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CASA, a Consortium for the Assessment of
Student Achievement.
The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement is interested in developing
CASA, a Consortium for the Assessment of Student Achievement.
CASA is a small cohort of cooperating faculty (initial target membership of 50)
who are or have committed to
| a. | increasing substantially the use of in-class assessment
of learning techniques in their courses |
| b. | adopting clear learning outcomes within their courses and continuously adjusting these goals to promote higher-order learning objectives, |
| c. | measuring learning of core (transferable) STEM principles, |
| d. | recording evidence of the effectiveness of these activities, and |
| e. | disseminating these results. |
CASA participant are people who use a suite of assessment techniques that are used to "assure success," not to document the degree of failure (i.e., the traditional end of course assessment). Many of these techniques already exist but most faculty members within the sciences will not use such techniques unless they have been demonstrated in courses for majors in other Colleges and Universities. CASA members share their assessment stories and techniques and aid other faculty members in adapting those techniques to their courses/
We consider CASA to be an essential next step in teaching reform. For individual faculty members, it is a big risk to change teaching techniques. Students, faculty, administrators and legislators are all comfortable with the platform lecture teaching method. Standard end-of-the course measures are based on the platform lecture teaching method. At the same time, there is a growing movement to set definable course and program goals and to develop assessment measures to see how well those goals are being met.
CASA members communicate through a SAKAI website maintained at
Rutgers University. If you would like to join please email Terry McGuire at
mcguire@biology.rutgers.edu
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Directors |
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| Terry R. McGuire Professor of Genetics Rutgers University |
Jeannette Haviland -Jones Professor
of Psychology Rutgers University |
