Week 4: Assessment & Learning Environments

Assessing what people have learned is a difficult task, not least of all because there is no clearly defined “best” criteria for assessing knowledge. Two of the most common approaches to assessment—formative and summative—seem to mirror the two teaching methods mentioned in the first chapter of How People Learn. Formative assessment involves gradual monitoring of a student’s knowledge through test feedback, paper revisions, and the like. Meanwhile, summative assessment tests a student’s knowledge after the end of a learning unit (for example, a textbook chapter). Formative assessment appears to be an extension of the learner-focused instruction, as this method emphasizes ongoing learning, discussion about misconception, and most importantly, a focus on engaging the student and his goals. On the other hand, summative is related to the old-school way of unloading a lot of information on a student then expecting him to reiterate these facts somehow.

In Sadler’s article, I was particularly struck by her argument that formative assessment is meant to “improve the student’s competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of trial-and-error learning” (120). This seemed especially true with respect to much of my own in-class learning experiences. The first assignment (be it paper, project, or exam) of any course always carries with it a great deal of uncertainty when the formative assessment model is being used. It is not likely that a student will know exactly what an instructor is looking for in a paper, even if explicit criteria are laid out beforehand, largely because of the subjectivity (or randomness) of grading written material. Similarly, a test may or may not contain a section of material the student studied, rendering the assessment process as “random” in the mind of the learner.

Following along with this idea, and drawing upon the concept of different learning environments introduced in How People Learn, it’s useful to think about how learners’ attitudes and backgrounds shape instruction and assessment. Students are (not surprisingly) influenced by previous learning experiences, and they may be expecting new educational experiences to closely resemble those of the past. We know, of course, that this is often not the case. Chapter 6 of How People Learn points out that it is important to keep in mind how norms and values are constructed in the learning community (e.g., classroom or library) so that learning is fostered or hindered. For example, if students aren’t comfortable approaching the teacher to ask for individualized help, his learning will suffer. Moreover, this learner will probably have to undergo the trial-and-error sessions that Sadler mentioned, as he repeatedly guesses at portions of the coursework that are unclear to him.

In terms of librarianship, I think that it is important to keep in mind a few things in particular from this week’s readings: (1) how we shape the learning environment for our students, and (2) how we can determine (or assess) how much our students are actually learning. Practically speaking, I think that the first of these issues is easier to address. We can, among other efforts, encourage our learners to work at their own pace, ask questions, discuss their findings with others, etc. All of these actions can produce an atmosphere that is catered to learning. For librarians, though, the question of assessment is harder to figure out. Because most librarians don’t have the opportunity to spend long periods of time (i.e., an academic year) instructing, observing and monitoring the progress of their learners, the notion of assessment is tricky indeed. If we are teaching patrons how to perform research using scholarly databases to write a paper for a 19^th century American history course, the ability to assess the students’ knowledge belongs foremost to the history professor, as he/she will have the advantage of reading the finished product. Accordingly, it is probably easier for librarians to implement some variation of formative assessment, as this can be carried out over shorter durations, even in the course of a reference interaction or a one-shot workshop.