Instructors guide to assessing student learning relative to POGIL
If you reach this page, you are thinking seriously about POGIL for your classroom as a means for improving student learning. But how will you know whether students are benefiting? Furthermore, how can you get the most out of your initial (and hopefully subsequent) attempts at using POGIL?
This Assessment Handbook will provide guidance on the following:
- What questions can I ask that will help me assess the impact on student learning?
- Are some questions better than others?
- What data should I be collecting to answer each question?
- What would "good" data be?
- How do I analyze (summarize/present) the data?
- What permissions do I need to conduct the study?
- What if I want to create my own assessment tools?
- How can I monitor my implementation of POGIL so that I learn as much as possible from each attempt?
Assessment Handbook, Part 1 provides answers to these questions and has an extensive bibliography to help you find more information. However, this document is not a comprehensive review of assessment instruments and approaches, nor is it a complete tutorial on assessment design and analysis. We hope that it will assist you in thinking about these issues in richer and more productive ways in POGIL classrooms and other instructional settings.
Assessment Handbook, Part 2 contains a table that summarizes how one might obtain information concerning important student outcomes, including formulation of a good question, types of data that can be collected to address the question, patterns of data collection for comparison, and strategies for analysis. More information concerning the surveys cited in this table are listed in the bibliography in Part 1.