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-- the Forum September 1993 --

Classroom Research--
Self-Assessment for Teachers and Students

Dick LeMoine, SCC
Educational reform movements during the past ten years have focused on means and techniques to enhance students' skills for critical, creative, and independent thought. To that end, Classroom Research (CR)-developed in the mid 1980's by Patricia Cross and Thomas Angelo- provides teaching techniques that can help beleaguered instructors.

What is Classroom Research?

Classroom Research is the use of a variety of assessment techniques in any specific class to enable teachers to measure the effectiveness of their teaching. It is also intended to alert students to their own levels of learning. Various assessment techniques presented in CR provide means for ongoing feedback throughout the semester between teachers and learners. Although most teachers test periodically for grading purposes, the main differences between regular testing and CR techniques are:

  1. these methods of assessment are designed not for grade determination but for self-evaluation of teaching effectiveness; and
  2. they continually alert students to their own responsibilities for learning. Excitement is generated for both faculty and students when they work together to focus on learning.

The qualities of the CR techniques presented by Cross and Angelo in their book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for Faculty , include:

Learner-centered what are the students getting from the classroom interactions? At what point, precisely, are students having difficulty with the concepts being taught?

Teacher-directed What, as a teacher, do I want to know? What do I need to know to help my students learn better? CR should be neither mandated nor made part of a teacher-evaluation procedure. Teachers should be free to share what they are learning, with "free" and "share" being the key words.

Context-specific Classroom Research is not intended to develop the way to teach anything. CR is intended to discover at what point a specific group of students is at in its learning process involving a specific unit of instruction. It is context-specific, what may work in one class may not necessarily work in another.

Anonymous With Classroom Research, teachers are not trying to assess a specific student but, rather, are trying to determine what a group of students needs in order to continue in its learning process. Anonymity ensures that students are willing to share with teachers without fear of lower grades.

Quick Most CR use rapid techniques intended to provide quick feedback, which informs teachers when there is a need to adjust their teaching.

Radical Doing CR involves risk-taking on the part of faculty. Given the opportunity, students will tell teachers what they are thinking and feeling about the course and the instructor. Teachers using this dimension of CR should be willing to accept the results.

Classroom Research can be used to elicit information in several specific areas:

I. Techniques for Assessing Academic Skills and Intellectual Development. CR techniques from this section reveal what students are learning from particular lectures or activities. Some of these techniques elicit answers from students delivered by rote, while other techniques determine how students are organizing and analyzing, and whether they are assimilating content.

Example:

Directed Paraphrasing: Students are asked to paraphrase a reading or a lecture for a specific purpose and audience and within specified limits for page length or speaking time. The purpose of this technique is to assess if students have understood important topics or concepts and to what degree they have internalized the information and are able to summarize it in their own words.

II. Techniques for Assessing Students' Self-Awareness as Learners; Self-Assessment of Learning Skills. Teachers use these techniques to determine whether or not students are monitoring their own learning processes as well as how aware students are of their own learning goals and interests.

Example:

Student Goals Ranking: Students are asked to list the learning goals they hope to achieve by taking the course. Students are then asked to rank order the goals in terms of their importance in their lives and to indicate how difficult they believe the goals are to achieve. The purpose of this activity is to assess to what extent the students' personal goals fit with the teacher's course-specific instructional objectives.

III. Techniques for Assessing Students' Reactions to Teachers and Teaching Methods, Course Materials, Activities, and Assignments. These assessment techniques are intended to provide information regarding students' opinions about the teaching skills and methods of a teacher and the effectiveness of course materials, activities, and assignments.

Example:

One-Minute Paper: Students are asked to write briefly a reaction to one or two questions about class procedures, content, materials, activities, assignments, or any other class-related information. The questions could deal with issues about the course in general or about a specific class session. The purpose of this activity is to collect students' feedback that could be used by the teacher to decide if mid- course modifications are needed and what the changes may be.

Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction (MCLI)
The Internet Connection at MCLI is Alan Levine --}
Comments to alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu