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CTLSilhouette(TM): An Online Tool for Assessment and Evaluation
The stakes are getting higher for teachers to provide evidence that suggests their students are meeting the goals set forth by national and state standards. The stakes are also getting higher for administrators at the state and local levels to provide evidence that their teachers are "highly qualified." Currently lacking in many areas is an assessment tool that can meet the needs of administrators and teachers alike for providing quantifiable data. Washington State University has developed an online data collection tool known as CTLSilhouette(TM) (http://www.ctlt.wsu.edu/ CTLSilhouetteinfo.asp) that attempts to address these characteristics. CTLSilhouette(TM) is the software that carries the Flashlight Online(TM) service. This column will review the unique capabilities of CTLSilhouette(TM) as an instrument for assessment and evaluation.
Ongoing assessment provides data for effective teaching and learning and for the design/development processes of future applications of a technology (Brown, Myers, & Ray, 2003). Since its development in 1998, over 19,000 surveys from over 3 O institutions have been administered using the CTLSilhouette(TM) application (currently in version 2.9) known mostly for providing the Flashlight(TM) Current Student Inventory. Flashlight(TM) was developed in collaboration with the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunication and Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, with various funding coming from the likes of the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education of the United States Department of Education and the Annenburg/CPB Projects (Brown, 1998).
The driving purpose of the Flashlight(TM) Current Student Inventory is to provide a database of questions for probing the relationship between new technologies and student experiences with them. CTLSilhouette(TM) can be used for a variety of assessment strategies that include, but are not limited to, formative assessment, summative assessment, and general data collection. A practical example of CTLSilhouette(TM) discussed later in this column is from a formative assessment of science content for in-service elementary school teachers involved a in professional development project delivered using distance learning technologies.
Standards
In the fields of mathematics education and science education, assessment of teacher practices and student performance is currently driving reform. Both the mathematics education (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000) and science education (National Research Council [NRC], 1996) standards emphasize that assessment needs to be an ongoing and informal activity. Using a practical tool such as CTLSilhouette(TM) not only addresses assessment standards in both disciplines but also provides a unique avenue for forced integration of technology into the everyday classroom.
Ongoing assessment allows teachers to ascertain an accurate depiction of student knowledge so they can support student progress toward attaining the standards' goals. An underlying assumption to the assessment standards in science education is that "state and local districts can develop mechanisms to measure students' achievement as specified in the content standards and to measure the opportunities for learning science as specified in the program and system standards" (NRC, 1996, p. 78).
A Practical Example Using CTLSilhouette(TM)
Although this tool has been used in a variety of settings for a variety of reasons, the following example will demonstrate its use as a formative assessment for science content of elementary school teachers involved in distance education sessions. Specifically, an assessment from a distance education session on biotechnology is the focus of this example.
In countries other than the United States, the educational communities have embraced distance education and the assessment/evaluation of the courses delivered. The professional development project described here included some 500 elementary teachers living in a region covering approximately 40,000 square miles. Use of traditional paper-and-pencil exams was attempted, but the logistics of receiving and tracking completed and noncompleted tests became too difficult to overcome. CTLSilhouette(TM) allowed for all of the completed responses to be stored electronically in a database, which allowed the instructor to access them anywhere and anytime. What follows were the three steps used to build the biotechnology test.
Authoring with CTLSilhouette(TM)
CTLSilhouette(TM) was designed to give quick feedback of educational processes (such as research collection, and assessment in distance courses) and to provide flexibility in authoring tests or surveys, and retrieving data. Tests can be designed in a user-friendly interface. CTLSilhouette(TM) provides a database of questions sorted by topic that can be automatically inserted into a survey by simply clicking a checkbox that corresponds to the item of your choice. The tool includes templates for customizing questions to fit your research or assessment topic, and a range of question types is available: check boxes, text driven areas, Likert-type items ranging from a three-way scale to a six-way scale, and open format questioning that employs radio buttons.
In the case of this project, custom questions were designed using radio buttons for multiple-choice and demographic items and open-ended text boxes for constructed response and vignettes of students with common misconceptions on the topic of biotechnology. Figure 1 shows an example of the multiple-choice items from the test, and Figure 2 shows the open-ended items from the test.
Administering CTLSilhouette(TM)
The CTLSilhouette system can be accessed online (http://ctlsilhouette.wsu.edu) with a secure login identification and password, which is provided after the purchase of a license. Many levels of security are also provided. Our test could have lost all validity if anyone surfing the net stumbled upon a test and filled it out extemporaneously. At any rate, CTLSilhouette(TM) provides a scaffold for access and validation. Therefore, only the author (the test creator) had read and write access, and students were given a valid ID to log in to the test.
If the author wants to change a survey before readministering it, CTLSilhouette(TM) allows the author to copy surveys in their entirety with a click of a button. With another click, the survey is started and a unique URL is provided for participant login (each individual survey has its own URL, e.g., http:// CTLSilhouette.wsu.edu/surveys/ZS8544). The URL was incorporated into the proj ect website so the participants taking the test could simply click the long web address rather than typing it in manually.
Accessing Responses
CTLSilhouette(TM) provides many options for accessing data from each survey. The responses can be downloaded to a spreadsheet or as html (Figure 3). To access the compiled information, the author must select the Analyze button. Figure 4 shows the corresponding screen.
Once the survey is chosen, the author can now choose the format in which the data will be downloaded (Macintosh(TM), Windows(TM) or Unix clone). The data can then be represented in the following formats: HTML, MS Excel(TM) or CSV with delimitations or comma, semicolon, or tab.
Technical Support
As with any new technology, there is a considerable learning curve. The CTLSilhouette(TM) system allows for many options for supporting the creation of online assessment. The technical staff can be emailed or called, contacted through an online form or from a help section provided through a linked webpage.
Implications for Practice
CTLSilhouetteO was designed for user friendliness and the results of this poll suggest that regardless of the technical aptitude of the user, the instrument can be used effectively. In follow-up interviews, the participants reported satisfaction with the use of an online instrument, as opposed to completing post session evaluations using paper and pencil and subsequently mailing or faxing the responses to the author. The participants alsoliked the anonymity of the results of the surveys they completed. It gave them the feeling that they could be honest in reporting personal experiences while not having those responses held against them in future interactions with the survey's author.
However, the participants expressed concern that the survey could be submitted by hitting the ENTER key inadvertently. Some of the participants, by habit, hit the ENTER key upon completion of an open-ended question and expressed some negative feelings because the survey cannot be reopened once submitted by any one individual. Finally, the survey currently does not support images. Any visual representations in questions must be described with text-a disadvantage for visual learners.
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