Dr. Furses Course Assessment
Bringing the Student Voice to Active Learning: In my course, I have been assessing two groups -- ME and the STUDENTS! I want to know how my teaching is going so that I can improve it. That is 'formative assessment' because I use it to CHANGE what I am doing. The students also need formative assessment (that would be their homework and lab scores). Then we both need to know how we are doing in the end -- summative assessment. For me, that is the student course evaluations done by the university, and for the students, this is their final grade. Here is information on how and what I have been assessing in my course:
1) Assessing my teaching in ECE1250 Introduction to Electrical & Computer Engineering Spring 2014.
This is a required freshman course, the first ECE course the students take as pre-majors. Topics in the course include introductory circuits, applications in ECE, Matlab, and basic lab skills. (A grade of C- is required to move on to future ECE courses.) It is a 4 credit class where 1 credit is a 3-hour a week lab, and the other 3 credits are MWF 50 minute face-to-face classroom sessions. 118 students took the class. See syllabus and class website.
a) Formative Assessment:
Assessing ECE 1250 slides PPT
Assessment ece 1250 karen krapcho.docx Download Assessment ece 1250 karen krapcho.docx
Here are the actual extra credit assignments I gave my students. I didn't want to force them to spend time giving me feedback if they were strapped for time on their homework. So, I made all of these extra credit. I gave them 20 points for each feedback which is approximately equal to about an hour's worth of homework assignment. The extra credit could count towards homework or labs but not exams. These were NOT anonymous. See my grading details here.
Finding out about my students:
Assess their experience with flipped classrooms (mine and others), how this class is going for them, and suggestions for improving Face-to-Face class time:
How well are they keeping up, what I can I do to help the students, what can they do to learn better, did the exam show what you know?
Feedback Week 6 (after MIdterm I)
I also asked (on the midterm itself) how many hours did they spend studying the week of the midterm)
Student engagement: How well were they adjusting to the active learning classroom, how engaged were they with the various class materials and resources, and how/where did they feel comfortable asking questions, also asked about the Labs & TA.
Biggest challenge to succeeding in this class, plans moving forward, advice to those who take the class next year:
b) Summative Assessment
The university collects teaching evaluations every semester from every class. Questions are not specific to the flipped class. final official feedback.pdf Download final official feedback.pdf
2) Students
My grading scheme is working very well for the flipped classroom. See syllabus for details.
a) Formative Assessment (see course website for actual assignments)
Next year I want to give a short quiz at least weekly to help the students determine if they are learning the material and ID issues early. I might even make a short 'test your knowledge' section for each day's work. I'm not quite sure ... but I think I need a lot more early assessment. I haven't decided if I should give this for a grade or not. I might 'grade' it so the students can anticipate how they would do on an exam, but not actually include it in the final grade. I want to think of ways to use the automatic quiz capability of canvas to do this.... how to ask ECE questions in ways that can be graded with multiple choice. I'm not quite sure how to do that effectively, but will be experimenting in upcoming semesters.
b) Exams (see course website for exams)
3) Did the students actually use the materials?
a) How to use Canvas analytics
b) How to use YouTube analytics
Links to an external site.
(example 28 days)
Thank you to Karen Krapcho, who has assisted me with the formative assessment in this class!