Yet Another Fifty: A Book Review of "Classroom Assessment Techniques" by Angelo and Cross

Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers by Angelo and Cross is packed with many great suggestions on how teachers can assess themselves in regards to teaching. It subscribes to the idea that teaching does not occur independently of learning; thus, these techniques mostly rely on gathering feedback in various ways on if and what students are learning. Although some of these techniques may lend nicely to graded work (even if only for participation points), the authors stress that, when applied for the purposes of assessing the effectiveness of teaching, there should be no grade attached to the student feedback.

In addition to a plethora of examples demonstrating how a teacher might undergo an assessment cycle, the authors provide several tables before diving into the classroom assessment techniques (CATs) listing the CATs in various ways. The two I find the most useful are Table 6.2 (CATs recommended for different disciplines) and Table 6.3 (CATs clustered by teaching goal - such as higher-order thinking, basic academic success skills, and personal development). After the CATs are described in full, the authors provide some additional insights into using CATs, including various tables showing how teaching goals vary and are prioritized across disciplines.

I do like that the book includes the teaching goal inventory (TGI) in full; however, it reminds me of the learning goals inventory (LGI) we already completed in class. of the two, I think I prefer the latter. I find the clusters in the LGI more comprehensive and straightforward than in the TGI; I also feel the LGI is more student focused as it puts the emphasis on learning, whereas the TGI is more teacher focused. Perhaps they can be used in a complementary fashion (which may make an interesting book or article for anyone more interested in the subject), and it may be something I spend more time looking at later to really figure out if they're mostly the same or actually complementary.

Other than my uncertainty about the TGI versus the LGI, my one criticism of the text is that some of the CATs seem repetitive. There are a handful that are very similar with more subtle differences. I'm not sure we actually needed 50 CATs - though that seems to be a trend with the books this semester (50 Tips and Strategies from Barkely, 50 Student Engagement Techniques also from Barkley, 55 motivational strategies from Nilson). You would think 50 is a magical number...or that someone just really likes long lists.

Like with Barkley, I think each CAT could start with a succinct bullet list of here's what this is, how to use it, and why you'd use it; it would better facilitate quickly finding an appropriate option. Most of the descriptions convey this information pretty well, but some are very chatty and others are too succinct to be of much use. The plus side, though, is I have a short list of the ones I think may be useful when I start teaching (both as assessment of my effectiveness in teaching and as a, perhaps, biweekly check on student progress in the course). Some of the ones I've jotted down are:

• punctuated lectures
• applications card
• paper/project prospectus
• interest/knowledge/skills checklist
• group-work evaluations
• reading rating sheets
• everyday ethical dilemmas (this one I see more as being an assignment rather than an assessment as I'm not entirely sure how knowing the ethical leanings of students will assess my effectiveness as a teacher - if you have thoughts, leave a comment)
• concept Maps
• group instructional feedback technique

All in all, this is another book I will be keeping on my bookshelf for future use. There are tons of ideas for gathering feedback from the people it's perhaps most important to ask: the students.