Core Competency 5: Assessing Student Learning

Description of Core Competency

Assessing student learning is crucial for an educator. Backward design can help a lot to align course objectives, lesson plans, student activities, and of course, assessments. Bloom's taxonomy can be used as guide. I have the opportunity to work on a mentored teaching project as a SUTL fellow under the supervision of Professor Ryan Sweeder titled as "Exploring long-term impacts of learning about 3DL on test writing". I also was a COLA fellow last summer and developed how to use formative assessments in chemistry lab classes for better engagements, getting feedback to update instruction modality, as well as meeting the course goals under the supervision of Professor Thomas Stephen. 

Requirement Fulfilled 

"Exploring long-term impacts of learning about 3DL on test writing"

• Date(s): May, 2022 - April, 2023

• Supervisor: Ryan Sweeder, Ph.D.

• Offered By: Lyman Briggs College and Graduate School at Michigan State University

"Certification in College Teaching Institute: Assessing Student Learning"

• Date(s): May 13, 2022

• Offered By: Michigan State University

Colleges of Online Learning Academy (COLA)

• Date(s): Summer, 2022

• Mentor(s): Stephen Thomas, Ph.D.

• Offered By: Michigan State University

Summary of Mentored Teaching Program

Three dimensional learning (3DL) which is described by National Research Council's Framework for K-12 can be very relevent for STEM teaching and learning. 3DL posits that teaching and learning of a scientific discipline should invlove three features: (1) Disciplinary core ideas of each discipline i.e., physics, chemistry, biology. (2) scientific practices and (3) crosscutting concepts. A group of academician lead by MSU and other universities adapted this framwork for undergraduate STEM teaching and learning as 3DL4US (three dimensional learning for undergraduate science). Under the banner of 3DL4US, faculties are being trained so that they can incorporate 3DL in their teaching. Our work was to collect evidence of 3DL elements in the assessments. We collected almost hundred chemistry exams from different faculties of different time frame, i.e., pre-training, post-training, pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, during pandemic. We wanted to see if faculties carry on their training over the years. We collected evidences from the exams using a protocol called 3DLAP (three dimensional learning assessments protocol) which was developed at MSU. I worked with two undergrads and the supervision of Dr. Ryan Sweeder from Lyman Briggs College and  Dr. Debbie Herrington from Grand Valley State University. We coded the exams following 3DLAP and then analyzed data. We found significant increment of the presence of 3DL elements in their exams after the training, we also noticed pandemic effect when all most all the classes shifted towards online and faculties compromised their overall learning golas switching towards more skill based assessments. We presented our work on ACS Spring 2023 as poster presentation. Paper ID: 3820994, Poster Board #:11126 at Division of Chemical Education. I also presented during Teaching Cohort Fellowship Showcase on April 24th, 2023 at Erickson Hall Kiva.

On the other hand, as a COLA fellow, I developed how to incorporate formative assessment in chemistry labs here at MSU to ensure active learning environment by collecting regular feedback. 

Artifacts from SUTL: Poster Presented on ACS Spring 2023

Detailed Description of the Project

Mentored Teaching Project Planning Document (Signed)

Reflections

It was a great opportunity to be a part of this project. Before strating the project, I was not aware of the three-dimensional learning framework. This project helps me to g0 through the documents and get acquainted with the 3DL framework of teaching and learning. As a future educator, assessment strategy is very much important. Aligning the assessment with the course objectives is the key for successful teaching and learning. This project helped me a lot in this regard. It will help me a lot to desing my lesson plans to fulill course goals. Most of the time during the project, we coded the exams collected from different faculties. This coding practices helped us to develop our own sense of assessment writing. The discussion, argument we made while finding evidence of core ideas, scientific practice, and crosscutting concepts, will help me to write better questions. This helps me to grow sense on how to alter a question to avoid ambiguity make more legible to students as well as incorpote 3DL framework to ensure students do scientific practices.