Maybe I should have said this in my e-mail, but we already used the MFAT as an end of major assessment. What we wanted was something that would show that they actually learned something beyond what they came in with. We did talk about having faculty write questions for each class they teach, but I thought instead of reinventing the wheel, maybe someone already had something. I haven't finished reading all the responses, but I thought I would clarify what we're looking for. I could have sworn I had already said all that, but I guess I didn't. Thanks to everybody past, present, and future who are responding to this request,
Marte >>> Nathalie Cote 02/25/10 12:51 PM >>> We have used the MFAT for two years. We*ll keep using itbut a major problem is that we do not teach our students to takemultiple-choice tests so the format of the MFAT assessment does not map allthat well to the skills we emphasize in our upper level courses. However, we douse it to observe curricular strengths and weaknesses in the content coverage acrossthe 6 subareas and to get a sense of the national norms for content knowledge. Our primary source of assessment information for the major is thesenior thesis. We are in the process of developing a pretest-posttest that willfocus just on the information literacy skills that we expect our majors todevelop. We will give it in Intro Psych and in the thesis class probably. This testwill be in addition to the ETS iSkills test that the college at large is aboutto being using and is intended to be discipline *specific (if you haveone please share!). Nathalie Cote Belmont Abbey College, NC From: Marc Carter[mailto:marc.car...@bakeru.edu] Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 3:39 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] assessment question (AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH) I'm with Julia and Claudia: use the MFAT. It's cheap andthorough. I did want to say that I don't think you need to do a pre-test,though. It's *highly* unlikely you're going to have a substantial numberof students who come to your degree program already knowing psych. Evenan AP class in high school is not likely to result in a great deal of retainedknowledge 4-odd years later. Almost everything they know about psychologyas seniors is due to what you've done with them while they were in yourprogram. I'd save the money on the pre-test and have a couple picnics forthe psych majors. I just cannot see it being informative. The MFAT is normed, so you can compare your group to other groups;it has six "Assessment Indicators" that will tell you about strengthsand weakness of your program in sufficient detail that you can make curricularchanges. m -- Marc Carter, PhD Associate Professor and Chair Department of Psychology College of Arts & Sciences Baker University -- From: Claudia Stanny [mailto:csta...@uwf.edu] Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:09 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] assessment question (AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH) Not knowing what the learning outcomes are for your programmakes answering your question more difficult. If you are focused entirely on content and fact retrieval, apre-post test doesn't pose a very interesting question. You couldprobably answer it better by using something like the Major Fields test forpsychology (ETS) and then look at subtest scores to look at knowledge areas toidentify areas of strengths and weaknesses. I'm assuming ETSprovides these subscores for areas in psychology for the Psychologytest. I know they do this for the Business test because the Collegeof Business uses this approach to look at strengths and weaknesses in in theBusiness curriculum - ETS gives them subscores for finance, economics,accounting, management, etc. If you would really like to have some sort of baseline forcontent knowledge, you could volunteer to pariticipate in the College Boarddevelopment of norms for the AP Psychology exam. Students take the APexam at the end of their introductory psychology course. Not exactlyentering the major, but I hope they learn more about the content of psychologyin all those other courses they take later! It would be sad if theylearned all the relevant content in intro! :-) Many programs have learning outcomes related to criticalthinking and analysis skills, information literacy, and quality ofwriting. If your institution has an assessment for these learningoutcomes in the General Education curriculum, you could try to get the averagescores for students in Gen Ed entering the psychology major and use thosescores as the baseline. Then create a meaningful assessment of theseskills with an embedded assignment in the capstone course to determine whatchanges occur during completion of the major coursework. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 * 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Marte Fallshore <ma...@cwu.edu> wrote: Hi,everybody. In case anyone's missed me, I'm back. Still mostly lurking, but I dohave a question. My school, like all the others, is obsessed with assessment(sounds like a poem title by e.e. cummings, doesn't it?). I was wonderingif anyone out there does a pre- posttest assessment of psych graduates? Mychair is wanting to start something like that b/c we now have a 1-credit introductionto the major class when they declare. We want to give them the pretest in themajors class then a posttest during their senior assessment class. What do theyknow b/4 the major and what do they know after? Anybody got any tests alreadywritten (and maybe normed) we could use? Thanks, Marte ************************************************ Marte Fallshore Department of Psychology CentralWashington Univ. 400E University Way Ellensburg, WA 98926-7575 509/963-3670 509/963-2307 (fax) No one knows what's next, but everybody does it. ~George Carlin WhenI give food to the poor, they call me a saint. 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