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.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
~Dom Heider Camara
I teach for free; they pay me to grade. (anon)
************************************************
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