HR: 0830h
AN: ED21C-1221    [PDF]
TI: Interpretation of Assessment Results in General Education Sciences Laboratories: the TA Effect
AU: * Patino, L C
EM: patinoL@msu.edu
AF: Department of Geological Sciences, Michigan State University, 206 Natural Sciences Bldg, East Lansing, MI 48824 United States
AB: A significant part of student learning relates to the way the student is taught. Assessment of class goals with multiple sections needs to take into account complexity introduced by having several teaching assistants (TAs). The TAs bring different levels of expertise in the subject matter, in pedagogy, and self confidence, creating highly variable experiences for the students in the classroom. It was observed that assessment results for a general education sciences laboratory are skew by the novice TAs in two ways. First, the inexperienced TA may cover material superficially, where the students are not given the tools to reason at higher orders of thinking. For example, students may be able to recall information, but they will not be able to thoroughly evaluate a given situation using the material learned in the lab. Second, the novice TA may teach to a question. Thus, the students in her/his section will have disproportional high scores in the assessment. To minimize the effects that novice TAs may have on assessment, it is very important to properly screen and train the TAs on the subject matter and on pedagogical issues. These steps will minimize the effects that novice TAs may have on the assessment results, but will not eliminate them. Thus, it is important to design the assessment tool to be as transparent to TA shortcomings as possible and try to get to the student understanding. Common assessment tools used for laboratory settings with large number of students include lab work and exams. Results of assessment of lab work are easier to compare when there is a clear rubric for students and TAs. Furthermore, the effect of the novice TA may be minimized because in the laboratory setting, students are encouraged to work together and to answer each other questions. Thus, allowing for more self-guiding by the students. For exams to be meaningful assessment tools, the TAs must have input on designing the exams. However, consensus must be reached on the wording of the questions so that students in all sections will be asked the same question. Ideally, the assessment questions will be prepared after the lab has been taught so the less experience TAs do not teach to the question. Regardless of the assessment tool used, it is important to take more than one sample per section (e.g. three samples per section) to draw meaningful conclusion on whether or not the assessment results are biased by inexperience TAs.
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting