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Xavier > CAT > Assessment Toolbox
Learning can occur on one's own. Teaching is an intervention. The teacher's job is to lead students through an obstacle course of activities so that learning (ideally, learning other than what students are likely to pick up on their own) might take place:
X + Y = Z
...where X = students' knowledge/skills before the intervention; Y = the educational intervention (class activities, assignments, projects); and Z = students' knowledge/skills after the intervention.
The goal of formal education is the following result:
Z > X
Vastly complicating the educational formula is the question: How can one determine, as objectively as possible, the degree to which Z is greater than X? Because of the intervention, how much was learned? How deep was the learning? How lasting? What can students now do that they couldn't do before? To what degree have thinking and reasoning skills been sharpened?
For participants in the Course Portfolio Working Group, learning assessment has been a central concern since this project's inception in 1997. Diverse instruments and approaches have been tried in courses that span the disciplines. This website gathers into one place:
Begun as a way to make available some of the insights and approaches adopted in the Course Portfolio Working Group project, this Assessment Toolbox will be expanded, in the coming months, as data from other CAT teaching and learning initiatives are added.
Here's what some visitors have said about "Assessment Toolbox":
This site contains a lot of good data and is very helpful. However, I think it could be better organized. I keep getting lost when I go from one section to another.
Let us know what you think about this webpage, "Assessment Toolbox."
This is a much needed resource for Xavier faculty (and others who access it) beginning work on pedagogical reflection and assessment. While I may not make use of the same terminology for assessment tools and plans, the examples are very useful. The discipline links are especially helpful.