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On March 1, 2004 American River College (ARC) implemented an online student driven self-placement process for Math. This project represented a year long collaborative effort between Math faculty and Counseling. Because of initial apprehensions, and even though students can self-assess their readiness for all math courses, prerequisite verification is still required for transfer level. Almost one year and 8,000 math self-assessments later, with the exception of a few initial computer glitches associated with the online program, there is nothing remarkable about the placement process to report on other than it appears to be doing exactly what it was intended to do: Provide students with realistic and honest guidelines for placement decisions.
Though we have not compiled any hard data at this time to demonstrate the effectiveness of the process, the strongest evidence has been the absence of grumbling or complaints from Math faculty, counselors or students. Given the controversial nature of self-placement, this in itself is quite telling. Students were randomly selected within the online application after completing the math self-assessment process and were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the process. With few exceptions, students overwhelmingly indicated they welcomed the opportunity to actively participate in their educational process and appreciated being provided with a realistic and clear understanding of the courses they could potentially enroll in. The absence of complaints coupled with the opinions of students has been very encouraging.
From the onset, once Math faculty and counseling fully understood how poorly the assessment testing process had actually performed over the years at ARC, they also realized that all self-placement had to do was perform at an equivalent level to be considered successful.
Though the problematic nature of conventional assessment and placement practices is well known to researchers across the state, it is common for faculty and counselors to falsely assume that because an assessment test is on the State approved list, it is valid and works as advertised. For example, in 1998, ARC decided to switch, at great cost, from a paper and pencil assessment process to the highly touted computerized assessment process, only to discover two years later that the Compass instrument was producing results that were no better and in some cases worse, than previous testing instruments.
After spending over a decade of developing research models to validate our assessment process at ARC, it was not difficult for Math faculty and counselors, when presented with the data, to understand that a flip of a coin could produce equal and sometimes better placement results than all our efforts with assessment tests and multiple measures. Though at the time the English department had reservations about students making placement decisions, Math fully understood the implications of the research data and decided to initiate the process to explore new options for their assessment process by providing release time for two faculty members in 2003.
We initially found that a number of four-year colleges on the east coast had adopted self-placement in English in the late 1990's because of the same concerns we had with our assessment process. Then we discovered that Moorpark Community College in California had successfully implemented a student driven self-placement process for English and Math in 1997, a process that is still in place at this time. Contra Costa Community College had also experimented with self-placement in the late 1980's with good success. These findings provided the initial impetus to further explore the feasibility of self-placement.
In the early discussions with Math faculty and counseling about the potential for a student driven self-placement model, two main concerns had emerged: (1) both the faculty and Counseling areas had long suspected that students could not make good decisions, and as a result (2) they believed that students would enroll in courses beyond their level of preparedness with the probability of not being successful. Yet our research of colleges that had implemented self-placement models indicated that neither of these two concerns were valid. For example, at Moorpark College, it was reported that many students had a tendency to initially consider taking lower level courses rather than higher. In addition, the proportion of sections and enrollments for the different levels in the Math and English sequences really did not change to any degree after self-placement was implemented. These same findings emerged from our research on the four-year colleges as well. The overall consensus was that self-placement worked as intended.
If we don't provide much information for students beyond the course catalog description, a questionable test score and the requirements for graduation or transfer, students don't have much on which to base a decision and, for that matter, neither do counselors. As result, from the instructor's viewpoint, it seems that poor placement decisions are often made. The self-assessment model offers the opportunity to take much of mystery out of the placement process because it asks students to weigh and consider information that is specific and relevant for a given course level and then to make a decision on what would be best for their degree of preparedness. For example, in providing examples of math problems that students should have mastered prior to a course provides a clear understanding of the background a student will need to be successful. Students report that in just viewing the difficulty level and type of math problems is often sufficient to provide them with the understanding of their readiness for a particular Math course.
It is not difficult to view traditional assessment practices as a prescriptive process to determine what would be most effective for the department. As a result, assessment practices are often viewed by students as punitive when they are placed in lower level courses and they often bring this attitude into the classroom. An interesting finding reported by both Moorpark and the four-year colleges using self-placement was the renewed interest on the part of instructors to enjoy teaching remedial levels courses, because students had willingly enrolled in the course based on a realistic appraisal of their own background and needs and were invested in their decision.
If a student fails to make the best decision through self-placement, it serves as an opportunity for students to better understand their own educational needs, and not an opportunity to cast blame on the educational system. And this is another benefit of self-placement, a lack of student complaints related to course placement. It must be pointed out that counselors are still part of the placement process, but they now function to support and guide a student's decision based on a wider set of information provided by the department and questions from the students, than in the past.
Because self-placement is offered in an online format, it is accessible from anywhere such as the student's home, high school or even on campus in the assessment office. Because it is not a timed event, it offers the opportunity for students to discuss their options with other students, parents, or even instructors and counselors. Also, because the placement decision is the student's evaluation of their own skill levels, there is no incentive to cheat, unlike current assessment process, and therefore, no need for computer security measures. Perhaps the most compelling reason to consider self-assessment is that it supports and is aligned with the spirit of the collaborative learning environment that student learning outcomes should generate. And if our goal is for students to make solid critical decisions, at what point do we allow them to do so?
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