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Dr. Richard Light, Prof of Education

• Books
• Making the Most of College - Strategies for teaching and  improving student learning . Book states that students need
  • Students need better advising from faculty
  • Students need better time management skills
  • Students need an understanding that extracurricular activities  contribute to learning
  • Instructors should assign one-minute papers
    • Light recommends "one-minute papers" at the end of each class session. These papers may summarize the main point of a lecture or discussion, raise any questions the student may have, and  may be anonymous,

  • Instructors should insist that oral presentations accompany written reports. Light contends papers should be presented  orally to classroom peers because students work harder and think more critically when their papers are for an audience of fellow students.

• Thomas Angelo's  14 Principles for Improving Higher Learning 
  THOMAS ANGELO is associate professor and director of the Assessment Center at the School for New Learning, DePaul University.
  
  A review of 50 years of research on learning revealed a set of 14 factors that were consistently correlated to positive student outcomes.

• Among these 14 factors are the following:
  • Organizing content in meaningful ways for students
  • Setting clear goals
  • Knowing in detail and in advance the standards to be used in assessment
  • Clearly perceiving the value of what is to be learned
  • Holding high expectations of achievement

   

•   Classroom Assessment Techniques:  Excellent Overview & Links to CAT sites
  •  Learner-Centered
  • Teacher-Directed
  •  Mutually Beneficial
  • Ongoing, rooted in good practice....

   

• Doing Assessment as if Learning Matters Most - PowerPoint by Tom Angelo
  • Starting with goals, standards, principles while always having excellence in mind
  • Misperceptions about Outcome Assessment

 Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT)
Cross & Angelo

  Patricia Cross and Thomas Angelo  jointly created CAT  to help instructors find out how well students are learning in their classroom.

Overview of CAT per Cross and Angelo
The three basic questions CATs ask are:

1. What are the essential skills and knowledge I am trying to teach?
2. How can I find out whether students are learning them?
3. How can I help students learn better?

•   Brief Biography

Motivation: Er...Will That Be on the Test? The Cross Papers,  24 pages, 2001. This booklet explores the internal and external factors that motivate students to learn or not to learn. It also provides tips for implementing strategies. Available from the League for Innovation in the Community College

•   Assessment in the Classroom:   exploring the relationships between teaching, learning & assessment  - an emphasis on Cross's research 

Patricia Cross - Quotable

"Passive leaning is an oxymoron; there is no such thing."
K. Patricia Cross

"The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinar"" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people."
K. Patricia Cross