2002 Spring Focus Session

Transformative Assessment: Step One
March 15, 2002
The Brown Palace Hotel
Denver, Colorado

Proceedings

• General Sessions
• Group Working Session

Program

This focus session was jointly sponsored by the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII), the Flashlight Program of the TLT Group, the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and the University of Colorado, Boulder's Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (ATLAS).

The focus session was designed as part of the Transformative Assessment Project, a project designed to elicit new ideas about assessment practices and systems that will transform teaching and learning, and to help institutions of higher education put these ideas into action. Transformative assessment systems are institution-wide assessment strategies that are based on institutional goals and implemented in an integrated way for all levels (the course, the program, and the institution) to systematically transform teaching and learning.

Together, the NLII, the Flashlight Program, and CNI developed three coordinated venues to explore and apply these ideas. This focus session served as a kick-off workshop for people who wanted to initiate assessment projects at their institutions. Attendees had the option of participating in an experimental online course and community to support their assessment projects after the focus session.

Meeting Purpose

NLII Focus Sessions are small (this session was limited to 40 attendees; 26 attended, 11 of whom were on institutional teams, and 15 of whom were attending individually) and highly interactive. Attendees had pre-session readings and other assignments; the sessions were facilitated by experts on the topic; and the sessions resulted in the development of new Web-based decision-making tools (see the Transformative Assessment branch of the READY system), white papers on effective practices (see the "Harvest" white paper synthesized from this focus session and the follow-on online workshop, at the public TAP team site), and other collective work products (see the Transformative Assessment Rubric). The purpose of the focus session was to advance the body of thought on using assessment to transform teaching and learning institution-wide. . . . We attempted to look at assessment in a new way-as a tool for communication about the nature of the desired transformation of teaching and learning. (What is the vision, what is the path to achieve it, and what measures would show progress toward that desired state?) Attendees worked on generating principles and practices for developing new assessment systems that coordinate assessment activities at the course, program, and institutional level, and that are in alignment with institutional strategic plans and goals. Attendees of the following online workshop had an opportunity to use these principles to develop draft plans for potential transformative assessment projects at their institutions.

1. Creating shared goals for institutional improvement

   It is difficult to design an effective evaluative study unless enough people at the institution first have a clear and shared idea of what kind of educational improvement the institution is trying to make. What kinds of goals are likely to be important? What strategies (meetings, workshops, conversations, or experiences) might help people get more clear on such goals and begin using a common vocabulary to describe them?

2. Choosing study topics

   What are the powerful questions to study within a course? Within an instructional program such as a degree program? Within a service (such as the library or technology support)? Across the entire institution? What are examples of where such studies have made a difference?

3. Coordinating studies

   When and how should your institution align and integrate studies so that many of them deal with the same general issue (e.g., skills of inquiry) but from different levels and angles (e.g., studying technology as an aid to inquiry with a number of individuals while also studying patterns of technology use for inquiry across the whole institution)?

4. Selecting assessment methods

   What are some of the basic methods for assessment? To what extent does assessment need to revolve around numbers and the bottom line?

5. Managing organizational issues

   What are some of the organizational issues that affect the success of assessment efforts? For example, how might you enlist the support of faculty across campus to implement change?