Non-Cognitive Assessments

On Wednesdays and on Fridays, our Kellogg seminar classes end at lunchtime, and the remainder of the afternoon is free to “do research, work on practicum prospectuses, meet with groups for projects, schedule time with practicum advisor, and explore Boone.”  No time for Boone, today, but I did manage to be involved with everything else on that list.

My practicum is definitely taking shape.  I am working on a study of professional development and guidance needs for adjunct professors, which was a clear reoccurring theme in the program review of our department that was completed by Hunter and Barbara in 2010.  While it is going to be a good practicum and is definitely something that we need at Edison State College, I am finding, as I review the literature, that the idea is not even slightly unique.  In the past three or four years, adjunct faculty professional development has pretty much taken off.  There are several good studies, and there are even some testing instruments that I may be able to replicate.  But for something to have a chance at being published, it needs to be unique.  I am thinking and thinking of a unique twist for it, and I welcome suggestions.

Today’s seminar was very interesting, as we spent the entire time on non-cognitive, or affective assessments.  There are a lot of them out there, and, as we learned in the seminar on placement and assessment, non-cognitive assessments are sometimes better indicators of success than the achievement tests we use to see where our students’ skills are.  Non-cognitive abilities are certain behaviors and attitudes—such as educational commitment and resiliency, that are much different measures from the traditional verbal and quantitative areas that ability tests or achievement tests are designed to measure. Non-cognitive tests can measure learning styles, interests, motivation, multiple intelligences, and other areas of the affective domain.  

We each took the Canfield Learning Styles Inventory, LSI, which was a bit arduous to score (the typeface was tiny, and that’s not just because I am over 40!), but an interesting assessment.  It is basically a self-report questionnaire that allows students to indicate what features of their educational experiences they most enjoyed. The LSI is scored on 21 scales, and it has 8 preferred conditions for learning, or typologies.  Using a lot of simple math and x and y values, a typology is revealed to be:

Social/Applied

Applied

Social

Neutral

Social/Conceptual

Conceptual

Independent

Independent/Conceptual

My learner typology is Independent/Conceptual.  That didn’t surprise me, but many of my class colleagues claimed that I seem to be more Social/Conceptual.  I must hide my introvertedness better than I thought, but I am unquestionably conceptual over applied.  The class broke into groups of people with the same typologies, and it was surprising to see that the people who were generally draw to each other, in the past week and a half of the Institute, were similar in learning typologies.  The Canfield was given to us as an example; it was not an endorsement.  The Canfield may not be the perfect non-cognitive assessment, but I am very much in favor of the use of non-cognitive assessments, and I believe they may have a place in Edison’s QEP Cornerstone Experience. 

After the last meeting of the day was over, several of us sighed deeply at the thought of another meal in the App State dining hall.  Heavy rain kept us from walking very far, so we decided to pile into the dented Honda for an organic dinner at the Hob Nob Farm Café.  I had a Thai dish, Chiang Mai, which was, according to the menu, rice noodles tossed in a spicy sesame ginger sauce with broccoli, carrots, garden peas, purple cabbage, bamboo shoots and roasted tri-color peppers, and topped with apples and cashews. Everything was so fresh, and it was delicious. We had more organic Malbec - incredible.  It was a wonderful meal with equally wonderful conversation.  I cannot say enough about the people I am meeting here at Kellogg.  The director, Denise, who did say that all Kellogg groups are pretty special, said that this one really seems like an exceptionally great group.

I am off to finish reading for tomorrow, and to tweak some of the part of the Universal Design presentation for which I am responsible for my group project.  Tomorrow will be another very long and busy day.