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{applause}
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the start of the Fall semester. You
know, whenever I'm up on a stage with bright lights in my face,
I have a renewed respect for performing artists of all types.
Stage performance in front of large audiences is not my forte,
so when Jason asked me to talk on the topic of “why do we assess”
and then casually added that it was to all of you
on opening day in which he wanted me to do this, yeaaahh right...
I readily agreed because I thought the question he asked is an important one.
I've given it a lot of thought but I always come back to the same two answers.
One is the answer that assessment allows us to improves and programs of instruction,
It also allows us to argue for and acquire resources, and overall improve our services to students.
And that's really why we're here, isn't it? To improve our services to students.
But the other answer is that it's in our blood, it's part of the DNA,
it's part of who we are as faculty.
I'm up here representing the electronics department. In electronics,
we spend a lot of time fixing things. We want to know how things work,
if they're not working why they're not working and how to make things better.
And you know, often we find out that when something isn't working, the cause is pretty basic.
“Dad the computer isn't working. Is it plugged in?”
Well, we found that applies to our courses often as well:
when something isn't working as well as we'd like in a more advanced course, many times
the cause can often be traced right back to the basics, right back to the fundamentals
you thought were covered thoroughly in the basics courses.
Oh we've all been there, haven't we? Be honest with me.
How many times last semester alone did you just want to grab a student by the lapels and say
“you mean to tell me you've been at this school five semesters and you can't identify a thesis statement,
tell me what a logarithm is, explain the significance of Avogadro's number,
give a talk to 400 of your best friends on a Friday morning in August.
Use an ammeter to measure total circuit current properly.”
Oh, I'm sure you can fill in your own examples.
And so could we. Several years ago, we started assessing
our fundamentals courses very regulary. And initially, we
wanted to make sure that we weren't leaving students behind.
We had made the courses somewhat more quantitative and we
we were trying to find out whether the students were able to work with the math involved.
And do you know what we found out? Oh they can! They got really good at doing those problems sets and turning
tests in and turning in problems and saying "Ah, I'm done with that. Notch that one off"
But then, a year before last we added a question to the assessment.
The question was basically this: “what does this number have to do with electronics?
What does this phase angle you just calculated have to do with the circuit parameters you measured in lab last Tuesday?”
You know what, we got a fair number of blank stares and “Um, I'll get back to you on that” kind of responses.
And that was a concern, because that's the kind of questions one might be asked
in a job interview, for example. So we dug deeper and found out
that in this case part of the problem was that there was a disconnect between
the lecture and the text presentations and the lab procedures that the students had to follow in the laboratory.
I won't bore you with the details, but the bottom line
is that the lab procedures had to be written in a way
that accomodated equipment limitations in the laboratory.
So we used our assessments to argue for the purchase of equipment that would
alllow us to demonstrate the concepts in a manner more consistent with lecture and text presentations.
We felt that was very important in the fundamentals course because that way the students wouldn't be receiving mixed messages.
So why do we assess? One of the reasons is that it allows us to argue for the purchase of instructional equipment.
Thereby improving our programs. In our case we were able to purchase the equipment.
And so in the most recent academic year, we added lab time and we added class time to the underlying concepts.
Then we asked the question a slightly different way. We asked the students then to explain their rationale.
Now I'm showing you the question and I don't really expect you to understand the significance of it
but I do want to make a couple of points. One, is this has been a department effort.
All of the people teaching the course have contributed to this question in one way or another.
The other is that with the rationale being explictly asked of the students,
now in the most recent iteratrion, we're able to take a look at their thought process.
Now we're able to see how they are approaching the subject matter.
And you know what? We found out that most of them will make the attempt.
They will give you a very definite rationale for why they made the decisions they did.
Oh, they may still be wrong, but that's not so much the point.
The point is now that now we are peering into their thought process.
Now we're getting thought as to where the misconceptions might be
and how to address those and thereby improve the teaching.
Why do we assess? To improve the teaching.
But what we also found is that a lot of students can do it.
They can very explicitly tie together concepts that at first may seem disconnected.
They can tell you this is this is that. Now we're looking at entire programs, aren't we.
Now we're looking at the abillity of students to make explicit connections.
Now we're able to say that students are, dare I say it, able to think at the college level
and maybe answer interview questions with something better than
“Uh, let me get back to you on that.”
Look, I'll level with you. I can hear the muttering and groaning under peoples breath everytime
someone comes up here to talk about SLOs. Go ahead, you can admit it. You were doing it, too.
But I'm going to make you a bet. Here's my pay stub. I'll put a month's pay
on the table right now. Oh, here's a table. How convenient. And the bet is this:
The bet is that I could walk up and down these aisles and stick a microphone in front of your faces
and with the assistance of our very capable sound man in the back, you would
be able to tell everyone in this room about some aspect of your courses,
your departments, your programs about which you feel an absolute passion.
And you could probably do it without much conscious effort.
I feel mighty safe in making that bet because it's passion for what we do, for what we teach
that allows us to do our jobs so well here at Mt. SAC.
Why do we assess? Because we do our jobs here very well indeed.
In the seven, going on eight years I have been here, I am constantly amazed by just
how good the teaching is at this school. And it is passion for what we do, for what we teach that makes the teaching so good.
I see that pasion every working day, in our classrooms, counseling sessions, in our library interactions.
Start with that. Start with something that is important to you.
Perhaps it's a fundamental, core concept of your courses or disciplines━
something that would just make you slap your forehead
if you knew that someone left your program without mastering.
You want to know that they know that, yes indeed, the landing gear
do have to be down before the plane hits the runway. Maybe it's more programmatic.
Maybe it speaks to what you want students to be able to know or do
as a result of engagment with your program.
Maybe it speaks more to the issue of what we are all doing .
Why are those field trips so important to you and your students?
How are our lab assistants affecting student success in the classroom?
Whatever it is, make it something important to you.
That's how this effort becomes more than just an exercise, more than just another process.
For my colleagues and me, the passion is to prepare students for good jobs
with very selective employers in an extremely tight job market. And to be able to do that, students have to know how to think;
they have to be prepared. Why do we assess? So that we know our students are prepared.
I know I'm running long, so I will just make one final point.
Many of you focus on transfer preparation for university-level work. You may not be aware of this,
but many of our courses do articulate to the engineering technology programs at Cal Poly
and quite a few of our students do continue their educations there or at other CSU's.
I had occasion to speak with their department chair not too long ago
just - more than anything- to make sure we were all still singing from the same hymnal.
And he casually mentioned, "Oh, we like the Mt. SAC students.
They're always the well-prepared ones.” Why do we assess? Because admit it.
Who in this room wouldn't like to hear something like that from an articulation partner.