What's Being Learned in Your Classes?

Erik J. Fernandez, Chemical Engineering
José D. Fuentes, Environmental Sciences
Fred E. Maus, Music
Esther Menn, Religious Studies
Manuel D. Rossetti, Systems Engineering
Alessandro Vettori, Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese

You're sure about what you're teaching in each class or throughout a course. But how can you discover--before the finality of a test or long paper--how much your students are learning? You can use any of a variety of "Classroom Assessment Techniques" to find out such useful information as what relevant background knowledge students bring to your course; whether their silence in discussion is due to lack of preparation, understanding, or ideas; how many of them "got" the main point of the lecture; whether they understand what you mean by "synthesize." Once you know how and what they're learning, you can easily help them more--and they will probably make fewer errors you need to correct. The six 1997-98 University Teaching Fellows will discuss the advantages and challenges of using different techniques they have tried to check on students' learning.