Thanks for sharing this, Jim.
And a bigger but belated thank you for the NR article on Rwanda! It is consistent with my own take on what is going on there. 
 
I decided to go back next month to try to tie things together and get the stories disseminated where they might do some good. Just got my tickets, in fact.
 
Regards,
paul
 
Paul Conway
Professor of Political Science
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, NY, 13820 - USA
Office phone: 607-436-3923

________________________________

From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Jim Greenberg
Sent: Wed 6/17/2009 8:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Assessing How Students Learn - Posted to TB list by Jim Greenberg



TBers,

The posting below looks at the importance of "how" students learn as well as
"what" students learn. It is #44 in the monthly series called Carnegie
Foundation Perspectives and is by educator Bill Cerbin. The Foundation
invites your response at: [log in to unmask] © 2009
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 51 Vista Lane,
Stanford, CA 94305 Reprinted with permission.


        Assessing How Students Learn

In higher education the dominant mode of assessment is to measure what
students have learned in a course or program. By measuring what students
learn educators can monitor student progress, determine learning gaps and
gains, and document achievement.

But measuring what students learn is of limited use if our goal is to
improve their future performance. It is akin to taking a person's
temperature. You may learn the individual has a fever but the measurement
produces no insight into the cause. Suppose we find that students score in
the 60th percentile on a standardized test or that half the students in a
course have significant writing problems. What should we do to improve
future performance? Unfortunately, the assessment data provide little
direction. The result is a kind of guesswork by which we consider
alternative teaching practices or programs without understanding how or why
they would work better than standard approaches.

To reduce the guesswork we need assessment that reveals how students
learn-how they interpret and make sense of the subject, where they stumble,
what they do when they do not understand the material, how they respond to
different instructional practices, and so on. Understanding the basis of
student performance can help us identify appropriate teaching practices or
approaches.

A compelling example of this form of assessment is the Berkeley calculus
project which took place more than 25 years ago. At the time there was a
large disparity between the performance of African American students and
other students in introductory calculus at UC Berkeley. About 40 percent of
African American students received grades of D or F in calculus compared to
about 5-6 percent of Caucasian and Asian students. Concerned about the
disparity, mathematics educator Uri Treisman decided to explore the problem
by focusing on how students learn. He wanted to understand

 . . . how students actually learn calculus. Do they use the textbook? With
whom and why do they
 discuss homework assignments? What do they do when they get stuck on a
problem?-the really
 basic questions about how students learn mathematics. (Uri Treisman's
Dolciani Lecture)

Treisman observed 40 students (20 African American and 20 Chinese American)
as they went about studying and learning calculus. He was able to identify
key differences in the ways that successful and unsuccessful students tried
to learn mathematics. For example, Chinese students formed study groups
outside of class and devoted their time to the most difficult material
rather than simply reviewing the mathematics they already knew. They
compared solutions, tested one another, and talked through difficult
concepts. The African American students also invested a lot of time studying
calculus, but did it alone. Only two ever studied with classmates.

Based on a detailed understanding of these patterns, Treisman established a
program to alter the way students learned calculus in the course. It
included, for example, "honors sections" of the course in which small groups
of students worked on particularly challenging mathematics problems. The
program addressed each obstacle that had been uncovered by observing the
students. After the changes were fully implemented the percentage of D and F
grades for African American students dropped to 4 percent, a stunning
improvement. (See a contemporary version of the project at Emerging Scholars
Program.)

A large scale study like the Berkeley project is not a practical option for
most teachers. However, assessing how students learn can be integrated with
classroom teaching. Teachers can scale down to examine how students learn
during a single exercise, assignment, or class period, or focus on how they
learn a specific concept, skill, or ability. (See the Carnegie sponsored
project, Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges.
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/index.asp?key=26)

Consider several methods accessible to most classroom teachers.

Observations of Student Learning. As the venerable American philosopher Yogi
Berra put it, "You can observe a lot just by watching." What better way to
explore how students learn than to observe them engaged in learning during a
class period? Teachers can do this during class discussions, group work,
active learning exercises, online chat or discussion forums. Better yet,
instructors can do periodic observations of student learning in one
another's classes and then meet to discuss their findings.

Think Aloud. The think aloud is a procedure during which students say out
loud what they are thinking while working on a task. Think aloud pair
problem solving involves student pairs, in which one student acts as problem
solver, the other as listener. The instructor circulates among the pairs to
observe students thinking aloud as they work on an assigned task.

Lesson Study. In lesson study several instructors jointly plan, teach,
observe and analyze student learning in the context of a single lesson. As
one member of the group teaches the lesson, the others observe students and
collect evidence of their learning. Lesson study allows instructors to
observe the interaction between instructional activities and student
learning during an entire class period. (See examples of lesson studies by
instructors at University of Wisconsin campuses at College Lesson Study
Project.)

Strategies that probe the learning process offer close up views of students
grappling with new material, engaging in complex thinking and responding to
instruction in the classroom. For example, when asked to explain social
behavior college students tend to rely on a single dominant factor such as a
person's upbringing or a personality trait. Psychology instructors at the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse used lesson study to explore ways to move
students beyond these everyday theories of behavior. They designed a lesson
in which students produced more varied and comprehensive explanations
consistent with discipline-based models of behavior. But exposing students
to the "correct theory" and engaging them in more complex theorizing did not
change their minds. As one student said, "There may be all these other
factors but I still believe the way you act depends on what kind of person
you are." The episode prompted the instructor to develop sets of mini-cases
in which students used psychological principles to explain behavior in "real
life like" situations throughout the course.

College teachers are aware of gaps in student learning as a result of
routinely grading their students' work. Encouraging teachers to assess
student learning as it takes place in the classroom can help them answer
questions about how and why the gaps exist. Assessing how students learn can
lead to the kind of information we need to make decisions about how to
improve teaching and learning.