Pretesting
On day 1 of the class, I hand out a short pretest and ask the students to comment briefly on what they expect from this class. This gives me a picture of how much the students know and also what they intend to learn. Its very useful and helpful for me.
pattara,
This sounds like an effective approach for assessing your students. Do you make class revisions based on the student feedback? If so, do you look for general trends?
Tremayne Simpson
There are pretest questions in my instructor manual that I go over with the class before I start lecturing each chapter. This helps me figure out who has read before coming to class.
Shiketheia Thornton, MA
Pattara,
That sounds so familiar. I also hand out a sheet a paper and ask my students to list things that they think they know about the subject. I also inform them that there are no wrong answers. My students get the opportunity to get extra points when participating in this activity.
Sylinda Brown, MBA
Sylinda,
This sounds like an effective activity. It gives you an opportunity to assess their prior knowledge, without actually "testing" them. This way, they will not experience test anxiety, early on in the course.
Tremayne Simpson
This is great! We also pretest. I think it is a wonderful tool on many levels.
Pretesting is a great tool to assess the level of the students entering your classroom. We also do a short hands on knife skills test so that we can see what the students have retained after each of the levels that they have passed.
Geraldine,
How do you proceed in situations where a student does not perform well on the "hands on" assessment test? Do you have to reteach the lesson that should have been previously learned or are the students recommended for tutoring?
Tremayne Simpson
Geraldine,
How do you proceed in situations where a student does not perform well on the "hands on" assessment test? Do you have to reteach the lesson that should have been previously learned or are the students recommended for tutoring?
Tremayne Simpson
In one of my classes I don't do a pretest, but I do a one day major review of all the skills they should have learned in the previous two classes. This particular class is a "doing" class and as I tell them, I don't want to take time throughout the rest of the course to explain the basics because this is a class designed to where you take the skills you learned and apply them. Today is your one and only review day. So if there is something you don't remember or understand, ask now........
Rick,
This is a great alternative to providing a formal pre-assessment. Students that did well in the prerequisite course, can also benefit from having a review of the concepts.
Tremayne Simpson
Pretesting is a great tool. I will pretest the first day of the basic classes in the course. Once the students reach the advanced classes of the course I will do a hands on review. If they have trouble with the rview, I will set up a tutoring schedule with them either with myself or a peer tutor that has maintained the skills. For peer tutoring the tutor must hold an A average, or a 4.0.
I teach Algebra online and often, students come to this class hardly knowing how to do fractions, some have trouble with other Math prerequisites of Algebra that should have been learned in High School or earlier.
As an instructor, I have been told that the school cannot add prerequisite courses to precede a basic Gen Ed course like Algebra. We try to review the basics the first week, and there are tutors available, but the rest of the time has to address the Algebra aspects of the course.
If anyone has some ideas about how best to motivate students to dig into what they need to do to catch up on their own, I would like to consider what you say. I tell them about tutors and point them to links online that may help them.
Donald,
Our campus has had a similar issue regarding Math. In an effort to provide further development for students that are lacking basic mathematical skills, we provide them with access to a online, supplemental learning tool, that prescriptively creates a learning plan for each student. The students are encouraged to work with the tool "outside of class", in order to be better prepared for college-level math. Their improvement is closely correllated with their time on task.
Tremayne Simpson
Can you provide a link to that tool, or is it owned by your school?
Donald,
The tool is "MyFoundationsLab" and it is owned by Pearson Publishing company. More information can be found on the Pearson Education website. For reference, several other publishers have also created online-based programs, that are prescriptively designed for student skill enhancement.
Tremayne Simpson
I like that train of thought of doing a big one day review of what the students should have already learned. I know when I have taught some of the junior classes that I use a pre-test to make sure they at least know the "abc"s of the topic (which has already been lightly covered in a freshman class). Much to my dismay though, most of my class couldn't even past the pre-test. At this point, I had to do some revising of my lesson plans because they will not understand the class objectives if they don't know that the figurative "2+2" is still 4. I keep the pre-tests on file though in case I'm asked why my class has repetitive material, so I can show the level of knowledge my students had when they walked into the advanced class.
If a student does not perform well on a pre-test I access his/her weaknesses and strengths, and follow up with possible tutoring to catch him/her up with the rest of the students unless it is an independent study then I take additional time to explain missed concepts.
Pretesting is great for some classes and others may overwhelm a student and have them feel like they do not belong in the class. I do not use them but would like to hear more on them and the sucess of them in A&P classes.
Beth
Beth,
Does your course have a prerequisite? If so, the pretest could contain items regarding the learning objectives that the student should have learned in the previous course.
Tremayne Simpson
