week 9

For the assignment this week you will again be working with your case study and will be creating a CAT for use with your case study. Just a reminder that the assignment you submit will include: cover page, your case study, evaluation plan, level 1 evaluation, CAT assignment.

CAT assignment Sheet & Rubric   ( in the attachement ) 

You are encouraged to share this assignment with your group for feedback before submitting the assignment for grading.

Submit this assignment using the submission link no later than midnight, Sunday.

• What you see as the advantages and disadvantages of this CAT?
• When/how/in what circumstances you might use this CAT?
• What tips or suggestions should someone keep in mind when considering or using this CAT?

Feel free to talk about more than one CAT!

• What does this cartoon mean to you?
• What relationship, if any, does this have to evaluation in your class/work environment?
• What does this have to do with teacher-centered vs. learner-centered evaluation?
• What are the implications for you as an evaluator? (and what actions might you take?)
• Anything else?

RESPONSE TO these two writers as well 

The First one

The advantages I see in using CAT are, the teacher can get an immediate feed back about their techniques and strategies of their way of teaching and how they can improve themselves. Students are different and each one possibly like a curtain way of learning the material given in class. Teacher could use students feed back to meet students' needs and enhance the way they teach them. On the other hand, Students might get bored of filling out those CAT papers and think they are useless but it depends on how often they are getting done I guess and how teacher would response to them while teaching the class.
       I would use CAT if I feel I'm unsatisfied or unsure about my teaching methods and think I could do better in teaching my students. In another word, I'll try to understand my students favorite ways of learning and try to accomplish that. 
       I would recommend teachers to take those feed backs in their consideration when teaching a class and not just to look at it as a routine to do and not use it.  

the second one 

  I like the example of using the minute paper CAT for immediate response of the student’s learning experience. At the end of class each student takes 5-10 minutes to write a summary of a leaning activity or the instruction presented. Additionally the minute paper CAT directs the student to focus on what was the most important thing learned and what questions or concerns remain unanswered. What a great way to get real time student feedback regarding the understanding of the content. Content or skill areas that are not adequate can be cleared up during the next class with learner-centered instruction. In my opinion this CAT represents a win for the student and the instructor. The student gets an opportunity to identify strong points and weak points and the instructor gets an opportunity to receive and provide student and trainer feedback. If objective grading of the assignment is not required I believe that this minute paper CAT can be more powerful if completed anonymously. The students will have more liberty to offer complete comments particularly on what they do not understand if the minute paper is anonymous. 

     The disadvantages as with most short answer assignments are in the increased time required to read, assess, and consolidate each of the student’s comments. On balance the advantages definitely surpass the disadvantages and I plan on using the minute paper CAT more often in my courses. I believe most of the CAT assignments are easily utilized and implemented in the classroom setting. Most of the techniques are simple to implement within classroom time limits. I can see utilizing CAT’s following instruction that may be more difficult to understand or involving a baseline concept that requires understanding before advancing to a new concept.