Hi Is there any evidence that these assessments actually improve the quality of programs and the students they produce (e.g., comparisons of programs that do and do not use assessments, ideally with random assignment, of course)?
Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA >>> "Paul C Bernhardt" <pcbernha...@frostburg.edu> 26-Feb-10 8:34 AM >>> Marc's point is dead on and is related to a philosophy of assessment issue. To pre-test or not to pre-test, that is the question (and a major point of discussion at the college assessment council meeting I was in last week). IMO, it is a choice based on learning goals and how you think of your program. If you think of your program as preparing students to have attained a certain level of proficiency as a psychologist, then have them take some national normed tests that cover as many of your department's learning goals as you can get. If you think of your program as transforming students over their careers from lower to higher knowledge and transformation is valuable to you to measure, then you need to pre-test and post-test. Paul C. Bernhardt Department of Psychology Frostburg State University Frostburg, Maryland -----Original Message----- From: Marc Carter [mailto:marc.car...@bakeru.edu] Sent: Thu 2/25/2010 3:38 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 and thorough. 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 number of students who come to your degree program already knowing psych. Even an AP class in high school is not likely to result in a great deal of retained knowledge 4-odd years later. Almost everything they know about psychology as seniors is due to what you've done with them while they were in your program. I'd save the money on the pre-test and have a couple picnics for the 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 strengths and weakness of your program in sufficient detail that you can make curricular changes. 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 program makes answering your question more difficult. If you are focused entirely on content and fact retrieval, a pre-post test doesn't pose a very interesting question. You could probably answer it better by using something like the Major Fields test for psychology (ETS) and then look at subtest scores to look at knowledge areas to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. I'm assuming ETS provides these subscores for areas in psychology for the Psychology test. I know they do this for the Business test because the College of Business uses this approach to look at strengths and weaknesses in in the Business curriculum - ETS gives them subscores for finance, economics, accounting, management, etc. If you would really like to have some sort of baseline for content knowledge, you could volunteer to pariticipate in the College Board development of norms for the AP Psychology exam. Students take the AP exam at the end of their introductory psychology course. Not exactly entering the major, but I hope they learn more about the content of psychology in all those other courses they take later! It would be sad if they learned all the relevant content in intro! :-) Many programs have learning outcomes related to critical thinking and analysis skills, information literacy, and quality of writing. If your institution has an assessment for these learning outcomes in the General Education curriculum, you could try to get the average scores for students in Gen Ed entering the psychology major and use those scores as the baseline. Then create a meaningful assessment of these skills with an embedded assignment in the capstone course to determine what changes 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<mailto: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<mailto:ma...@cwu.edu>> wrote: Hi, everybody. In case anyone's missed me, I'm back. Still mostly lurking, but I do have 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 wondering if anyone out there does a pre- posttest assessment of psych graduates? My chair is wanting to start something like that b/c we now have a 1-credit introduction to the major class when they declare. We want to give them the pretest in the majors class then a posttest during their senior assessment class. What do they know b/4 the major and what do they know after? Anybody got any tests already written (and maybe normed) we could use? Thanks, Marte ************************************************ Marte Fallshore Department of Psychology Central Washington Univ. 400 E 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 When I 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) ************************************************ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: csta...@uwf.edu<mailto:csta...@uwf.edu>. 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