Transmedia story Pass 2

 ”Take out your pencils and scantrons.”

If there is a dreaded sentence in any student’s vernacular this one should be in the top five. Another would be the phrase Pop Quiz.  If this brought back memories of feelings of anxiety for you, you can relate to your students fear when you utter these words. But how effective is the pop quiz? Are we giving our students a lesson in multiple choice test taking and fear? Is that our goal? Is the only way to assess learning through testing? Is this the only way to get feedback on the effectiveness of our teaching? Does traditional test taking give us the feedback that we need to help our students learn?

There are other ways to assess students, gain insight into our teaching, and it doesn’t have to involve that four letter word-test. Alternative assessment strategies are not a new idea but it is one that you may not be familiar. The aim of this article is to provide you, the faculty, with ideas on how to implement assessment strategies in your courses without a lot of prep time and to illustrate how they can be an effective teaching and learning tool.

What are Alternative Assessment Strategies?

Alternative assessment strategies are formative evaluation methods that serve two purposes. They can help you to assess the degree to which your students understand the course content and they can provide you with information about the effectiveness of your teaching methods.

When alternative assessment strategies are used consistently, they can have the following results:

For faculty

• provide day-to-day feedback
• provide information about what students have learned without a large time investment
• allow you to address students lack of understanding
• help to create good working relationships with students

For students

• help develop learning skills
• increase understanding the content
• shows your interest about their success in your course

The Muddiest Point

The Muddiest Point focuses on course knowledge and skills and takes almost no prep time.

 

1.  Pass out index cards
2. Ask students to write down the topic or idea that they understood the least.  3. Collect the cards as the students exit.
4. Separate the cards into categories.
5. Review the Muddiest Point(s) at the beginning of the next class meeting.

Instructor reactions to activity

I’m a tenured Biology faculty member at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City Campus, and I conducted this activity in my Nutrition and Drugs course which meets twice a week for a 3 hour lecture and 2 hour lab. The class session is typically broken into two lecture portions each about 1 hour and 45 minutes long. The remainder of the time is used for a break. This course is designed for the non-science major. These students are those who are typically weaker in science skills then those pursuing a future career in the medical field and I am always looking for ways to meet their needs and make up for the deficit in their prior learning.

I found the implementation of The Muddiest Point easy; however, because it was something new to the students they were confused at first as to what expectations were required. I did modify the procedure somewhat and conducted two sessions of the activity; one at the end of the first portion of the lecture before the break and one after the second portion of the lecture before the lab. In the second application of the activity I provided the index cards to the students before starting the lecture and asked the students to write down the least clear concept from this portion of the lecture.

In the next class meeting I used the information gleaned from the student feedback to spend some more time on concepts identified as being the muddiest. I also provided students with additional resources for study on the top three muddiest points.

Student reactions to activity

 

Through observation and statements by the class it was clear that the students were somewhat uncomfortable with the activity at first. This reaction was not unexpected as none of the students indicated that they had encountered this type of process previously. More responses were collected in the second attempt than the first. I think if this is something that I had started from the beginning of the semester the students would be more comfortable with the process; it would be part of the normal routine of the class.

In the following class meeting I opened with the results from the activity explaining the top three concepts again and in more detail. The class was observed as being attentive and taking notes regarding the additional resources.

Overall, I found the activity to be very useful in helping me hone in on topics or concepts students were having trouble conceptualizing. I think it also made them think about which concepts they needed help.  I do feel that the students need practice with the activity to become more comfortable with the process.