Assignment 3

Student Assessment and Feedback

Submit your completed assignment during 4th workshop meeting. Please note that this assignment must be started three weeks prior to the due date.

Teaching is a complex process that rests in large part on the quality of the exchanges between students and teacher. As is true of any complex skill, becoming a good teacher requires both careful self-analysis and feedback from others. Getting feedback from your students is a good way to develop better teaching skills.

Thus far in this CNSM TA Professional Development workshop we have asked you to think about your teaching, select and try a few teaching techniques in your classes, and reflect on your classroom experiences focusing both on your teaching challenges and successes. Now, we want you to attempt to collect important feedback from your students:

  • Are they learning?
  • Does their learning reflect your teaching goals?
  • With what are they struggling - concept understanding, problem solving strategies, etc.?
  • Are your teaching methods effective - if so, how? If not, why not?

Your students can offer you insight into your teaching world.

In preparation for this assignment, please download the Five Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handy Handbook (PDF) and read over all five classroom assessment techniques offered on this document. As the authors Angelo and Cross suggest, these techniques "provide faculty with feedback on student learning while the teaching/learning relationship is still intact, so that we as faculty can yet intervene to help this semester's (as opposed to next semester's) students learn more completely."

Details of the Assignment

Choose one technique to try at least 3 times over the next 2-3 weeks in your classes or labs. After each attempt note your perception of the effectiveness of the technique. Make adjustments, if needed, to improve on its use.

Following at least 3 uses of the technique please write a reflection describing your experiences. (Please recall that reflections are not summaries, see assignment #1.) Your reflection must:

  1. Describe the successes you encountered while using this technique – be sure to offer your personal insights about these successes.
  2. Describe the struggles you encountered while using this technique – be sure to offer your personal insights about these struggles.
  3. Provide your evaluation of the implementation of this technique with your students.
  4. Provide your evaluation of the overall worth of this technique as a means for increasing your teaching effectiveness.

Please organize your writing to reflect these four, by using the following headings: Successes, Struggles, Use, and Value.

NOTE: A word of advice. In implementing this technique in your class, don't apologize to your students. Rather, help them understand why it is you are using it. Ask them to provide sound feedback because in doing so they will help you to reach them better with your teaching.