[Barron Family Adventures] Assessment and Me
Author: JRB // Category:It seems that we measure everything, don’t we?
From mile markers on the side of the road to wedding anniversaries, it seems that our species has a penchant for taking aim, shooting, and then determining, documenting, and communicating the level of performance or progress toward the goal. Maybe we are inherently competitive, insecure and in need of validation, or shrewd managers of effort bent on investing our scarce resources only in those opportunities that bear the best odds of returning a handsome profit for our labors.
Regardless, assessment is a very real and constant part of our everyday lives, irrespective of our station in life. As a practitioner and student of Technical Communication & Rhetoric, I am particularly concerned with assessment: crafting messages appropriately and delivering them well, identifying and describing desired behaviors, eliciting actionable responses and deftly guiding audience members toward the intended (yet often elusive) targets.
This summer I enrolled in a course on assessment, intending to achieve the following goals:
- to identify the various domains in higher education where I must assess with diligence, consistency, and accuracy (current and future)
- to associate these domains with the most appropriate (efficient and effective) known assessment strategies and tools
- to creatively and collaboratively imagine new (and thoughtfully refine old) approaches for assessment
- to examine, apply, and evaluate these approaches
Your advice and comments are welcome along the way; I will be posting my assignments and reflections here all along the way. Check back often to, um … er, assess my progress toward these (ambitious) goals.
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You may view the latest post at http://barronfam.com/?p=659 You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Joshua Barron josh@barronfam.com
