Tie reading to a grade: Quizzes and assigned journals, which can determine about 20 percent of the final grade, can double or even triple reading compliance — but rote formats that seem to exist for their own sake can encourage skimming or feel punitive.“Do away with the obvious justifications for not doing the reading,” says Naomi Baron, at American U. “If you summarize everything that’s in the reading, why should students do it?”Ask students to make arguments, compare, and contrast — higher- order skills than factual recall.Using different media is fine, but maintain rigor. “You can do critical reading of anything that has essentially an academic argument in it,” says David Jolliffe, at the U. of Arkansas. Video and audio, in fact, may sometimes be better than textbooks — what he calls “predigested food.”Explicitly tie out-of-class reading to in-class instruction, going over points of confusion and connecting lessons and texts to each other.Teach reading skills. “Hundreds” of strategies exist, all of which make “explicit the processes that proficient readers use without thinking about it,” says Doris Perin, at Columbia.
Lisa M Lane on 12 Mar 10THREE PROMISING ALTERNATIVES FOR ASSESSING COLLEGE STUDENTS' KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS Trudy W. Banta, Merilee Griffin, Teresa L. Flateby, and Susan Kahn Foreword by Jillian Kinzie (Dec 2009) National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment 1) ePortfolios, 2) a system of rubrics for evaluating student writing and thinking across the curriculum, and, 3) online assessment communi- ties that facilitate facassessment practices. centers on the establishment of online assessment communities. These are basically groups of faculty who take time out to discuss how students can be Cited in: http://bit.ly/cyE2KH March 2010 overview by Lorenzo Associates
