
general public and experts in the
graduate’s area (University of NebraskaLincoln)
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Other Attributes as the Basis of
Your Program’s Outcomes?
• Observation that leads to identification of
patterns (exceptions to patterns),
relationships, linkages, structures, forms,
nested issues in or components of larger
issues or structures
• Interpretation
• Discovery
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• Creativity and innovation (new approaches
to routine ways of thinking or doing)
• Adaptability to a changing situation or
problem
• Self-discipline (see a project through to
completion)
• Collaboration
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• Transfer or application of knowledge,
abilities, habits of mind, ways of knowing
to new problems
• Creative problem posing
• Critical analysis
• Critical self-reflection
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• Multiple perspective taking
• Communication across multiple media for
different audiences and purposes
• Ability to shift from writing, to speaking, to
visual representation, to use of potentials
of multi-media
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• Ability to represent through different visual
means
• Critical Self-reflection (solo and group or
community)
• Pursuit of new avenues of exploration
• Open-mindedness
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• Engagement in the issue, problem, project
demonstrated through perspective taking,
language, use of discourse strategies
• Psychomotor skill performance
• Ethical perspective
taking/awareness/conduct
• Mathematical reasoning
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• Versatility in the use of forms of evidence
• Ability to project consequences, results,
resulting conditions, challenges, actions,
responses and evaluate them
• Ability to approach/solve/address muddy,
complex problems for which there may not
be a clear, easy, or “right” solution
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Works Cited
•
Biggs, J. 1999. Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What The Student Does. Great
Britain: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.
•
George Walker,G.,Golde,Chris M, Jones,Laura, Conklin Bueschel, Andrea, Hutchings, Pat. 2007.
The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century. CA: The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
•
Maki, P. (2004). Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the
Institution. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC, and the American Association for Higher
Education.
•
Maki, P., and Borkowski, N. 2006. The Assessment of Doctoral Education: Emerging Criteria and
New Models for Improving Outcomes. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
•
National Research Council. (2001). Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of
Educational Assessment. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
•
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. 2007. Tough Choices; Tough Times.
•
Nyquist, J. D. (2002, November/December). The Ph.D.: A tapestry for change in the 21st century.
Change, 34,13-20.
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