Assessment in the Learning Paradigm The Wisconsin Technical Colleges November 4, 1999 John Tagg Associate Professor of English Palomar College

Far and few, far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a sieve.

Alan E. Guskin, Chancellor of Antioch University, 1994: “[T]he primary learning environment for undergraduate students, the fairly passive lecture-discussion format where faculty talk and most students listen, is contrary to almost every principle of optimal settings for student learning.”

Alexander Astin, What Matters in College, 1993: “The explicitly stated values — which always include a strong commitment to undergraduate education — are often at variance with the actual values that drive our decisions and policies”

The Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1995: teaching is more than lecturing. active engagement in learning is more productive than passive listening. we should evaluate institutional performance against student outcomes.

“We know all of this, but appear unable to act on it. It is time to explore the reasons for our failure to act.”

“From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education” Robert Barr and John Tagg Change Magazine, November-December 1995

We act as we do because we hold, implicitly or explicitly, theories that guide our actions.

Espoused Theory: The set of principles that we use to explain our behavior or to prescribe the behavior of others.

Theory-in-Use: The set of principles inferred from how people actually behave. The rules implied by our actions.

Why don’t we do what we say we should?

Paradigm: A set of assumptions or rules, usually held unconsciously or taken for granted, that defines the boundaries of an activity and defines the possibilities for action.

The Instruction Paradigm

The Instruction Paradigm The Learning Paradigm The Instruction Paradigm

Mission and Purposes Instruction Paradigm To Provide Instruction Learning Paradigm To Produce Learning

Mission and Purposes Instruction Paradigm Transfer knowledge from faculty to students Learning Paradigm Elicit student discovery and construction of knowledge

The Instruction Paradigm: Mistakes the means for the end. Freezes the means.

To say the purpose of college is to provide instruction is like saying: The purpose of GM is to create assembly lines. The purpose of a hospital is to fill beds.

Criteria for Success Instruction Paradigm Inputs, resources Learning Paradigm Learning and student- success outcomes

Productivity/Funding Instruction Paradigm Definition of productivity: cost per hour of instruction per student Funding for hours of instruction Learning Paradigm Definition of Productivity: cost to produce meaningful learning per student Funding for learning outcomes

Teaching/Learning Structures Instruction Paradigm Atomistic 50-minute lecture, 3- unit course Learning Paradigm Holistic Learning environments

Teaching/Learning Structures Instruction Paradigm Time is constant while learning varies Degree equals accumulated credit hours Learning Paradigm Learning is constant while time varies Degree equals demonstrated knowledge and skills

Learning Theory Instruction Paradigm Fits the storehouse of knowledge metaphor Learning Paradigm Fits learning how to ride a bicycle metaphor

How do you ride a bicycle? (How do you keep moving forward without falling to the ground when riding a bicycle?)

“For a given angle of unbalance the curvature of each winding is inversely proportional to the square of the speed at which the cyclist is proceeding.” – Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge

Nature of Roles Instruction Paradigm Faculty are primarily lecturers Staff “support” faculty and the process of instruction Learning Paradigm Faculty are primarily designers of learning methods and environments All staff are educators whose job is to produce student learning and success

So what does this mean for us? Everything we do is wrong? We do more harm than good?

It means We need to rededicate ourselves to the values that made us educators in the first place. We need to see the familiar aspects of our work through the lens of a new paradigm.

“There is no blame.” Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, 1991

“The things we see every day are the things we never see at all.” --G.K. Chesterton

–Dennis McGrath and Martin Spear, The Academic Crisis of the Community College, 1991 "Education proceeds everywhere through the vehicle of the three credit course. Faculty members have so internalized that constraint that they are long past noticing that it is a constraint, thinking it part of the natural order of things.“

Far and few, far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a sieve.

Assessment is the key to building learning organizations

How can assessment model quality learning? Assessment can provide ongoing, coherent feedback and create a meaningful curriculum. Assessment can extend the time-horizon of learning. Assessment can raise standards of learning.

1. Feedback “Feedback is information that provides the performer with direct, usable insights into current performance, based on tangible differences between current performance and hoped-for performance.” --Grant Wiggins, Assessing Student Performance, 1993

Curriculum L. Curriculum: 1. a running 2. a contest in running, a race. a. raceground, course, lap. b. a racing chariot.

Feedback provides the map and road signs on the course of learning.

Feedback for learning is more than and different from evaluation The best assessment is always formative, never merely summative. The best assessment always provides information that the recipient can use for improvement. The best assessment ultimately makes evaluation trivial: –If the maps and road signs are clear, no one needs to tell us who won the race.

2. Assessment can extend the time-horizon of learning. If the terminus of learning is the end of the semester, the curriculum becomes a sequence of short sprints in random directions rather than a marathon racecourse. It exhausts us, but doesn’t get us very far.

Assessment at its best creates goals beyond the grade. The portfolio. The apprenticeship that leads to a masterpiece. The capstone project. The product of extended service. The accumulated evidence of ongoing development.

Assessment at its best will loosen the boundaries of the semester and eventually replace them. Developmental sequencing of courses and learning experiences. Certification of skills based on evidence of competence rather than measurement of seat time. Variable time to completion of substantive learning goals.

3. Assessment can raise standards of learning.

How should students learn? The most important learning is learning how to learn. Deep learning is more valuable than surface learning. Meaningful learning goals will always entail active performance of skilled activities.

The best assessment will allow Mastery goals –“Students should be required to recognize, learn from, and then produce quality work in unending cycles of model-practice-feedback- refinement. They should not get out of our clutches until they have produced some genuinely high quality work of their own.” –Grant Wiggins

The best assessment will allow Continuous monitoring of learning effectiveness—for both the students and the institution. Discovery of the constructive role of schooling in lifelong learning.

Start with your own expectations of your students. Whenever you cannot honestly maintain high expectations of your students, look first to organizational structure for the cause.

How can assessment model quality learning? Assessment can provide ongoing, coherent feedback and create a meaningful curriculum. Assessment can extend the time-horizon of learning. Assessment can raise standards of learning.

Far and few, far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a sieve.

The Fourth North American Conference on the Learning Paradigm Copyright © John Tagg 1999