ALP Assessment

ALPs Assessment and Evaluation Tools

A critical component of developing and implementing active learning activities in the classroom is the ability to assess the effectiveness of the activities.  This page provides an ALPs assessment strategy, exemplar assessment instruments, and exemplar assessment results.

ALPs Assessment Strategy

The ALPs assessment strategy includes six different assessment techniques to determine the effectiveness of ALPs activities: (1) 30-second student opinion surveys taken after an interactive lecture or class session; (2) quick quizzes taken before and after the application of an ALP; (3) specific exam questions designed to measure students’ understanding of the concepts covered through an ALP; (4) student feedback at the end of the course that includes ALPs; (5) focus groups made up of student representatives; and (6) concept inventories.  The use of these six assessment tools accomplishes two principles of evaluation.  First, the use of a variety of tools reduces the “noise” in the results through redundant measures.  Second, the different tools allow measurement of different components of effectiveness.  The table below shows the characteristics measured by the different assessment tools.

These six assessment techniques provide a wonderful basis for determining global ALPs effectiveness, but they do not, individually, address the needs of particular students or class composition.  An additional step is needed to add this fidelity to the ALPs assessment.  This additional step entails the collecting of students’ personality types, using Myers-Briggs Personality indicator, learning styles using the Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles, and demographic information. Demographic information includes major, reason for taking the class, ethnicity, gender, G.P.A. and expected grade in the class.  The personality type data, learning style data, and demographic data are then correlated with the assessment measures.  Through this process, ALPs may be evaluated and strategically deployed for certain personality types or learning styles, or for a general student population, depending on the results of the correlations.

ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT	WHAT THE TOOL MEASURES
30-Second Surveys	Did students find the lectures which had ALPS more interesting than the lectures with no ALPs? Did students indicate that the lectures with ALPs were better learning experiences than the lectures without ALPs? Did students find the content explained by ALPs easier to apply than content with no ALPs? Were the students more motivated to explore topics further if the topic was presented using ALPs?
Quick Quizzes	Which type of content helped the students answer a conceptual question the most—a ALPs or a classic lecture style with traditional example problems? Does having different professors potentially affect the results?
Exam Questions	Did the ALPs help the students answer specific exam questions?  This is a more longitudinal measure than the quick quizzes.
End-of-semester surveys	How do courses using ALPs compare with courses that do not use ALPs? Over the course of the entire semester, do the ALPs enhance your learning?
Focus Groups	How do the different ALPs compare and contract in their affect on your learning? How did the ALPS affect your motivation for the material?
Concept Inventory	How do students perform on a multiple choice test designed to evaluate whether a person has an accurate and working knowledge of a specific set of concepts, where distracters of typical misconceptions are included as possible test answers?

Background on MBTI

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) includes four categories of preference (see table below). Although MBTI categorization is well-established, its use as an indicator of the way people learn is far less common. The second of the four categories provides insight into how a person processes information. Those who prefer to use their five senses to process the information (sensors) are contrasted with those who view the intake of information in light of either its place in an overarching theory or its future use (intuitors). This sensor vs. intuitor category is seen by most researchers to be the most important of the four categories in terms of implications for education.  One goal of the MBTI-based assessment is to determine if the ALPs favor one MBTI type over another.  Ideally, the use of the ALPs would span the MBTI types without preference.

Background on Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles

Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles are composed of four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global) (see table below). Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman formulated this approach as a way of focusing on assessing the learning style of an individual.  This index helps the instructor determine if an ALP has the same effect on all learning styles.  As an example, instructors’ teaching styles often favor sensing over intuitive learning styles or vice versa. The goal of this index is to assist instructors to create ALPs that impact all student learning styles equally.

Table: Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles

 

Exemplar Assessment Instruments

Correlation of Learning Styles and Myers Briggs Types with Quiz Results, 104KB PDF
Exemplar ALPs Assessment Results, 436KB PDF

 

© 2008 ALPs | Dept of Mechanical Engineering
Cockrell School of Engineering | University of Texas at Austin