ASSESSMENTS

Iterative Learning and Performance Based Assessment

While traditional education often relies on what Paolo Freire called the "banking concept" of education, in which teachers make information "deposits" and periodic "withdrawals" at exam time, the modern learner operates under a different metaphor -- that of game player. This learner chooses direct, unmediated experiences that offer opportunities to solve real-world challenges. The teacher is repositioned as a coach (a "guide on the side" rather than a "sage on the stage"), and the learning resembles games and game playing. Iterative processes, experimental design, playtesting, and revision become the central modes of engagement. Real-time, ongoing feedback informs the learner's progress and offers incremental accommodation and new challenges. Trial, failure, reflection, and re-approach are common to the process.

Portfolio Assessment

The e-Portfolio is integrated into the online course environment and is an essential element for documenting and presenting student projects. Students and teachers collaborate on the submission of materials for the ePortfolio as it is used to reflect upon the development of student knowledge and skills over time. Students can also customize the e-Portfolio to share their own work and personal interests through the e-Portfolio blog. The e-Portfolio is accessible within the online course environment and can be viewed by students can allow peers, parents, perspective employers, and college admissions staff.

Performance Assessment and "Threshold Moments"

The CCC program and the Connecticut Student Innovation Exposition (CT Expo) involve dedicated stakeholders, including educators, administrators, students, parents, and business leaders from Connecticut and the New England region. Our central tenet is designed to engender in students what David Perkins (noted authority on education, co-director of Harvard’s Project Zero, and author of Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education) describes as a “threshold experience”—a STEM-based threshold experience to be more precise. A STEM threshold experience is, therefore, the gateway to a discipline and eases the entry into others, as Howard Gardner points out in Five Minds for the Future. This central tenet, the threshold experience, is reinforced throughout the CCC program and Connecticut Expo. This experience has the potential to encourage students to follow STEM pathways.

Measures of College Readiness

Our courses are designed to prepare students for the real world, and for a successful experience in post-secondary education as a pathway to that world. Clearly, the status quo in high school education is not producing students headed for a successful experience. According to a report by the ACT, of the graduating class of 2008 only 22% of ACT-tested students were ready for college-level coursework in English, Math, Social Science, and Biology. A 2006 report by the Alliance for Excellent Education estimated the national cost of remediation to high school graduates at more than $3.7 billion/year, including lost wages, cost to the government, and to tuition. Standardized measures are one important indicator of the success of our courses and programs in preparing students for the future. We are currently conducting pilot research on college readiness using the College Board Accuplacer. This data will be analyzed and outcomes applied to the review and revision of courses to better leverage our most effective practices.