Thinking about assessment...

Assessment is a major element of a college campus. Today, I was thinking a good deal about assessment as we did the final presentations in my Mass Communication class. We only had five minutes per presentation and the ONLY is important here. Ricardo started off the presentations with his summary of a paper on the I-Phone. That started discussion that was moving a five-minute presentation to almost double and we had a lot of presentations left. Kimberly then used a video montage to begin a discussion of her paper, which covered product placement in music videos. The videos grabbed attention and then the product got attention and the discussion started again. Often during the semester I have wished to spark such discussion among the class and today, as it was focusing on key concepts, I had to do the unthinkable and say -- "Sorry" we have to get everyone in and there isn't time. Obviously, the next time I will have to plan better because the discussion was on target and on task and I hated to have it end. Often, I feel that way about the semester in lots of my classes.

Later today there was another type of 'assesment' as the Dance Department and Theater Department held an "Informal" demonstrating some of the concepts that students had been working on in various classes throughout the semester and some of the other groups and talents on campus. The Dance Informal is always a fun, entertaining event that provides some on-stage experience and a chance for both class and personal assessment. Maybe I need to start inviting people to the final speeches from Speech Class??



And, last evening the Coker Singers performed in their Christmas Program, which was a masterful delight. I have snippet of video from this "Celebrate the Season" performance event but the video sound quality is so BADDDD it would not be fair to the group to use it. The Singers were fantastic.

And, while on the topic of assessment, this is the final week of the semester with tomorrow the final day of classes with exams beginning Saturday morning. Always a paper due, always a test to take, always an impression to make -- college may not be that different from the real world.