Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
Purpose: CATs provide faculty and students with feedback about their learning in order to improve achievement of the course outcomes. CATs are intended to be quick, informal, typically ungraded activities that are typically conducted during class, but many CATs can be conducted in an online environment.
Benefits: Faculty and students benefit from CATs in the following ways:
1. Obtain just-in-time feedback about the teaching/ learning process.
2. Obtain information about student learning with less work than traditional assignments.
3. Encourage the view that teaching is an ongoing process of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection.
4. Help students become better monitors of their own learning.
5. Help students feel less anonymous, even in large courses. Demonstrate that the professor cares about learning.
6. Provides regular feedback about student progress (preempt misconceptions and poor performance on tests, quizzes, projects, etc.)
7. Give insight into day-to-day teaching methods and student learning processes.
8. Model that learning is an ongoing and evolving process that can be modified as needed.
9. Provide students with a means of gauging their own learning so they can modify study strategies as appropriate.
Implementation: Steps to implementing a CAT include:
1. Decide what you want to assess about your students’ learning from a CAT.
2. Choose a CAT that provides this feedback, is consistent with your teaching style, and can be implemented easily in your class.
3. Explain the purpose of the activity to students and then conduct it.
4. After class (typically), review the results, determine what they tell you about your students’ learning, and decide what changes to make, if any.
5. Let your students know what you learned from the CAT and how you will use this information.
Examples of CATs
Applications Cards: Students develop at least one possible, “real-world” application for a concept that was discussed in class, described in textbook/online document, etc.
Assignment Assessments: Students respond to two or three open-ended questions about the value of an assignment to their learning. This could also be a quick clicker activity.
Background Knowledge Probe: This is a brief questionnaire to measure students’ knowledge of certain topics or concepts. It provides feedback on the range of students' preparation and is most useful at the start of a new course, lesson, or topic. This could also be a quick clicker activity.
Classroom Assessment Quality Circles: Subgroups of a course provide ongoing, structured feedback regarding course materials and assignments. This serves two purposes: 1) provides regular feedback to the professor regarding students’ perceptions, and 2) offers students an opportunity to be actively involved in their learning. This approach is generally fairly time consuming, but can be conducted online rather than in person.
Concept Maps: Students draw a diagram of nodes arranged in hierarchical order, each containing concept labels, which are linked together with directional lines. Analysis of existing concept maps could be a quick clicker activity.
Defining Features Matrix: Students are asked to categorize closely related concepts according to the presence or absence of important characteristics. Since this technique is used in a matrix format, students’ responses are easy to score and analyze. This could also be a quick clicker activity.
Directed Paraphrasing: Students paraphrase a topic for a small group of students. Other students in the group comment and improve upon the initial student’s paraphrase/explanation of the topic.
Documented Problem Solutions: Choose one to three problems and ask students to write down all of the steps they would take in solving them with an explanation of each step. Consider using this method as an assessment of problem-solving skills at the beginning of the course or as a regular part of the assigned homework.
Documented Problem Solutions: Students record the steps they take in solving a problem. This is especially useful for assessing problem-solving in highly quantitative courses or in disciplines that teach structured approaches to problem-solving. This could also be structured as a quick clicker activity.
Empty Outlines: Faculty provide students with an empty or partially completed outline of a presentation or assignment and asked to fill in the blanks. It works best in courses with a large amount of structured content.
Exam Evaluations: Students provide feedback on an exam’s value as a learning and assessment tool. This is most useful if applied soon after students have completed an exam.
Group Instructional Feedback Technique: Faculty poll students on three questions about the class from someone other than the instructor: "What works?", "What doesn’t?", and "What can be done to improve it?" Faculty conduct this CAT before the middle of the term and tell students how their input will influence the course during the second half of the term. This approach is generally fairly time consuming, but can be conducted online rather than in person.
Minute Paper: Pose one to two questions in which students identify the most significant things they have learned from a given lecture, discussion, or assignment. Give students one to two minutes to write a response on paper or online. Collect their responses and look them over quickly. Their answers can help you to determine if students are successfully identifying what you view as most important. If not, the professor addresses the misperceptions described by the students during the next class session.
Misconception/Preconception Check: Identifying common misconceptions and incorporating them into a simple questionnaire to elicit information about prior knowledge or beliefs that may hinder learning. This could be a quick clicker activity.
Muddiest Point: Ask your students, “What was the muddiest point in today’s lecture, the reading, the homework?” Give them one to two minutes to write and collect their responses. In the next class period (or online) discuss the most frequently cited topics of confusion.
One-Sentence Summary: Students answer the questions "Who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why?" in one sentence.
Problem Recognition Tasks: Identify a set of problems that can be solved most effectively by only one of a few methods that you are teaching in the class. Ask students to identify by name which methods best fit which problems without actually solving the problems. This task works best when only one method can be used for each problem.
Process Analysis: Students outline the actual steps they take in carrying out an assignment and comment on their approaches to that assignment. This helps students analyze their methods of working while faculty gain insights regarding students’ problem solving strategies.
RSQC2 (Recall, Summarize, Question, Comment, and Connect): Students write brief statements that recall, summarize, question, connect, and comment on meaningful points from the previous class.
Student-Generated Test Questions: A week or two prior to an exam, begin to write general guidelines about the kinds of questions you plan to ask on the exam. Share those guidelines with your students and ask them to write and answer one to two questions like those they expect to see on the exam.
What’s the Principle?: Faculty present students with a problem, topic, or scenario and the students identify the principle that can be used to solve each problem. Like Problem Recognition Tasks, this technique is very well suited to quantitative and scientific fields that use algorithms in solving problems. This could be a quick clicker activity.
Adapted from the following sources:
http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/CATs.html
http://www.sc.edu/cte/guide/CATs/index.shtml
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/cats/#how
Angelo, T.A. & Cross, P.K. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.