Here's a collection of recent writings evaluating assessment methods. Most
of these are not concerned with the parameter, "cost-effectiveness." All
evaluations of student assessment method based on cost-effectiveness that
I've encountered are macro, i.e. they deal with standardized techniques
applied to large scale educational institutions such as whole universities
and state school systems. You'll probably have to do your own experiments to
evaluate cost-efficiency of various techniques on the class-room level.
Should be interesting.
1. Allsopp, Louise (2002) Flexibility in Assessment - An Evaluation of
Student Performance Informing Science InSITE - "Where Parallels Intersect"
June 2002, Adelaide University, Adelaide, Australia Interesting evaluation
of assessment technique for Economics courses. can be found at
http://ecommerce.lebow.drexel.edu/eli/2002Proceedings/papers/Allso068Flexi.p
df
1. Brown, Bull, and Pendlebury, (1997) Assessing Student Learning in Higher
Education, Routledge (Modular assessment tactics)
2. Brown, S. & Knight, P. (1994). Assessing Learners in Higher Education.
London, Philadelphia: Kogan Page. (On the issue of evaluation response
time.)
3. Felder, R.M. (1996). Matters of Style. ASEE Prism, 6(4), 18-23.
4. Felder, R.M. & Silverman, L.K. (1988). Learning Styles and Teaching
Styles in Engineering Education. Engr. Education, 78(7), 674-681. (Concerns
different learning rates and styles of students.)
2. Gray, P.J. & Banta, T.W. (1997). The Campus-Level Impact of Assessment:
Progress, Problems and Possibilities. New Directions for Higher Education,
25(4).
3. Lejk, M. (1994). Team Assessment, Win or Lose. The New Academic, Summer
1994, 10-11.
4. Ma, J. & Zhou, D. (2000). Fuzzy Set Approach to the Assessment of
Student-Centered Learning. IEEE Transactions on Education, 43(2), 237.
(Sounds interesting - haven't read it. This is what A. Alsopp writes about
their work (Alsopp pg. 2): "Ma and Zhou take the idea one step further.
They examine a fuzzy set approach to the assessment of student-centered
learning. They argue that since assessmentcriteria and their corresponding
weights are usually determined by the lecturer, the result can often be
reduced student participation and lower quality of learning. In their paper,
a commonly agreed assessment criteria is used and then student learning is
evaluated on a fuzzy grade scale".
Here are a few relevant sites:
1*. UCD - Centre for Teaching and Learning - Good Practice in Student ...
... Formative assessment: feedback Formative assessment is intended to
inform
students how to improve their learning. A Formative Assessment ...
www.ucd.ie/~teaching/assess/as5.htm - (Interesting graph comparing various
assessment devices and evaluating their use for assessing summative and
formative accomplishments. The Irish are right on!)
2*. Columbia University - Gateway Engineering Education Coalition.
This web site is rich with information about assessment and evaluation
methods and procedures, including papers, presentations, faculty tools, and
surveys. http://www-gateway.vpr.drexel.edu/assessment/(Rich in rigorous
evaluation of assessment programs and techniques. Includes papers -
including one from Cooper Union - and surveys).
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Reshef family" <victor@kfar-hanassi.org.il>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: assessment query --- practice of university assessment
> Suggest that you look up Dan Dennett's description of applicee evaluation,
> Dennett, Daniel 1995 Darwins Dangerous Idea pp. 501-505). Somewhat more
> literary than the writing in most professional education journals, but no
> less accurate for
> that. What's most interesting about his account is
> 1. That he describes how it is done rather than how it should be done,
> 'including the operation of real-world constraints (notably time
> limitations and the
> entrenched nature of grading)."
> 2. He describes more fully the range of selective pressures on academic
> assessment
> proceedures than most studies I've read.
>
>
> Nearly all the work on student assessment that I'm acquainted with
> concentrate on cognitive and curriculum issues and overlook the many other
> measures involved in student assessment. The practical limitation of this
> kind of research is to be found in its essentially pragmatic approach,
e.g.
> "what are effective practices of assessment, ...?" This restricted focus
> ignores such issues as time limitation and the entrenched nature of
grading
> largely because it fails to regard the role of assessment as an integral
> part of the whole learning/teaching complex. Yet, despite the questionable
> effectiveness of the pragmatic approach for student assessment, we should
> take notice of how well the restricted methods of "effective student
> assessment" are integrated into the characteristically instrumentalist
> approach of academic educational practice in general (like
> large-scale/efficient classes - your irony is in place here). We also
> should attend to how well this approach to education is implied by the
even
> more general and widespread envisionment of the relationship between the
> effectuator of social policy - the teacher, and the body politic,- the
> students, as a strictly instrumental one. Isn't it strange that when
> reseachers in quantum physics (as well as anthropology and psychology)
> address problems of social relations they assume a distance between the
> effectuator and affected that is only ever fully realized in researches in
> classical physics?
>
> Sorry if this does not get you where you want to go, but it seemed to me
> that you wanted two rather contradictory kinds of information; the
> parameters for effective assessment of student performance, and measures
for
> the largely social-cultural selection of aspirants for future academic
> positions. For the former there's all kinds of material, but as for the
> latter, there are more literary works and T. V. series on the subject
than
> serious research.
>
> Victor
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Noah Finkelstein" <nfinkels@weber.ucsd.edu>
> To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 8:19 PM
> Subject: assessment query --- practice of university assessment
>
>
> > Hi all --
> >
> > Recently I was posed the question below and thought that maybe some xmca
> > folks might have good references on assessment in large-scale /
> > "efficient" classes (yes, the "" indicate irony). The question about
how
> > to effectively assess students come from the university physics world
but
> > seems relevant to many disciplines. In short, the question is given the
> > real-world constraints (notably time limitations and the entrenched
nature
> > of grading) what are effective practices of assessment, and what related
> > research is there?
> >
> > I'll happily take any comments off-line and then repost a summary of any
> > interesting tid-bits.
> >
> > Thanks much.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Noah
> >
> > Noah Finkelstein
> > soon-to-be-leaving-LCHC
> > nfinkels@ucsd.edu
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded question _____
> >
> > A lot of [research] ... seems to be to basically be saying that if you
> > provide a lot of individual feedback to students as to their level of
> > understanding and what they need to learn the material better, studies
> > show they do learn better than if you ignore them or just give them a
> > simple grade ranking them relative to the other students. [...] What I
> > would like to see is research on what minimum elements (and hence most
> > cost effective) can achieve formative results. Even more useful would
be
> > a practical study that accepts the fact that students are conditioned to
> > see grading as the primary incentive to attend or work in a class and
> > looks at the best way to grade things to best achieve desired learning
> > goals and attitudes in the students. In other words, what works best in
> > the real world in which most faculty and students currently exist? Do
you
> > know any useful references on that?
> >
> > I would be curious to hear about [any related research on assessment]
> > since grading questions are so much a part of the effective and cost
> > efficient teaching issue. A big fraction of the faculty and TA time is
> > devoted to grading but it is really unclear what is the best amount. I
am
> > reasonably confident that I know the limiting cases. If every bit of
> > teaching time is devoted to grading, students probably will not learn
much
> > nor have a good attitude, and similarly if zero time is spent on it,
> > results will not be very good. However, where is the optimum between
> > those limits and what are particularly good and bad practices seems
> > remarkably unclear and undiscussed, particularly considering the central
> > role it has.
> >
>
>
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