COF TEACHING & LEARNING CONFERENCE

Keynote: Using Assessment to Help Our Students Succeed: the Remarkable
Benefits of Asking Students Some Simple Questions, Richard Light

For more than twenty years, a group of leaders from 24 diverse colleges and
universities have participated in an assessment project that asks students about their experiences at different colleges.  Then faculty members, staff, and campus leaders
initiate changes based on what they learn in a systematic way which flourished with
enthusiastic support of administrators and faculty. In this session, Richard Light, who
Chairs this assessment working group, will share many examples of a kind of
“assessment” that has nothing whatever to do with standardized tests.  Light will
describe some specific and remarkably simple questions that students are asked,
and he will offer a group of seven concrete examples of “what has changed on a
group of campuses” because of what the students have told us.  At a time when
budgets are especially tight, Light has chosen examples that, without exception,
can be implemented for either zero cost or for very low cost on each campus.  
The changes Light will describe include using assessment for helping students to
engage academically with their schoolwork; improving student advising; enhancing
the “quality of life” on campus “outside of the classroom”;  and helping those campuses
with modest retention rates to improve those retention rates.  Especially at a time of
changing demographics among students on all of our campuses, Light will emphasize
how to use simple assessment findings to “make the most” of the increasingly varied backgrounds that students now are bringing to each campus.  He will share his main measurement instrument with all participants, together with leading a discussion
about how each faculty member, staff member, and campus leader can use simple,
one-on-one interviews to achieve powerful improvements for students on their campus.