Karin Sprow Forté

Dr. Sprow Forté believes that assessment of learning is at the core of what any educational program, course, or institution does. Assessment is both a way to adapt instruction, content, and activities to the needs and interests of the learners, as well as to provide accountability for the instruction in the form of outcomes. Those outcomes can then be used to guide revisions to curricular and institutional choices and goals.

Assessment is central to all instructional roles in teacher education and preparation, as our faculty actively model a wide variety of informal and formal assessment procedures and practices daily in their classrooms. We are also accountable to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for preparing quality teachers to staff the public school classrooms across the Commonwealth, making our assessment data collection and reporting essential to our existence. We are also accredited by the Association for Advancing Quality Educator Preparation (AAQEP), which likewise requires constant vigilance of our formal assessment procedures and data analysis for annual reporting. More importantly, however, both reporting responsibilities affords the teacher education faculty the opportunity to examine student learning closely on a regular basis.

From my personal perspective on assessment as an instructor in higher education, there is not a moment in front of a classroom that does not involve assessment of one kind or another. This could be observing students’ faces to assess understanding, watching as students take part in activities to assess engagement, studying attendance trends to assess impact of classes on students’ life circumstances, keeping an eye on learning management system analytics to assess participation and engagement, or administering all types of exams, homework, quizzes, papers, and projects. Every  element in a classroom experience can provide assessment information, as long as the instructor is looking for it.