If you're making a judgment about the power, punch and panache of the words within this sentence, you are making an assessment.
It's a tool that can be used to measure anything, but according to Jennifer Amos, a professor of bioengineering and this year's Distinguished Teacher-Scholar, it's especially useful in the classroom.
"It should be something that's part of the culture, something that's woven into what we do," she said. "We have to be able to know what our students are learning."
Amos has been taking that message on the road, as it were, using her DTS designation to host a series of campus workshops that focus on helping professors ensure that what they are teaching is being absorbed by the students they're trying to teach.
Too many times, she said, assessment is considered only as it relates to accreditation requirements.
"When accreditation is the carrot, it's not a very good model," she said. "Having it as an integral part of your plan from the beginning results in less work on the back end."
Amos said a classroom assessment can be as simple as developing a post-course evaluation form, but it also can be a long-term process that measures more precisely the ups and downs of classroom success.
"You can assess anything," she said. "All you need are defined goals and an action designed to determine if you've achieved them. A grade is not an actual measure of success."
Amos said it's easy to think of an assessment as a physical checklist, but she's asking those attending her workshops to delve deeper into the concept and think about building assessment into course projects from the very start.
She said project-based learning lends itself well to a comprehensive assessment, with students asked to demonstrate multiple skills "all within the prompt of a problem statement. It's all embedded because it was included in class planning."
She said the assessment process is an integral part of the College of Engineering's approach. It's even part of the presentation to new instructors, who are asked to track metrics as part of their normal duties.
"Assessment should be a part of our culture and something we just always do," she said. "Once you have it in place, all you have to do is tweak it every year.”
Amos has plans to continue the workshops online and to hold another live workshop this summer.
