SALG Student Assessment of Learning Gains

Suzanne Aurilio, Mark LaumakisCDI Online, July 14,2009

SALG Conceptually…

“SALG is designed to summarize the learning gains that students perceive they have made, both as a consequence of particular aspects of class pedagogy, and the teacher’s pedagogical approach.”

Functionally… “It can be edited on-line to reflect any set of learning objectives, is taken completed online by students and provides faculty with a summary of results in both statistical and graphic form.”

(Seymour, Wiese, Hunter, & Daffinrud, 2000 p.1)

What (and why) are you measuring?

SALG it!

What (and why) are you measuring? Do you want to evaluate your course according to

“best practices”, i.e. standard course design quality criteria?

Do you want to know more about your learners in general: needs, preferences, motivation, satisfaction?

Do you want to focus on student achievement? Do you want feedback on your facilitation of

learning? Do you want feedback on specific course

elements and/or technologies?

Use SALG to assess Design elements Learning resources Pedagogies Presentation media Assignments/Activities Interactions

(content, peers, instructor, technology itself)

Vinod SashidharanREC 404: Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Tourism

Customized SALG survey to assess students’ ratings of various elements of the course and WebQuest project based on how well the course content and WebQuest helped meet the objectives (student outcomes) of the course.

Mark LaumakisPsych 101

pICT fellow in 2005Began teaching parallel 500-student

sections of PSYCH 101 in 2006, one traditional and one hybrid

First fully online PSYCH 101, Summer 2008

Evaluating the Face-to-Face Class Evaluated Fall 2005 innovations via the

Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG)

How much did the following aspects of the class help your learning?

Rated from 1 (no help) to 5 (great help)

Clicker Data: Spring 2007

Question % Agree or Strongly

Agree

Class clicker usage makes me more likely to attend class.

93%

Class clicker usage helps me to feel more involved in class.

84%

Class clicker usage makes it more likely for me to respond to a question from the professor.

91%

I understand why my professor is using clickers in this course.

90%

My professor asks clicker questions which are important to my learning.

90%

Summer 2008 Fully Online: SALG Data

How much did the following aspects of the class help your learning?

Rated from 1 (no help) to 5 (great help)

Summer 2008 Fully Online: SALG Data

Question Summer 2008 Online

Taking the test online 4.27

Discussion Forums 3.00

Introduction e-mail that explained the basics of the course

4.50

SALG Data over time

Question Fall 2007

Blended

Fall 2007

F2F

Spring 2008

Blended

Spring 2008 F2F

Summer 2008

Online

Questions, answers, and discussions in class

3.96 4.04 4.10 4.01 4.36

Live online class sessions

3.39 4.20 4.15

Archives of live online class sessions

4.15 4.50 4.44

Quality of contact with the teacher

3.41 3.48 3.94 3.90 4.26

Working with peers outside of class/online

3.12 3.22 3.31 3.39 3.82

Resources

SALG Website http://www.salgsite.org/about/Seymour, E., Wiese, D., Hunter, A. & Daffinrud, S.M. (2000,

March). Creating a better mousetrap: On-line student assessment of their learning gains. Paper presentation at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, San Francisco, CA. http://www.salgsite.org/docs/SALGPaperPresentationAtACS.pdf