Foundations for Conceptualizing Assessment in Your Course

In this talk I will discuss how to think about assessment as a part of student learning experiences and of faculty professional development. Specifically, how to set the goals of the class and how to collect evidence that the students achieved the goals and how to use this evidence to change what the students and you will do later. These three seemingly simple steps, called Assessment For Learning (AFT), might dramatically change your approach to assessment and possibly to what you do in your classroom in general. I will provide examples of setting goals, developing assessment questions and altering existing instructional approaches for conceptual understanding, quantitative problem solving, and experimental abilities.