Schoolcraft College Writing Fellows

Constantly Self Evaluate

While part of assessment is to test what our students have learned, an important part of assessment is to discover how well we are teaching a subject.

Last year, when my partner was returning to school after being out of the classroom for 25 years, he had an appointment with his advisor. After his appointment, we met for lunch and he had all kinds of questions that should have explained by his advisor. It turns out that when she asked if he understood what she had just explained, he was too embarrassed to answer truthfully that he did not understand. This is how I learned that students will lie when directly confronted about their understanding of material.

Fortunately, there are a number of relatively quick exercises we can do to get feedback as to whether or not students are learning what we think we are teaching. Reprinted by the Southern Illinois University at Evansdale, these three techniques were developed by Angelo and Cross (1993).

Directed Paraphrase

Muddiest Point

Minute Paper

When we ask students to respond, we need to be prepared to modify our assignments and/or teaching techniques based on the feedback we receive.

References and Resources

Angelo, Thomas A. and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass., 1993.

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Schoolcraft College Writing Fellows
18600 Haggerty
Livonia, MI 48152
734-462-4400 (ext. 5292)
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