Designing Effective and Innovative Courses in Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry Audio access: Call in Access code: Please mute your phone by pressing *6 Alternate number: (not toll-free) Technical problems? Contact John at Program begins at 3 pm EDT, Thur. May 3 Please bookmark the workshop program at 012/program.html

Welcome to Session 3!  Presentation on assessing student learning  Give you some time to work on your own activity with assessment plan  Small group feedback on activity/assessment  Three possible discussion topics  What can we do to increase relevance of MPG courses to students and the curriculum?  What are some ideas for effectively incorporating GIS and remote sensing into MPG courses?  Effective strategies for designing "hybrid" courses – the one required course in min and pet?  Report on discussion topics

Assessing Student Learning Practical Strategies

Informal vs formal  Informal assessment  Low risk  Generally not graded  Good for engaging students  Good for “on-the-fly” assessment  Formal assessment  Higher risk  Students receive grades and/or formal evaluations

Informal assessments  Classroom performance systems (“clickers”)  Low-tech holding up cards or hands  Think-pair-share  Minute papers (in-class or online)  Discussion (in-class or online)  Journals (paper or online)

Knowledge surveys  Knowledge surveys (Ed Nuhfer, U. Colorado Denver, and Delores Knipp, US Air Force Academy)  Students do not provide actual answers to questions but indicate level of confidence in their ability to answer questions

More on knowledge surveys  Likert scale for responses  Example of a scale  3 = you feel confident that you can now answer the question sufficiently for graded test purposes  2 = you can now answer at least 50% of the question and know precisely where you could quickly locate information needed and could return here in 20 minutes and provide a complete answer for graded test purposes  1 = you are not confident that you could answer the question for graded test purposes at this time

More on knowledge surveys  Questions can be complex, open- ended because students are not actually providing answers  Dex Perkins: a couple hundred questions in mineralogy  At start of semester  Just before an exam, then correlates with exam performance  edgesurvey.html edgesurvey.html  edgesurvey/index.html

Formal assessments  Formal assessment should be “authentic”  What students receive grades on are tasks that allow you to evaluate whether students have met the goals  If students are graded largely on their abilities to recall, define, recognize, and follow cook-book steps, you have not evaluated their progress toward goals involving higher order thinking skills.  Formal assessment should measure what you say that you value  Don’t assess what is easily measured – assess what you value.

Aligning assessments and goals  Aligning assessment with goals is a good way to insure authentic assessment  Example: Students will be able to evaluate and predict the influence of climate, hydrology, biology, and geology on the severity of a natural disaster.  Give students an unfamiliar example  Can they do it??  Don’t just test on their ability to recall the information that would be part of such an analysis

Details on two topics  Pyramid exams  Grading rubrics

Pyramid exams  Students take exam once solo  Students can collaborate on second try  Solo counts 75-85%  Advantages:  Turns an exam into a learning experience  Can add a few questions for the collaborative part that are harder than you might include for solo exam  Students like it

Grading rubrics  Guidelines for evaluating student work  Handed out with the assignment  Provides standards for student to achieve in order to obtain specific scores/grades  Shifts the responsibility for grades onto the student to demonstrate knowledge, skills, abilities, not on the instructor to identify mistakes

General rubrics  Indicate the grade-equivalent in the syllabus  Use only the 1-5 scale for assignments  Helps students focus on improvement (fewer knee-jerk reactions and complaints about what would be Cs and Ds in regular scheme)

General rubrics  Example for products in GIS course  Sets the general standards – a B or an A is more than just doing a satisfactory job  Can be customized quickly for specific assignments

Examples of specific rubrics  Write rubric when you write the assignment, not just before you are going to do the grading  Forces you to clarify what you value  Helps you make sure that the assignment aligned with the goals

Examples of specific rubrics  Give students the rubric with the assignment  Helps students understand what they will be graded on  Helps solve problem: did the student leave out X because he/she didn’t understand the assignment or was it a deliberate decision?

Examples of specific rubrics  Helps students learn what a complete assignment is

Examples of specific rubrics  This rubric specifies components – helps students learn what a complete assignment is  Could be re-cast if students were being graded on their ability to figure out what the components actually are.

Examples of specific rubrics  Grading rubric for oral presentation  Give ahead of time; class and instructor evaluate during/after presentation

Rubrics for grading writing  Rubric helps students get over the idea that grading writing is “subjective”  Post examples of 3s, 4s, 5s (no names) – students can really see the differences

Improving writing  Useful for multiple writing assignments  You don’t have to keep track of what each student was working on  Forces students to focus on addressing previous critiques  Gives you the option of giving a 0 on writing if issues not addressed

Grading rubrics  AND….  Rubrics save you TIME and make grading easier!!

Individual work: assignment/assessment design  Leave Elluminate on; hang up phone.  Work on your own assignment/activity and its assessment.  Enter ideas and info on your own activity page, which can be linked to from:  /activities-wkspc/index.html  Post questions to Elluminate chat, if you like.  Call back in to at 3:55, using access code

Small-group discussion: assignment/activity design and assessment  Leave Elluminate on; hang up phone.  Go to the Workshop Program page, and call back in using your group’s code.  Group task:  Assign a time keeper and a recorder.  Each person has 10 minutes to describe what he/she is designing and to receive feedback. The more you talk, the less feedback you’ll get!  Post questions to Elluminate chat, if you like.  The group will decide on the best ideas that have come up, and the recorder will report on them when we call back in to the main access code.  Groups end by 4:50.  Call back in to at 4:55, using access code

Reports from groups  Each group has 5 minutes to give us a snapshot of their best ideas!

Small-group discussion on several topics  Leave Elluminate on; hang up phone.  Go to the Workshop Program page, and call back in using your group’s code.  Topics  What can we do to increase relevance of MPG courses to students and the curriculum?  What are some ideas for effectively incorporating GIS and remote sensing into MPG courses?  Effective strategies for designing "hybrid" courses – the one required course in min and pet?  Nuts and bolts  Assign a recorder.  Post questions to Elluminate chat, if you like.  Be prepared to tell us about your best ideas.  Groups end by 5:35.  Call back in to at 5:40, using access code

Reports from groups  Each group has 5 minutes to give us a snapshot of their best ideas!  What can we do to increase relevance of MPG courses to students and the curriculum?  What are some ideas for effectively incorporating GIS and remote sensing into MPG courses?  Effective strategies for designing "hybrid" courses – the one required course in min and pet?

Assignment for session 4  Complete the road check to let us know how the workshop is going for you.  Work on your course, assignments, and activities over the summer.  Prepare a "poster" for the online poster session to be held on Thursday, October 25. We will send an to you when a template is ready.  Read and respond to discussion threads; start discussion threads, if you wish.  If you want to have a phone or Skype consultation with Barb, please send an .

Thank you for your hard work so far!