A new method of using student self-assessment: Bridging gaps between teaching content and student learning

ABSTRACT

This longitudinal pilot study developed and tested an instrument to assess students’ perceptions of the extent to which they accomplished the learning objectives that were listed in a number of communication course syllabi. In addition to students’ perceptions that they had improved from the start to the end of the semester in achieving course objectives, the findings revealed that students’ assessment was related positively to their ratings of professors’ teaching effectiveness. The instrument provides valuable information about students’ accomplishment of teachers’ course learning objectives.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Lawrence R. Frey and Dr. Katherine G. Hendrix's professional guidance and proofreading, as well as we appreciate Dr. Deanna Fassett and several anonymous reviewers' insightful suggestions in the revision.

Notes

1. Most pretest–posttest learning assessment is conducted at two points in time (e.g. beginning and end of a semester), but because students could not be expected to understand fully all of the listed course syllabi objectives at the beginning of the semester, their responses to these two survey questions were obtained at the end of the semester, after they had sufficient exposure to all the listed learning objectives.

2. After spring 2018, faculty members had access only to their online teaching records and not to other faculty members’ records.

3. Instructional communication, with its roots in educational psychology, pedagogy, and communication (Mottet & Beebe, 2006), focuses on written, verbal, and nonverbal communication factors that affect the teaching–learning process across grade levels, instructional settings, and subjects (see, e.g. Friedrich, 1989; Myers, 2010; Staton, 1989). Although students’ self-reported learning-loss method emerged from research conducted in the communication discipline, given concerns about the validity of the Learning Loss Scale (Hess & Smythe, 2001; Hooker & Denker, 2014) and the crucial aspects of listing learning objectives in course syllabi (McCroskey, 2007), this new self-assessment learning instrument was developed by the first author (an instructional communication scholar) and tested in a department of mass communication.