Tuning Up Your Class: Using Assessment for Optimal Student Performance
Abstract
If we as professors thought about assessing our classes in the same way that mechanics think about assessing our automobiles, we might become comfortable with the concept of assessment as a tool to achieve top performance. This article describes a preventive maintenance schedule focusing on four components of the classroom: classroom community, students, course content, and professors. First, we present a checklist summarizing ways to assess these components during specific time periods in the semester. Then we provide a tune-up kit for the items in the checklist including diagnostic questions, sources of relevant research, and possible solutions for each component. The kit serves as a quick guide for avoiding or diagnosing and solving potential problems in the classroom.
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