Keywords: assessment, testing, grading, tips, communication, intelligence, curiosity, teaching

Contents

• Tips for Improving Testing and Grading
• Whale Tales: Human Interactions with Whales

Howard Aldrich is Kenan Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, U.S.A. He has had a commitment to teaching for almost thirty years. In a recently published book from Sage, Researchers hooked on teaching (1997), Aldrich describes the journey through his teaching career.

Tips for Improving Testing and Grading

In this short book - only 139 pages, including appendices and references - John Ory and Katherine Ryan provide some really excellent advice about developing a testing plan that matches the learning objectives of an instructor. Topics include developing a test plan, writing objective test items, writing constructive response test items, preparing, administering, and scoring classroom exams, evaluating exam quality, and assigning grades. Unlike some books on teaching, this one comes with plenty of examples and a number of self-tests to help you see how well you understand what the authors propose.

I particularly like the authors' choice of the Bloom taxonomy of educational objectives for organizing the testing process. Moving from the basic level of learning, knowledge and comprehension, up through the highest levels, synthesis and evaluation, the authors show that it is possible to build a testing plan that will accurately reflect an instructor's course goals. They also emphasize the unbreakable cycle between testing, course objectives, and teaching methods. Testing is not just for end of term evaluations - properly constructed and administered, tests advance the learning process.

The authors of Tips for Improving Testing and Grading are John C. Ory and Katherine E. Ryan. The book is available from Sage Publications, 1993, ISBN 0-8039-4973-1. It is also available in paperback.

Whale Tales: Human Interactions with Whales

The book raises many themes that I have come to recognize in my teaching: diversity in the kinds of intelligence found in our world, the incredible sense of curiosity that seems to drive whales in many of their encounters with humans, the generosity of humans who have gone out of their way to work for the preservation of whale habitats and the return of captured whales to the wild, and the connectedness of all living things. I suspect that you will not be able to put this book down, once you begin reading it.

The book was published in 1996 and is available from Whale Tales Press, PO Box 865, Friday Harbor, Washington, 98205, Telephone 1-800-946-7227. It can also be obtained by emailing Bydesign@pacificrim.net.

Howard Aldrich's Home Page includes notes on the courses he teaches, current research projects, publications, working papers and his selection of useful links. Of particular interest is his Sociology 380 Home Page: Seminar on Teaching Sociology, Spring 1997

Researchers hooked on teaching, to which Howard Aldrich is a contributor, is reviewed on ultiBASE.

Howard Aldrich is featured by ultiBASE in an interview entitled A teaching champion: An interview with Howard Aldrich.