Are Formative Assessments an Equity Tool?

First, let’s define assessments, and then formative assessments. An assessment is a tool used to provide information about the thinking, achievement or progress of students. Usually when faculty think about assessments, summative assessments come to mind. These include exams, quizzes, projects, or papers. And usually, this type of assessment comes with a grade. An instructor might give an exam at the end of a chapter or unit and use it to evaluate progress against a benchmark. A formative assessment, on the other hand, is a check-in with students that can be used by the instructor to modify classroom practices and learning activities. Formative assessments are assessments for learning rather than of learning. A subtle but importance difference. Can they be used as an equity tool?

We know that effective assessment must be a balanced system. Yes, grades are important (and required!) but formative assessment techniques (FATs) help to tell the rest of the story. Let’s ask students what they think! It’s way better than relying on body language! Think about the times you thought you were delivering a brilliant lesson…students were nodding like they were following, smiling, seeming to hang on every word, understanding every word. Then the test reveals otherwise.

Let’s look at this from the Transparency Framework* perspective:

Purpose: The purpose of formative assessments is to learn the whole story. Is learning taking place in your class? And are you adapting to the needs of your students?

Task: Choose a formative assessment technique (like the 3 Minute Pause) and use it several times during the term. When you collect data, report back to students what you heard.

Criteria: Look for the trends in the student feedback, and make adjustments to your classroom practices as needed.

So, you might be asking, how is this an equity tool? FATs give us an opportunity to hear from ALL students. It emphasizes getting all students to the same start and finish line of understanding. Because it helps all students, it helps our underserved populations to a greater degree.

Formative assessments also help develop a sense of belonging in your classroom. Research tells us that having that sense of belonging improves student confidence, and not having a sense of belonging can have an emotional impact on students and can lead to failure to learn and stay.  Formative assessments help us shift from a one-way communication path (as the instructor I have all the information and I will deliver content without thinking about how it’s being received) to a two-way path (students, I hear what you are saying and I will adapt classroom practices to help more learning take place as well as develop a greater sense of belonging).

Want to know more about what formative assessments are easy to use? Check with your faculty development professional on your campus! 

*Transparent design increases student academic confidence, sense of belonging, and persistence rates. Winkelmes. Liberal Education 99, 2 (Spring 2013) Winkelmes et al. Peer Review 18, 1/2 (Winter/Spring 2016)

Butterflies

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC
 
I love butterflies. This summer I have been watching butterflies in my garden, and am delighted when they flutter around, landing for just a moment on a flower before heading off to search for more nectar.

The kind of butterflies I don't like are those I get on the first day of class. Walking into a classroom with a group of new students, wondering what kind of impression I’ll make has always made me a bit nervous. When I share this with students, they can hardly believe it - What? they say...but you’re the expert! You’ve been teaching a long time! Why do you still get butterflies on the first day??

Delaney J. Kirk Ph.D. from University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee (and who has 27 years teaching experience!) still gets a little nervous at the beginning of a class. In the most recent edition of the Faculty Focus blog she outlined 10 tips for getting ready for that first day:

Faculty Focus

1. Develop your own routine before going to class. Take a short brisk walk beforehand. Twirl your wrists to gently shake the stress out of your arms. Relax your shoulders; people tend to “hunch up” their shoulders when tense. Do some deep breathing.
2. Check out your classroom before the students get there. Walk around and get familiar with the room, podium, how the seats are arranged, etc. Make sure you know how to work any technology you’ll be using.
3. The first few minutes are crucial. Your students are curious about you and the course. Everything (how you dress, walk, present yourself) are clues as to your personality and credibility. Walk briskly and with purpose into the classroom.
4. Chat briefly with the students as they come into the room to make yourself (and the students) feel more comfortable.
5. Act confident and enthusiastic about what you will be doing that first day. Don’t say that you are nervous as this makes the students uncomfortable and you will lose credibility with them.
6. Also, it’s best not to tell your students that this is the first time (if it is) that you have taught this particular course. You should know more about the topic than they do so they’ll assume you’re an expert.
7. Use notecards or form to gather information about your students (name, email address, past class experience with the topic, work experience, etc). This takes the focus off you and onto the task which gives you time to get comfortable.
8. As you begin, make eye contact with two or three people in various parts of the room. Learn their names and use them several times. You are essentially beginning to build a relationship with your students.
9. Be enthusiastic about being in the classroom so that they will be also. Don’t just stand behind the podium but move around and move toward them. Look happy to be sharing your knowledge with them.
10. Start with something that is easy for you to talk about. Tell a story you’ve told often before, read something that is relevant to the class from the newspaper, share something from your days as a student or talk to them about why you went into teaching.

Are there some ways that you prepare for the first day? What do you do to help with that nervous feeling on Day 1 of the course?

Revisiting Online Quizzes

Are you working on or planning to revise the tests in your classes soon? Rather than just refreshing or updating the questions, Derek Jorgenson, Instructional Designer at EvCC, encourages you to take a step back and think about exams in the larger context of assessments. Listen to a two-part podcast about Revisiting Online Quizzes at the Center for Transformative Teaching blog. Handouts and other resources are also available.

Faculty Developers

What do your 5-Star Consortium faculty professional development leaders do?

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC

L to R front row: Scott Haddock and Kristina Jipson (EdCC),
Peg Balachowski (EvCC), Rhonda DeWitt (Lake Washington Tech),
and Elisabeth Frederickson (EdCC)
L to R back row: Jeff Stevens (Cascadia),
and Brigid Nulty (Shoreline)

For the past two years, members of the 5-Star Consortium faculty development leaders have presented a best practices in teaching and learning orientation for new associate faculty at each of the 5 colleges (Everett CC, Edmonds CC, Shoreline CC, Cascadia College and Lake Washington Tech). The orientation has changed and (in our opinion) improved over that time, thanks primarily to input from participants. We conduct formative assessments throughout the session, and conclude with a feedback form called PLUS/DELTA. Using the information from participants, we have made improvements such as including more activities that allow participants to move around rather than just being lectured to.


Earlier this summer, the faculty developers from the 5 colleges met to talk about the future of the orientation. Our big goal includes cultivating a sense of belonging to a teaching and learning community by providing a place to connect to fellow associate faculty (adjuncts), across schools, within schools, and within disciplines. We also want to make sure that the new faculty connect with the faculty developer professional on their campus. Add to that a tool box of classroom activities that will aid new faculty in organizing active learning pedagogies and making important connections with students. We believe that faculty who employ these techniques will not only build critical relationships with students but will also begin reducing equity gaps that exist in many classrooms today.

During the orientation we want to make sure that we model transparency, being explicit about the choices we have made for the orientation. Our research indicates that the topics we have chosen are important to faculty and students across not only the state but the country, in both CTCs and universities. And participants have told us that they appreciate the comfortable and safe space that we provide during the orientation as well as a set of tools that can be employed the first or next day of class.

During out meeting we also revised our orientation outcomes. We also discussed a series of Saturday workshops that will be hosted by different 5-Star colleges throughout 2018-19. Watch this blog for more information on those workshops as well as those hosted by individual colleges!

5-Star Orientation Outcomes:

By the end of the Orientation we want our participants to be able to:

1. Be reflective metacognitive professionals (with a growth mindset) so that they can model and nurture it with their students. 
2. Understand the demographics of CTC students via data, including the differences between prof/tech and transfer students, and equity gaps with regard to persistence and success.
3. Make authentic connections with their students because this is supported by research as a way to mitigate equity gaps.
4. Implement evidence-based, equity-minded, contemporary teaching strategies in their course to maximize student learning.
5. Use formative assessment to improve their teaching and student learning using student feedback.
6. Have an HR introduction, including topics such as ethics, Title IX, FERPA, and how to deal with student conduct issues.

Closing the Loop

How can you tell if your students are really getting it? That’s the question at the heart of this strategy. So often the class time flies by and suddenly it’s over! We don’t get a chance (or make the time) to ask students to reflect on what they learned or what happened in class before they leave. Watch this video and learn how one instructor, Sarrah Saaasa, an Economics teacher, has helped students to develop a metacognitive reflection practice and give her feedback that will help “students cement their learning and informs future instruction.” I especially like her question, “How were we as a class today?”
Sarrah takes seven minutes at the end of class to use this strategy. How would this work in your classroom? Do you think it should be done every day? Note that the students are giving verbal feedback. I usually suggest that formative assessment feedback be done anonymously. Clearly, she has created a classroom culture where students feel free to contribute. Are you willing to give it a try in your next class? Send us feedback on how it worked or what you changed.

First Day of Classes

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC

Day 1 – The Fantasy and the Reality

Among the blogs and listservs that I read is one that, although the primary intended audience is university level faculty, frequently has insights that as someone who works at a community college I can totally relate to. In the most recent edition of the “tomorrows-professor Digest,” (Vol. 118, Issue 9), the author of the article, Kevin Bennett, refers to his many years of classroom experience to offer some wisdom as newly minted instructors begin to think about their first day in the classroom. Here is an excerpt from his post:

Fantasy

“After several years of graduate school, your department has given you an opportunity to teach your very own college level course! Dig, if you will, this picture: your imagination in overdrive, you see yourself performing captivating oratories on every subject within your academic discipline. No one doubts the almost magical synergy between you and your eager students. They hang on your every word, applaud your insightful and witty comments, and commend you on exam day for a superbly crafted test that challenged their mastery of the material. Perhaps you even remind yourself of the scene from Dead Poets Society where students climb on desks to address “O Captain! My Captain!” Soon this will be you.”

I had to laugh as I read this…yep, that’s exactly how I imagined it would be when I walked into my first college level course all those years ago. Here’s how I imagined myself – a real superhero when it comes to helping students learn math!

Reality

“Now come back to reality. Teaching a college level class is no easy task. It requires a great deal of work and preparation just to organize a decent course, let alone make one that will have a lasting impression on students. Are you up to the challenge?”

Delivering Excellent Course Content from the Outset

“Based on my years of experience in the classroom, here is a very brief guide to teaching your first college course. The advice is organized around the themes of first day issues, preparation, and balancing teaching and research.”

Want to learn more about Kevin’s advice (whether you are brand new to teaching or you want to freshen up your approach as you prepare for fall quarter)? Article available here. Sign up for the electronic newsletter (see below).

To subscribe via the World Wide Web, visit: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

Featured Faculty Developer: Elisabeth Fredrickson

Hear a bit from Elisabeth Fredrickson, one of our blog contributors, and the Associate Dean for Instruction at Edmonds Community College!

What do you like most about your job?

Talking to faculty about their teaching! I love to hear instructors’ success stories, help them troubleshoot friction points in their teaching, and generally geek out on teaching and learning.

What are three career lessons you’ve learned thus far?

I’ll give you one big one: Don’t wait for someone else to bestow expertise status on you. If there’s something that fascinates you, that you want to learn more about, then just go learn it! Read, go to workshops, listen to podcasts, watch videos, talk to people. People in the field of education, in particular, are eager to share what they know!

What would people never guess you do in your role?

Interior design (I got to design my own office space) and hospitality (I make a lot of tea). Those weren’t listed in the job description, but making people feel welcome is a big part of my role.

What are your hobbies and interests outside of work?

Hiking and backpacking. A friend (a fellow English teacher) and I took last summer off and backpacked in the Olympics and Cascades. We hiked Tuck and Robin Lakes during the Jolly Mountain fire and got evacuated by the ranger (fortunately, we’d already reached the lake and were on our way out, so we didn’t miss anything!).

Are you messy or organized?

Let’s just call it controlled chaos : )

Do you have a favorite newspaper, blog?

Three recommendations:

Cult of Pedagogy – Jennifer Gonzales’ excellent teaching blog with quick tips you can apply right away in the classroom.
Teaching In Higher Ed Podcast – Bonni Stachowiak has such a comforting voice. She’s like a den mother for teachers. She also knows her stuff, has smart guests, and offers loads of advice about becoming a more effective, efficient, and joyful teacher.
Teach Better Podcast – Doug McKee and Edward O’Neil take deep dives into a variety of teaching and learning topics and interview award-winning teachers. This is the podcast that first got me excited about the scholarship of teaching and learning.

If you could witness any historical event, what would you want to see?
I’d go back to Paris in the 1920s and hang out with the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, and the other expats -- just like in the movie Midnight in Paris. Maybe I’d buy a Picasso.

What’s the one thing you can’t live without?

Oxygen? Also coffee.

Best childhood memory?
   
Camping at Kalaloch, on the Olympic Peninsula, as a kid. We still go every summer with our own kids, who are basically adults now. The tradition continues. . .

If your house was burning down, what’s the one non-living thing you would save?

I can’t think of a single non-living thing that would make me run into a burning house!

Top 3 life highlights?

Marrying my high school sweetheart, bringing our three awesome kids into the world, and climbing Mt. Rainier.

Teaching the Top 100%

The 5 Star Consortium Colleges are thrilled to celebrate our 100th blog post today! Thank you to our readers and contributors!

Please enjoy this timely blog post titled: "Teaching the Top 100%"

by Elisabeth Fredrickson, Associate Dean for Instruction at Edmonds Community College

In a recent TIHE podcast, Sarah Rose Cavanagh reframed the contrast between selective universities and open-access community colleges. Community colleges are selective too, she says. “They select the top 100%.”

In other words, we say to students, “We select all of you. We believe you can learn and succeed.”

Inclusive teaching can mean a lot of things, but generally, it describes practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for all students, taking into account their diverse needs, abilities, backgrounds, and experiences.

How might that play out in the classroom? Here are a few examples:

UNC Chapel Hill professor Kelly Hogan added structure to her Biology 101 class. She started teaching her students how to learn (what to do before, during, and after class). Her explicit instructions and mandatory practice sessions helped all of her students, but it especially benefited first-generation, black, and Latino/a students.

Marsha Penner facilitates classroom discussions using small groups and shuffled response cards for anonymity. That way, even introverted students and students with social anxiety are encouraged to participate.

Kelly Zamudio’s introduction of active learning strategies in her evolutionary biology class boosted self-confidence and sense of social belonging among all of her students, and it also boosted achievement among underrepresented minority students.

Some great examples of inclusive teaching that I’ve seen on my own campus include kinesthetic mock quizzes, peer teaching sessions, community-building icebreakers, low-cost textbooks, and classroom norms that promote active and non-judgmental listening.

What do you do in your classroom to provide support, equitable access, and meaningful learning for all of your students? How do you address the needs of specific populations of students in your classes, and how do you leverage their strengths?

After Conference Thoughts

submitted by Brigid Nulty - the Associate Dean of Teaching, Learning and Assessment at Shoreline Community College

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m back at my college, working, after two full days at the ATL Conference in Vancouver, Wa. It was my first time and I loved it for a bunch of reasons: chief among them the opportunity to hang out with with my Pro-D colleagues (go 5-Star!) and meet some amazing teacher-leaders from across the state.

There were many great learning moments, but here were two that really had an impact on me.
1.    Debra Jenkins’ metaphor of the “bridge” as a place we meet others to discuss and engage in conflict. She made the point that change is hard, equity is hard, and that conflict is an opportunity for both personal, professional, and institutional growth. We need to embrace it, and stay “on the bridge”. Not ignore or deny the ravine, not drive others to jump off, not jump off ourselves…

2.    I loved Bevyn Rowland’s pre-conference training! The takeaway? Making time to do healthy self-care is important, and should not be apologized for. We should be supporting it, championing it, for ourselves and for our colleagues. Why? High stress and exhaustion increase implicit bias and negativity bias. Both of these biases harm others. The ethical thing to do is to learn how to take care of ourselves so that we are more resilient and adaptable in the face of [inevitable] stress. Oh and by the way: healthy, long-lasting self-care practices are difficult! I loved this quote that was posted:
“What [they] don’t often tell you is that self-care can be completely terrible. Self-care includes a lot of adult-ing, and activities you want to put off indefinitely. Self-care sometimes means making tough decisions which you fear others will judge. Self-care involves asking for help; it involves vulnerability; it involves being painfully honest with yourself and your loved ones about what you need.” – Mawiyah Patten, on the website, The Mighty

Did you go to ATL? Have you been to some other conference recently? What made an impression on you?

Exams – are they really learning opportunities?

submitted by Peg Balachowski, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at EvCC

“Some faculty members lament that exams can be missed opportunities to cultivate learning because worries about grades consume students' attention. What if there were a better way?”

In a recent post in the Teaching and Learning newsletter (courtesy of The Chronicle for Higher Education) the authors described a two-stage exam:

“Here’s how it works: Students take an exam individually... After they submit their answers, they split into groups of three to five students and go over the test together to hash out the answers.” Hmmm… you might be wondering if students who know this is the exam protocol would neglect to prepare for the exam. I wondered that too. The faculty who used this technique decided to test whether students had really learned anything from the group session and gave a surprise quiz just a few days later on the same material. Note that this was an INDIVIDUAL quiz. To their delight, “students who tested collaboratively learned the correct answers to more than one-third of the questions they had initially answered incorrectly on the tests they had taken individually. And, when students were tested three days later, the knowledge largely stuck.”

Is that enough of a boost in learning to convince you to try this technique? Let us know if you do and how your students did!

By the way, you can sign up to receive the Teaching and Learning Newsletter from the Chronicle by going to this site.

Saturday Series Spring Workshop

Sally Heilstedt, Dean of Instruction at Lake Washington Institute of Technology will be presenting a workshop on Saturday, April 28, 2018:

Ensuring Equitable Learning with the Transparency Framework

The Transparency Framework is a simple tweak you can make to your existing assignments that will increase clarity, as well as students’ sense of belonging, confidence, and persistence. All of that with one teaching tool!

Saturday, April 28, 2018
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Lake Washington Institute of Technology -- West Bldg, W401

Coffee, tea and light snacks provided

Interested? RSVP online.

I'm First! Supporting First-Generation Students

submitted by Elisabeth Fredrickson, Associate Dean for Instruction at EdCC

Recently, I listened to a Teach Better Podcast episode on Inclusive Teaching with A. T. Miller, director of Cornell’s Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives. The episode focused, in part, on the valuable perspectives that first-generation students bring to the classroom and on practical strategies we can use to help level the playing field for them.

Financial obstacles and lack of family support are common among first-generation college students. But these students share other characteristics as well.

First-generation students . . .	We can help by . . .
often have more life experiences than the prototypical college student. They have had to figure things out for themselves--and have gained some wisdom in the process.	treating their experiences as an asset. Give them an opportunity to write, speak, and build projects around their lived experiences. We can also help by framing their past experiences as an advantage. They have done hard things and learned new skills before, and they can do it again.
may not speak the insider language of the institution: program, dean, prerequisite, syllabus, objective, transfer.	interpreting the language for them and creating motivational syllabi that are welcoming and inclusive.
might feel alone, or suffer from “imposter syndrome.”	identifying first-generation faculty on campus and providing opportunities for students to network with those faculty. Cornell’s “I’m First!” campaign identifies faculty who were first-generation college students themselves, so that they can be positive examples and mentors to first-generation students.
might struggle in self-selected, unmonitored group work. When students pick their own groups or teams, academically-advanced students may partner up and rush ahead with the project, while less confident students, including those with limited English proficiency, may find themselves grouped together, with less collective knowledge between them than other groups have.	ensuring every group has a confident person who can provide leadership and direction, and by creating clear rotating roles to ensure that less-confident students don’t always get stuck in lower-level “task” roles, like being the notetaker or timekeeper.
may not feel comfortable asking their instructors for extensions, even in the case of family emergencies. In fact, they may not be comfortable asking for favors from authority figures at all.	“practicing paradox,” (clear deadlines, plus reasonable flexibility) and by reaching out to first-generation/non-traditional students who are falling behind and explicitly offering an alternative deadline schedule.