Demystifying Assessment

Sunoikisis, an inter-institutional initiative to supplement the curriculum for small classics programs (sunoikisis.org), offered its first course for advanced students of Latin in the fall of 2000. This presentation will (1) describe the survey instruments and interview protocols and tools the program has developed for measuring outcomes, (2) describe the data from the fall semesters of 2013 and 2014, and (3) discuss how the design of the courses evolved in response to the evaluation process.

The topic of assessment raises several questions: what do we assess, how do we conduct the assessment, and where is our data used? When correctly framed, these questions imply a deeper set of inquiries: what can teachers take from innovative assessment to better their teaching, empower their students, increase enrollment, impress parents and administrators, and strengthen advocacy for their programs? This paper will explore how I have improved my teaching and assessment as I worked with my state modern language association over the past five years.

Most teachers begin to teach the way they themselves were taught, and test as they were tested. Many Latin teachers were drawn in as students by the puzzle of Latin and the challenge of knowing precisely what every word meant and how it functioned in a sentence. The process was painstakingly slow and generally resulted in a literal translation of the text that all too often did little to convey fully the author’s intent. In reality, good translation is a highly-skilled art, practiced well by a mere handful of the learned and eloquent.

The years since the publication of the Standards for Classical Language Learning in 1997 have seen the proliferation of assessment as a tool to measure the effectiveness of programs. The assessment plans of many Classics programs, however, reflect only a portion of the Standards, focusing primarily on language proficiency (Goal 1) and cultural knowledge (Goal 2). It is the aim of this paper to assert that Goals 3-5 (Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) should also be considered programmatic goals, and included in assessment plans.