Outcomes and Assessment Workshops
2016-2017
CLEAR offers 50 minute workshops presented by Dr. Ron Carriveau that provide what is needed to develop measurable student learning outcomes and outcome-based assessments. The small group workshops are designed to generate discussion. Participants are invited to ask questions and make comments at any time during the presentation. The expected outcome is that participants will obtain outcome and assessment knowledge, tools, and strategies, to help them maximize, analyze, validate, and report student learning.
Workshop Location: PEB 205A Conference Room
Workshop Time: 12:05pm - 12:55pm.
It is okay to bring your lunch to the workshop.
Seating is limited.
To register: send requested workshop #, date and time to
Dr. Carriveau has extensive experience in outcomes and assessment as a consultant, test publisher, state department director of assessment, corporate test development manager, public school teacher and administrator, and university associate professor. He has consulted nationally and internationally and presented at national and international conferences. He is co-author of Next Generation Course Redesign (2010, Peter Lang), and author of Connecting The Dots: Developing Student Learning Outcomes and Outcome Based Assessments (Second Edition, 2016, Stylus Publications) which is the primary source for the workshop content.
Workshops offered in September 2016 have the meeting dates listed in green.
Workshop #1
Outcome attainment measures versus grades.
Grades are typically the coin of the realm when it comes to student, course, program, and institution evaluation and reporting. This session shows how to calculate outcome attainment measures and provides research based evidence regarding the significant difference when grades that include points for non-outcome related measures are compared with grades awarded that are based directly on outcome attainment measures.
Workshop #2
Wednesday, Sept 14th and Thursday, Sept 15th
Developing meaningful and measurable learning outcome statements.
All teacher know, to varying degrees, what outcomes they want their students to achieve. This session shows how to utilize a three-level SLO model to clearly articulate expected outcomes and provides guidelines for writing measurable SLOs, demonstrates the importance of verbs, reviews higher level thinking SLOs, and provides question templates for writing outcomes and test items.
Workshop #3
Wednesday, Sept 21st and Thursday, Sept 22nd
Constructing high-quality selected response test items.
If you can't measure student attainment of outcomes, then you can't fix what isn't working or determine what is working. This session focuses on writing outcome based multiple-choice test items as one source to determine student attainment of the outcomes and includes: guidelines for writing the item stem and the item options (answer choices), research that supports three options only, how to develop a test-item bank, and how to conduct item validation.
Workshop #4
Wednesday, Sept 28th and Thursday, Sept 29th
Constructing high-quality constructed response test items and scoring rubrics.
Constructed response test items with rubric scoring is used to measure how well students meet performance outcomes. Constructed response includes producing a written response, giving a performance, or creating a product. This session focuses on guidelines for writing different types of constructed response test items with an emphasis on extended written responses and includes: types of scoring rubrics (holistic and analytic), developing analytic rubric proficiency descriptors, and setting rubric scoring scales and cut points.
Workshop #5
Developing assessment plans and curriculum guides
It is always good to have a plan for what outcomes you intend to assess. This session covers the development of an outcome-item reference map, an overall assessment plan, test blueprints, and an outcome based curriculum guide, all of which are helpful for a successful outcomes-based model in which expected outcomes, test items, and instruction
are fully aligned.
Workshop #6
Measuring critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking skills are needed for problem solving. This session provides the rationale, advantages, and limitations of
measuring critical thinking skills with multiple-choice items, provides examples of higher-order-thinking item sets and scenarios for measuring critical thinking, and examines the LEAP Critical Thinking Value Rubric required for core courses.
Workshop #7
Measuring attainment of outcomes for specific instructional activities
In addition to evaluating students and courses, outcome attainment can also be used to evaluate specific instructional and learning strategies and activities in order to make evidence-based instructional and course design decisions. This session shows how this process is easily done when outcome statements are aligned with the instructional activities.
Workshop #8
Reporting outcome attainment at the course, program, and institutional levels.
This session shows how to use measures of student attainment from various selected- response and constructed-response assessment sources to report outcome attainment gains or losses in terms of a set criterion (goal), which includes averaging and weighting the attainment source values and then linking course level attainment measures to program and institutional levels.
Workshop #9
Using item statistics to validate selected response test items.
Items need to be validated to ensure that they are making a valid contribution to what a test is measuring and are providing useful information for making evaluation decisions. Poorly functioning items need to be fixed or deleted and replaced. This session expands on the item statistics presented in Workshop #5 and shows how item statistics can be obtained from programs like Blackboard.
Workshop #10
Using assessment as an instruction strategy and for motivation purposes
Formative assessment has been shown to be one of the best strategies to ensure that students do well on summative assessments. This session clarifies the concepts of formative assessment, summative assessment, and competency and shows how assessment can be used for a prior learning measure, a strategy for introduction of new content, motivation based on success, and individualized instruction.