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Emily Foerster

This article helped me understand CATs and gave me practical examples of how it is implemented. It also discusses how CATs should be used and why they are important.
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/cats/

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The central purpose of Classroom Assessment is to empower both teachers and their students to improve the quality of learning in the classroom" through an approach that is learner-centered, teacher-directed, mutually beneficial, formative, context-specific, and firmly rooted in good practice.
http://citl.illinois.edu/citl-101/teaching-learning/resources/teaching-strategies/classroom-assessment-techniques-(cats)

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Classroom Assessment Techniques Charly LaSon

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Classroom Assessment Techniques Charly LaSon

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This article was very simple to understand and I was able to see what the point of the article was before choosing it without reading the entire thing. The bullet points allowed for immediate understanding and organization of the materials.
http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/assessment-and-evaluation/classroom-assessment-techniques-quick-strategies-to-check-student-learning-in-class

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I really enjoyed this article because of the many examples it gave on how to use classroom assessment techniques, they were all easy and not so unrealistic as I have seen on other sites.

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Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are a set of specific activities that instructors can use to quickly gauge students' comprehension. They are generally used to assess students' understanding of material in the current course, but with minor modifications they can also be used to gauge students' knowledge coming into a course or program.

CATs are meant to provide immediate feedback about the entire class's level of understanding, not individual students'. The instructor can use this feedback to inform instruction, such as speeding up or slowing the pace of a lecture or explicitly addressing areas of confusion.

Asking Appropriate Questions in CATs

Examples of appropriate questions you can ask in the CAT format:

How familiar are students with important names, events, and places in history that they will need to know as background in order to understand the lectures and readings (e.g. in anthropology, literature, political science)?

How are students applying knowledge and skills learned in this class to their own lives (e.g. psychology, sociology)?

To what extent are students aware of the steps they go through in solving problems and how well can they explain their problem-solving steps (e.g. mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering)?

How and how well are students using a learning approach that is new to them (e.g., cooperative groups) to master the concepts and principles in this course?

Using Specific Types of CATs

Minute Paper

Pose one to two questions in which students identify the most significant things they have learned from a given lecture, discussion, or assignment. Give students one to two minutes to write a response on an index card or paper. Collect their responses and look them over quickly. Their answers can help you to determine if they are successfully identifying what you view as most important.

Muddiest Point

This is similar to the Minute Paper but focuses on areas of confusion. Ask your students, "What was the muddiest point in... (today's lecture, the reading, the homework)?" Give them one to two minutes to write and collect their responses.

Problem Recognition Tasks

Identify a set of problems that can be solved most effectively by only one of a few methods that you are teaching in the class. Ask students to identify by name which methods best fit which problems without actually solving the problems. This task works best when only one method can be used for each problem.

Documented Problem Solutions

Choose one to three problems and ask students to write down all of the steps they would take in solving them with an explanation of each step. Consider using this method as an assessment of problem-solving skills at the beginning of the course or as a regular part of the assigned homework.

Directed Paraphrasing

Select an important theory, concept, or argument that students have studied in some depth and identify a real audience to whom your students should be able to explain this material in their own words (e.g., a grants review board, a city council member, a vice president making a related decision). Provide guidelines about the length and purpose of the paraphrased explanation.

Applications Cards

Identify a concept or principle your students are studying and ask students to come up with one to three applications of the principle from everyday experience, current news events, or their knowledge of particular organizations or systems discussed in the course.

Student-Generated Test Questions

A week or two prior to an exam, begin to write general guidelines about the kinds of questions you plan to ask on the exam. Share those guidelines with your students and ask them to write and answer one to two questions like those they expect to see on the exam.

Classroom Opinion Polls

When you believe that your students may have pre-existing opinions about course-related issues, construct a very short two- to four-item questionnaire to help uncover students' opinions.

Creating and Implementing CATs

You can create your own CATs to meet the specific needs of your course and students. Below are some strategies that you can use to do this.

Identify a specific "assessable" question where the students' responses will influence your teaching and provide feedback to aid their learning.

Complete the assessment task yourself (or ask a colleague to do it) to be sure that it is doable in the time you will allot for it.

Plan how you will analyze students' responses, such as grouping them into the categories "good understanding," "some misunderstanding," or "significant misunderstanding."

After using a CAT, communicate the results to the students so that they know you learned from the assessment and so that they can identify specific difficulties of their own.

CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!

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Using Classroom Assessment Techniques - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University

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Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are a set of specific activities that instructors can use to quickly gauge students' comprehension. They are generally used to assess students' understanding of material in the current course, but with minor modifications they can also be used to gauge students' knowledge coming into a course or program.

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https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/cats/

this website gives a concise and simple definition of what classroom assessment techniques are: “CAT’s are simple, non-graded, anonymous, in-class activities designed to give you and your students useful feedback on the teaching-learning process as it is happening.”
This source also lists a few different styles of CAT's.

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Leahy, S., Leon, C., Thompson, M., & William, D. (Nov. 2005). Classroom assessment: Minute by minute, day by day. Educational Leadership, 63 (3), 19-21. Retrieved from http://facets.edc.org/sites/facets.edc.org/files/classrassessmentdaybyday.pdf

Assessing students with the intention of finding out where they're at is a useful tool to measure learning in the classroom, and as the article points out, the techniques can be implemented without changing too much of our typical teaching styles. I like the statement that there needs to be a shift away from "quality control" to "quality assurance" in our classrooms.

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This article was really helpful to me because it provided a variety of different types and examples of classroom assessments that I had never heard of before. It also said what they assess and when it is best to use these techniques.

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Citation for resource #2: Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day[Advertisement]. (2005, November). Educational Leadership .

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Citation for resource #2: Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day[Advertisement]. (2005, November). Educational Leadership .

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For my second resource I chose Classroom Assessment, Minute by Minute, Day by
Day. This article talks about using assessments for learning rather than assessment of learning.
That really stood out to me, I thought it was an interesting idea or different take on assessments.
The article goes on to say that assessment for learning takes the approach of the adjusting of
teaching as needed while learning in still in the process. They want teacher to emphasize more
on what students are getting rather then what you’re teaching. In a classroom like this every

student will converse in groups, do seatwork, answer and ask questions, do projects, and
homework assignments. Instruction and assessments begin to blend together. Teacher takes this
information and look it at and decide instructional choices that covers what is understood and
what is misunderstood.

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Mcdaniel, R. (1970, June 10). Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs). Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/cats/

Simple, anonymous, non graded, in class activities designed to give you and your students feedback on performance.

Examples of Classroom Assessment Techniques include:

-The Background Knowledge Probe- designed to determine student’s preconceptions. This is usually a short and simple questionnaire given at the start of the course.

-The Minute Paper- designed to measure if students have gained knowledge or not. Students are asked to respond to questions such as the most important thing they’ve learned.

-The Muddiest Point- one of the simplest assessment techniques to determine students difficulty areas. Students are asked to jot down what was the most difficult or “muddiest” point in the chapter.

-The What’s the Principle?- used for problem solving. Students identify a problem as well as what can be applied to solving the problem.

-Defining Features Matrix: Compare and contrast technique.

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University, C.M. (nd). Whys & hows of assessment . Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/CATs.html  Kristen Larsen

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University, C.M. (nd). Whys & hows of assessment . Retrieved October 22, 2017, from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/CATs.html  Kristen Larsen

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This article was extremely helpful because it discusses the importance as to why teachers must use CATs. This source also provided examples and methods to create your own CATs to meet the need of your students.

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This article was most helpful because it came in a very user friendly format and all of my questions were readily answered, by using this source it allowed for me as a teacher to have a professional reference to a welcoming source.