Closing the gap between teaching and learning: formative evaluation in a freshman design course

Abstract

College teaching is rarely subject to any meaningful evaluation. Test scores, survey forms and peer observations offer little data about the processes of teaching and learning which are assumed to be happening. One very revealing study discovered that students who had passed calculusbased physics with an A or B still believed in pre-Galilean principles of mechanics.' There has been considerable discussion about children's intuitive ideas and their implications for the science curriculum? Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to these topics at the college level.Learning is strongly affected by emotional and motivational issues. Two recent studies have looked in depth at student experiences in engineering education. Millar and Regan (1993) examined the changes in teacher and student attitudes which occurred because the course developers paid close attention to the relationships among faculty and between faculty and students? Olds and Miller (1993) studied how faculty-student relationships shifted back and forth between a new collegial model and the old adversarial model?Both studies underscore the need to lmk at the affective as well as the cognitive domain.Although evaluation traditionally asks how well an activity has achieved its goals, it also provides an occasion to examine the goals themselves. Based on a study of humanities faculty, Cross (1993) identifies four distinct frameworks which might inform the work ofa college teacher: is the goal of teaching is to provide information, to model the pursuit of knowledge, to enhance thinking skills, or to develop the student as a whole person? Using the term "critical reflection", Sparks-Langer and Colton (1991) advocate that teachers think about the ''long-term effect [of their teaching practice] on students' values and thus on society'6.What constitutes evaluation? Harlen (1983) makes a clear distinction between assessment and evaluation.Assessment means finding out what students have learned. There are a large variety of assessment techniques, of which the traditional pencil-and-paper exam is only one. Evaluation is an inquiry into the opportunities which have been provided for learning, Assessment is only way of doing this. Evaluation should also include an examination of the activities, content, teaching methods, physical surroundings, classmm