Assessment… Yours, Mine, and Ours

Abstract

Assessing the differences between our perceptions of what and how students are learning and what in practice is taking root as deep knowledge that is regularly transferred across a variety of rote, theoretical, and experiential domains has become a routine activity for many education professionals. It is no longer unfair suggest that faculty who do not practice classroom assessment and administrators who do not engage in regular program assessment are out of step with teaching and curricular best practices. Assessment, in current higher education jargon, refers formative work. In this light, assessment responds complex problems of teaching as faculty ask not only: What is our curriculum and pedagogy accomplishing, but also, What can we do as professional educators increase student success? Assessment observations and measures, some based upon empirical data, others on teaching experience akin the photographer's practiced eye for subtle detail and shading, provide multi-dimensional portraits. Assessment is different from summative evaluations such as papers and exams that produce grades. Two of the distinctions are especially worth noting. First, traditional grades are designed identify outcomes rather than information about the learning process. Has the student mastered the material? Does she know how write a lead or apply a rule of libel law? Assessment, however, focuses the lens on relations between how we teach and how students learn. Second, traditional evaluation places all of the accountability for learning on the student and provides little feedback useful the teacher willing share that responsibility. The overall teaching goal remains student mastery of subject matter, but assessment's powerful parallel concern is with improving the tools available foster learning. Careful assessment often suggests alternative paths (with guideposts provided by faculty) toward each student's oh, now see moments. One way think about this is that assessment examines the learning process itself and is especially useful for teachers attempting formulate, and reformulate, strategies that will produce explicit learning goals. At its best, grading provides a sometimes useful ranking and an indication of readiness for entry-level work after graduation, and, at worst, a weeding-out of students whose work doesn't conform particular criteria. Evaluation can be a convenient measure but rarely provides diagnostic information useful for prescribing alternative learning approaches. Assessment carries an affirmative professional obligation go beyond the weeding and ranking that underlies the I learned it, you can learn it if you want to teaching paradigm. The role of the teacher is changed when the processes and practices of learning are viewed as at least as important as sorting by way of static evaluation measurements. If assessment has the power strengthen teaching professionalism in the realms of pedagogy and curriculum, is it also useful as a means increase the value of a journal-Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, for instance? Assessing Educator AEJMC's Publications Committee has asked me serve a second term as Educator's editor. have, with hope, humility, and a graduate editorial assistant from Penn State's College of Communications, accepted the invitation. In so doing, would like report on the changes made on my watch over the last three volumes, and on the careful, evidence-based assessment undertaken review our work. Educator now includes invited as well as refereed work. The mix of refereed research and essays is balanced by symposia commentaries from colleagues with deep expertise. The journal has focused on some themes, particularly on diversity. Teaching tips have been eschewed in favor of evidence-based, generalizable studies that provide a deeper understanding of why some pedagogies work while others sometimes fail for identifiable populations of students under specific circumstances. …