ABSTRACT
Judy’s story: When I was first introduced to assessment, I thought, finally, a way to really know what my students are actually getting from my classes. We all have assumptions about what students learn in our classes, but those assumptions are most often untested. Assessment provides ways to ask questions about those assumptions and find out how reliable they were. However, I found that my colleagues did not always agree with my positive view. Many faculty see assessment as very threatening. As we worked our way through the faculty teaching in University Studies, we found that asking them to identify a question they had about their teaching helped them see the benefits that assessment could bring. I remember one faculty member in particular who said his class was fine, that he had students who were just not prepared for his material. Some of his students were able to understand the concepts he was teaching, but some of them were not ready for his class. So we did a short survey about preparation, and we found that the students he had identified as being prepared had already taken a similar class, and the material was not new to them. That’s why they were getting it. It wasn’t because they were smarter overall; it was because they were familiar with the course content while the other students were new to it. It was an eye-opening moment for him, and he never thought about his students or taught that class in the same way.
