Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 205 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Jay Parkes and Dawn Zimmaro share about their book The College Classroom Assessment Compendium.

Production Credit: [00:00:14] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:51] Today I’m welcoming back to the show Dawn Zimmaro and Jay Parkes, the authors of The College Classroom Assessment Compendium. Dawn is a Senior Program Manager for Learning Assessment at Amazon where she helps to innovate and scale workforce learning. She previously served as the Director of Learning Design and Assessment at the Open Learning Initiative at Stanford University where she led the development of pedagogical and assessment solutions related to innovations in blended and online learning and higher education courses.

Bonni: [00:01:26] Also joining on today is her coauthor, Jay Parkes. Jay is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He teaches courses and classroom assessment and college teaching as well as social science research methods. He’s conducted research in classroom assessments and public schools at universities and at a medical school. He’s offered workshops over the years on assessment topics to a wide variety of instructors. Dawn and Jay, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Jay: [00:02:00] Thanks for having us. We’re delighted to be back.

Dawn: [00:02:02] Yeah. Great to be here.

Bonni: [00:02:03] Well as you already know because we’ve been corresponding over e-mail. I absolutely loved this book. I was teasing each of you and saying you must not be capable of writing a book that’s not going to totally captivate me. So I’d like to start today just by saying thank you for such a meaningful, significant, wonderful book.

Jay: [00:02:21] Well thank you for saying so. And we need to thank all those people who ask us these questions they contributed to the structure and contributed to the topic so it’s in part due to the daily lives we live that it became what it was.

Bonni: [00:02:35] So the book is The College Classroom Assessment Compendium and it’s different from the last book I read of yours you’ve been on the show before and linked link to that episode in the show notes and that book was about multiple choice questions, How do you write those well, how do you write those kinds of exams well. And this is a whole different structure. Could you talk a little bit about what the book is structured like so people can know the type of book that it is and how they might go about reading it? And then also what made you decide to go that route for the book?

Dawn: [00:03:08] I’ll talk about the structure a little bit. So, you mentioned our first book Multiple Choice Testing and that was a deep dive on one particular topic. But you know Jay has been working as a faculty member for over 20 years and doing consulting with his colleagues. And I’ve been a consultant with a faculty members at university campuses and doing some teaching as a part of that role as well.

Dawn: [00:03:30] And over the last two decades we have heard similar questions around assessment from our colleagues and in our consulting role. And so the structure for this and the thing that really germinated the seed for this idea was all those questions over the years that we kept hearing faculty members instructors struggle with. And so the structure was really intended to be sure encyclopedia like entries that would help just in time questions.

Dawn: [00:03:57] I’m teaching a class and a student misses an exam and how do I handle makeup work and makeup exams? Or you know I’m planning my course for next semester, do I embed participation grades as a part of that and effort grades as a part of that? So we really wanted to have them be consumable short entries that faculty members instructors could refer to, really framed around an assessment philosophy evidence and best practices.

Dawn: [00:04:23] So it’s grounded in the research but it’s easily accessible. There may be two or three pages and we also framed it around a recommendation when we felt that felt that that was justified based on our own experience and what the research suggests.

Dawn: [00:04:37] So you know how should you handle excuses for missed exams how do you handle you know different questions that students ask about what we call grade grubbing. And so I describe it as having the consultant at your fingertips as well as the colleague down the hall and that was the intent for this resource.

Bonni: [00:04:55] Yeah one of the things that you do although you do it in such a concise way. It’s truly brilliant. But you’ll say you know, “this is what the research says about this, this is how some people handle it,” and then like you said oftentimes you’ll say, “this is our recommendation on how to handle it.”

Bonni: [00:05:09] Jay, why did you and Don decide to go this route for the book? The kind of structure you decided on?

Jay: [00:05:13] Well it actually has two structures simultaneously. As Dawn said, there’s just in time structure with short entries on focused topics. And yet behind it all is a set of values and beliefs and philosophy that every instructor has, it may not be particularly articulate or explicit but it does tie together and so we are actually two structures that picked up the entry and read what you need. There’s also then we’ve structured it with connections between entries. So every entry has a, “see also” at the bottom with connected entries. Even if a topic is mentioned in the live in entry we have a boldfaced or in the e-book you can just click on it and it hotlinks right to the next entry.

Jay: [00:05:56] And so it’s possible as you said to read it straight through or to or to work your way through it almost in a Choose Your Own Adventure style and let it help you form your own assessment philosophy. So in some respects it’s sort of two books in one because we see the need both for that just in time answer but also for faculty to do more thinking systematically about why they do what they do.

Bonni: [00:06:18] What has been your experience as far as how effective most faculty are at being able to do this? When you asked them about why they have certain course policies regarding assessment how good are we in general at articulating those values beliefs and our philosophies?

Jay: [00:06:36] Faculty are really good at having made a decision and sort of know why they do it at some level. So they’ll say well I give extra credit because it gives me some wiggle room and allows me to address unexpected circumstances and so forth and so faculty often have some thought and some organization to how they’ve made the decisions they have.

Jay: [00:07:02] But we also noticed that sometimes those aren’t as deep or as as broad as they could be. So it’s not that they’re doing something wrong it’s that they could be thinking about it in richer ways. And sometimes when they do that they decide they could come to an answer they liked better.

Jay: [00:07:19] And I think normally where I see evidence of that is when a faculty member has something happened in class and then they overcompensate by writing another paragraph in their syllabus that says, “Now you can’t come in seven minutes late,” and you know all these conditions and so forth and we tend to overcorrect and that’s often a sign that it bothered us but we don’t know why those are those opportunities to stop and say, “why does this bother me?” And usually the answer to that is a value or a principle or something a little deeper than that particular student.

Bonni: [00:07:55] One of the things I’ve found in reading that too was where I had attempted to solve a problem or express my values in one area and then not really realizing that it affected another area that maybe I didn’t want to dismantle that other area that was also supportive of my values and beliefs. And you helped me be more integrative, I think maybe is the best word I can think of, in terms of scene where there were gaps and my own approaches.

Dawn: [00:08:24] And just to add to that I think faculty members are often challenged to write teaching philosophy statements. And think about how they communicate or interact around their subject matter expertise. But when it comes to assessment and classroom assessment I think you know instructors in my work with them over the years have really been challenged of assessment is not just grading and thinking truly around the values and principles and beliefs. And as Jay mentioned there may be a precipitating factor that challenges somebody to think a little bit differently.

Dawn: [00:08:56] But what we’re trying to do here is really weave that that assessment philosophy throughout all of the entries. So it may just be just in time question that you have in need of answers. But underlying that really is challenging the reader to think about well how does this interact you know if I do late work policies how does this interact with all the other policies that I have around assessment? It’s not just about a grading contract but it’s really about how do we really support student learning and the outcomes that they need as a as an educator. And I think that is a different framing than that I’ve seen and framing that we have in our conversations with colleagues and faculty members.

Bonni: [00:09:35] One of the values that you talk about as embedded in all aspects of assessment involves ethics of course and specifically and I’m quoting from your book here, “we’re also focused here on academic beneficence, that is actions which promote the students academic good an academic welfare.”

Bonni: [00:09:57] I know we could spend hours and hours talk about this but I’d love for both of you to share a little bit of where we get ourselves into trouble in terms of fairness where are we not as far as we should be and were we trying to be too fair when we’re actually hurting ourselves in terms of living up to these values and beliefs?

Jay: [00:10:17] Well I I’ll speak to the beneficence piece because that’s been one of my favorite parts of working on this was elaborating what that is and it’s an ethical principle that says we are supposed to be working for our student’s good. But there’s also a downside there that we often don’t think about, which is we can be essentially too nice to our students.

Jay: [00:10:40] And so, for example, if we’re writing with students and publishing with students it’s actually unethical to put their name on a paper if they haven’t contributed and earned that authorship. And yet some folks will do that. And so being nice can actually be an ethical problem. And so being tighter and more concise about what we mean by being nice is important.

Jay: [00:11:00] And when we were working through this and as I talked to instructors here on my campus, they’ve really gravitated towards the distinction between general welfare and academic welfare that there are times when what’s in the student’s general welfare in their general good, so they’ve got the flu. They’re going to be out for 10 days. What’s best for their health may be different from their academic welfare, which is what’s going to help them master the material in the course.

Jay: [00:11:31] And as instructors, our primary responsibility is to attend to the academic academic welfare of students. And when at all possible also accommodate their general welfare. And yet we’re not their mom, we’re not their therapist, we’re not their doctor where their instructor. And so I think it’s very helpful to set those boundaries for ourselves and say you know here are the kinds of things I can do because you have the flu and you need to take care of yourself. And that’s a separate issue, and at times, those things are not in congurence.

Jay: [00:12:09] But just articulating that distinction for for folks around here has proved useful as they think through what do they do with students whose larger welfare is having an impact on their study and they’re kind of asking you to help with that.

Bonni: [00:12:22] You mentioned extra credit earlier and I think just now, and I have just heard so many times colleagues say, “Gosh, you know, as hard as these students are working, I can’t have anyone fail this class and so if I tell them in the beginning of the class that if they work really hard they just won’t fail this class.” And that’s where they bring in extra credit. I know both of you really I don’t know wrestled is the right word because I don’t-did you have a sense before you started to do this work I mean how long have you been recommending no extra credit?

Dawn: [00:12:56] To address the question around no extra credit I think there’s a larger issue around a shared value that the Jay and I sort of wove throughout all of the recommendations and it’s this idea around beneficence and fairness and equity that you know if we’re really focused on the academic welfare the student then our assessment activity should primarily be focused on promoting learning and that grades are a representation of how well students have mastered the course learning objectives.

Dawn: [00:13:25] And so you as an instructor need to ask yourself is giving extra credit really assessing the ways of students demonstrating their mastery of learning objectives or is it an attempt to try to be as Jay described you know tried to be nice. And I think that philosophy of really what are your learning objectives. How are you designing assessments to support mastery of those learning objectives and then creating a plan to support student learning outcomes is really the focus of how we ground most of our recommendations.

Dawn: [00:13:59] So that – “Don’t provide extra credit” [recommendation]. I’ve been working with faculty members asking them, “What are the learning objectives? How does extra credit really support their mastery of learning objectives or is it to help support that effort in the class?” The student who goes above and beyond or may be struggling but puts in a lot more time compared to the student who just seems to get it naturally and isn’t putting as much effort but is still earning the same grade.

Dawn: [00:14:24] And ultimately, if you’re measuring the learning objectives, you kind of have to disregard things like effort and extra credit because they’re not really getting at the heart of what your your academic experience and your teaching teaching experience should be like.

Bonni: [00:14:37] One thing that you stress in the book a number of times is that not everything that matters must be graded. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Jay: [00:14:47] Well I think there’s a good approach among some faculty to think of grades as an economy, that in order to get something from students you have to pay them for it with grades or points. And grades are an economy but they’re not only in economy.

Jay: [00:15:03] And so there are all kinds of things that we can expect of students that we don’t have to pay for with a grade. We expect them to come to class. And some people great attendance. But I think there’s a reasonable assumption that you should be coming to class. You should be coming to class following universities dress code. We don’t grade for that. We don’t grade on whether you’ve brought a laptop or a notebook or a pen with you. We sort of just say you will need these materials and we expect you to bring them in.

Jay: [00:15:31] So where where do we draw that line? And I think what we want to push people to think about is that learning can be further than we think it does. My favorite example of this is the notorious problem of getting students to read before they come to class. And so one of the strategies is to think of it economically and say OK there’ll be a quiz or there’ll be some something you do at the beginning of class that will earn you points if you read the readings. Another approach though is to have a learning activity something in those first few minutes of class that demands knowledge of the reading in order for the students to participate and succeed at that learning task to make that intrinsically valuable.

Jay: [00:16:13] And I think if we start to think more deeply about how can we set expectations in ways where it’s simply an expectation it’s not something we’re transacting over. We might move grades away from some of these things. Another way to think about it is how does your profession treat these things? If you’re an engineer and you know that the state’s office will not accept a proposal for a contract if it’s not in 12 point font, then you say to your students 12 point font and if you don’t turn it in in twelve point font, I won’t accept it. Why not? Because the state agency won’t accept it either.

Jay: [00:16:58] And so connecting these expectations out into the professions I think is an important part too. The state doesn’t grade you on that. They just throw it away. And so we could do that too. I just think we want to invite instructors to think more carefully about paying for things with grades.

Dawn: [00:17:17] Yeah and as a follow up to that I think we often differentiate between learning and assessment and that they are not actually two sides of the same experience so a learning activity that doesn’t necessarily have a grade associated with it is a type of assessment of where the student may have misconceptions or misunderstandings. And so you can do ungraded activities in the classroom that enhance their learning experiences that may be tied to a more formal graded activity. But the student actually sees value in it.

Dawn: [00:17:47] And so whether it’s a conversation that you’re having with a student in a classroom based on learning experiences or a formative assessment where you’re collecting ideas about a muddiest point or misconception. If students see value in that activity there doesn’t necessarily need to be a grading economy associated with it.

Dawn: [00:18:04] And so I think connecting learning assessment and meaningful ways is a really critical component of enhancing the learning experience for students and taking the focus off of grading and putting it back on. What is it that you want students to master and having them actually take ownership of that as a part of their classroom experience.

Bonni: [00:18:22] We’ve talked about grading throughout our conversation so far and I’m going to take a little break in our conversation and share about today’s sponsor for the episode. And that is TextExpander. TextExpander is one of the first programs I ever install on any computer that I have, it’s that essential to the work that I do.

Bonni: [00:18:39] And what it lets us do is create what are called snippets and a snippet is just a little bit of text that we type and when we press our spacebar it spits out either a little bit of text that’s hard for us to remember- like I can never remember my work phone number for some terrible reason, it’s probably because I never dial it- and then it could spit out a lot of text like the show notes for every episode start out as a snippet. TiHE as in Teaching in Higher Ed, I press space and actually I can include variables in there. I can have what the episode number is what the guest or get in this case guests are. And it’s really the more that you think about the repetitive task that we do and we do this a lot and grading of course, we want to spend our time providing them meaningful feedback.

Bonni: [00:19:27] So let’s take some of the repetitive parts and automate that that’s really the goal and it doesn’t have to just be with grading. We can do this with our meeting agendas we can do it with mailing addresses. I also don’t ever remember my P.O. Box number for if someone wants to ship me out a book or a package then we usually use a P.O. box and that’s something that I have a snippet for. Or a reference letter request from students, or even just directions if someone’s going to come visit the campus, we can have all those things in a TextExpander snippet.

Bonni: [00:19:57] And I want to thank them for the support of the show and just for making a fabulous product that again is my essential go to. And now it’s nice because it’s on Windows and on Mac. That was not always the case. And they’ll be a link in the show notes at teachinginhighered.com/205 for you to take advantage of a discount that they have for Teaching in Higher Ed listeners. So thanks again to TextExpander for sponsoring today’s episode.

Bonni: [00:20:26] And now I feel like we should have some kind of a drumroll here because I want to tell you really the biggest struggle I had, in a good way because you helped me learn and you’re still helping me learn. I was mentioning before we started recording just how much I’m still thinking about the book. Here’s the recommendation that you have for us: “Do not drop the lowest grade or let students choose a grade to drop.”

Bonni: [00:20:52] And this is something that I started doing about a year or perhaps even more than that to go that I felt like solved all my problems, not all my problems, but solved a big one because I do know that life happens sometimes and you know our students have really difficult things that come up. And if it is a one off thing, then I want to have some flexibility where the stakes aren’t so high that they almost you know turns into like a fatalistic thing for them and it’s just been completely transformative. And I wonder if we could just spend a few minutes maybe talking a little bit about why was that your recommendation? Don’t drop the lowest grade or let students choose one to drop.

Dawn: [00:21:40] Jay, do you want to take that one first?

Jay: [00:21:44] I was hoping you’d start. I think I want to preface it by saying two things. One is there is an absolute reality to teaching that we can’t ignore. And sometimes we need to solve the problem and move on. And that’s real. And so there are a bunch of relief valves, a bunch of techniques that folks have seen or heard that solve a problem. And there are days when that’s what we need.

Jay: [00:22:15] Every relief valve though has deeper issues with it. And so this technique of letting students drop a score or miss an exam or something like that is a valve insofar as as you alluded to Bonni, it takes away the need to deal with student excuses to have an approach to make ups, to have to have makeup prepared. It resolves so many issues.

Jay: [00:22:43] Some of the things that it invites though is now, you know, I took quizzes one to four and five you took quizzes one two three four aced them and chose not to do five. My guess is those quizzes don’t cover the same material. They cover different chapters or different portions of the course. And so now you’re quiz average and my quiz average don’t represent the same mastery of the same learning objectives. And so leaving an assessment out may mean we are no longer covering the same learning objectives. So that’s one of our main objections to it.

Jay: [00:23:25] I think the other thing I’ll say and this is a secret that I probably shouldn’t say out loud. We make recommendations that sound absolute. And we know there’s wiggle room. We know folks are going to have a 1 percent or 3 percent opportunities where, no really it works and it’s fine. Maybe I shouldn’t say that about the book but we understand reality takes over or in some cases there’s a there’s a place where it works.

Jay: [00:23:55] You know I was thinking if you’re doing weekly or daily reading quizzes or something like that where you have tons of scores, dropping one probably doesn’t hurt the validity of scores ultimately. But I think we want to watch the relief valve and is there a better solution than this. And in this particular case, what do the scores mean if different students don’t complete the same assessments are part of the issues.

Dawn: [00:24:24] And I think to add to that it comes back to, for me, what are your philosophy around assessment? And then also from a bigger picture perspective what is your plan throughout the course? And so if you’re creating a vision for what your students what the activities and assessments that your students should engage in and sort of mapping out the critical learning objectives and the assessments that will measure those, if you drop a score and that is the only assessment that really gets those learning objectives, have you adequately and effectively evaluated how well students have actually learned?

Dawn: [00:25:00] Or is it about sort of the release valve that Jay talked about really you know focusing less more on grading and less on mastery. And so we really emphasize different ways to get at mastery opportunities, rewriting drafts, or if you have a more comprehensive because as Jay suggested multiple opportunities to demonstrate your mastery of a particular learning objective then maybe dropping a score might be appropriate in that context.

Dawn: [00:25:24] But we know there’s limited time and limited space in a semester or a quarter depending on how you teach to actually engage in more formal assessment opportunities and so those should all be meaningful activities. And by communicating to the students that they can drop one, you’ve sort of devalued sort of what that assessment purpose is all about. And so I would challenge instructors to go back and really think about sort of their big picture assessment plan which we talk about in the book as well as their philosophy around assessment and what that is intended to communicate to the students.

Bonni: [00:25:55] One of the other things I took away from your writing about this was that by having it be more of this you know fluid you can drop a score here that we’re we’re almost emphasizing grades more in that case that if we do it doesn’t we do the things that you just described we’re not really having the grade represent learning, the grade is represented in some sort of a game of acquiring this series of points to get to the desired outcome.

Bonni: [00:26:29] And I did like your emphasis on learning, it really challenged me to think through that and I’m actually pleased about your answer too because I think that when I went back and looked at the way I have structured these dropping, and they’re often quizzes just like you described Jay, but what I realized is in most cases, that’s not the only way I measure their learning for a particular outcome.

Bonni: [00:26:53] I’ve become a really big fan of this. Lowering the stakes a little bit by doing some of these dropping quizzes you know it’s not a huge deal but as long as there are other ways that the student has demonstrated mastery or not you know of a given learning outcome you know that challenges me a little bit to say you know how could I align those things so that instead of just all the quizzes, one of these grades gets dropped, it’s arranged more by these learning outcomes.

Jay: [00:27:20] Well Bonni, I think you’re in some respects our ideal reader because you’re such a reflective instructor and you you read the the way we discuss the topic and you reflect on what that means for you. I think in our workshops and so forth we get the instructor who just says, “No that’s not right.”

Jay: [00:27:39] And I worry more I don’t worry if someone arrives at a different answer than I do. What I worry is when they just tell me no and move on. So I really value the reflection and as as we’ve all acknowledged there’s room for differences on these things. But it’s that reflection and that’s, “Well, is there a different way here? Or what are some of the other things I hadn’t thought about?”

Jay: [00:28:03] That’s the most we could hope for and one of the prompts with this book in addition to the, well sometimes there’s an answer or you can just take and use, but there’s a lot of it that really is about trying to help people be reflective in why they do what they do and perhaps come to answers that they’re more comfortable with in that deep sense of satisfied and I’ve reflected on it and I can articulate it. And so you’re doing just what we really would hope folks would do with these issues is reflect on them and think about them more deeply.

Bonni: [00:28:38] This is the point in this show where we each get to give our recommendations and I don’t do this every time but I’m definitely going to be recommending your book as my recommendation today and just to repeat the title that’s the college classroom assessment compendium by Jay parks and Dawn Zimmaro. And I wanted to share just one last thing that it – throughout the whole book not only was I learning new things or seeing different perspectives on assessment but I just regularly was confronted with that we need to be asking ourselves why we have these policies why we’re grading this way why we’re assessing this way and finding that places and are teaching where there is incongruence and really working toward having greater concurrence and all of that and especially communicating this regularly to our students.

Bonni: [00:29:32] There’s just this sometimes this tension that can create where we’re frustrated because we feel like our students are apathetic and they’re frustrated because they feel like this is just transactional it’s just busywork it’s a game and that’s that’s a dangerous place to be in our teaching to have perceptions of our students that are them against us.

Bonni: [00:29:50] And if we really think through our assessment – we think through why we teach – why is what we have to share important – and then how we measure that. That’s all got to line up and I just really loved your book and I hope there’s future books coming because I really enjoyed reading two of your books so much. They’re really easy to read but also hard at the same time – really do get us to reflect on on our teaching so thank you so much. And that’s my recommendation. And I guess I’ll pass it over Jay to you next to give your recommendation.

Jay: [00:30:22] Sure. I’m just finished rereading Robert Sapolsky Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. It’s in its third edition. It’s a book about stress and the impact of stress on physiologically and psychologically and it’s sobering in all the detail and how chronic stress affects our lives. But it’s also a great reminder of why we need to take care of ourselves and handle stress better. He’s such a great writer puts it in layman’s terms and makes it funny to read about how stress hurts people with sounds awful but that’s the way he does it.

Jay: [00:30:58] And the title Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers makes the point that zebras when the tiger jumps out of the brush at them take off and get away and their heart races and they have other stress responses and several minutes later they’re over that and they move on with their lives. And people don’t do that. People constantly are responding as if the tiger just walked out of the brush at us. And the other difference that I appreciate is human beings have a capacity that other animals do not have to produce the exact same psychological response – or I’m sorry physiological response – just by recalling that experience.

Jay: [00:31:38] So I can sit here at my desk and think about an interaction – a tough interaction with a student – and have the same stress response sitting here as I did when I was interacting with the students. So why Zebras Don’t get all serious by Robert Sapolsky just a great fun read and a good look at the damage stress can do and why we should take care of ourselves.

Bonni: [00:31:59] That sounds absolutely fascinating. I am sure I would never have that happen to me [said sarcastically] but I’m sure I know a few people. Thank you so much.

Jay: [00:32:09] You need to read the book.

Bonni: [00:32:10] I do. It’s going to go… It might even go right in the shopping cart. I won’t even probably wait a wait list or the wish list. It’s really excellent thank you. And Dawn, what do you have to recommend today?

Dawn: [00:32:21] Yeah my recommendation is a book called How Not To Be Wrong: The power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg. And the author provided a quote I think that sums up sort of what attracted me to this book and what I find fascinating and he said math gives us a way of being unsure in a principled way.

Dawn: [00:32:39] And so there’s so much uncertainty in citizens and just individuals and we’re inundated with data every day and reports and headlines and in my own teaching of introductory statistics I was trying to get my students to be statistically literate and I think this book really got at the heart of how to think about mathematics and statistics in a way to answer common problems and really be literate about the kinds of information and claims that are being made all around us every day.

Dawn: [00:33:09] He mentions a report where there’s a prediction that 100 percent of Americans will be obese by 2048 in a study that got published in and really challenging those kind the claims and not necessarily having to understand the formulas or the deep mathematics or statistics behind claims that are made like that but just understanding how to reason and understand the world around us in a better way using sort of numbers and common sense around mathematical constructs. I would actually have titled his book How to be Mostly Right – rather than how not to be wrong because you know end of the book he actually talks about hedging and some of the ways in which we talk about our chances of being right and I think it was just a fascinating easily consumable digestible book with practical experiences in everyday life about how this kind of reasoning can really help us think and be better consumers around around data and headlines that we see in newspapers and websites and different things of that nature.

Dawn: [00:34:09] So it made me think in a different way and how I can communicate with colleagues and peers as well who may not be, you know, when I tell them I do statistics their eyes glaze over. And so this is a way to to give some anecdotes and stories about how to actually use that in everyday life.

Bonni: [00:34:23] And if we are not teachers of statistics will we be able to consume the book as well?

Dawn: [00:34:29] Oh absolutely. Which is why I picked it up. I have two teenagers in the household who are both sort of not very interested in the discipline of mathematics and I’ve been trying to tell them as well as folks who like you said you know of my own generation who learned that I do statistics about how to make sense of the world around us so it is absolutely readable by… I will give this to my teenagers to read – maybe older teenagers – they may not get past Chapter One. I would encourage folks from all disciplines to read this book.

Bonni: [00:35:01] Well thank you both for these recommendations you’re making my to read list a lot longer. [It] sounds like it will also be a lot better, too. So thank you for that. And I just really love your book and love getting to have conversations with you and… Do either of you have anything to share in terms of anything on the horizon with either of your writing?

Dawn: [00:35:20] No I think what was funny is with the multiple choice book we had an everything was an exclusion rule. If it wasn’t about multiple choice, we didn’t write about it. And with this book we had everything was an inclusion rule. Oh, we could write about that. We could write about that. And so we for the moment have exhausted ourselves.

Jay: [00:35:39] So we are thinking… We are we do have ideas and we have not covered the ground completely that’s for sure. But so we don’t have that – here’s what we’re percolating next – in a real concrete way.

Dawn: [00:35:51] What we have talked about needing to complete the trilogy [laughter] of our of our co-authorship… So we’re still still contemplating what the final end chapter would be in that trilogy around assessment.

Bonni: [00:36:05] Well it sounds like the trick for me if I want to get you to write more books is just to start sending you all the questions I get from the teaching and higher ed audience because some of them are really hard questions. You could put them in your file cabinet when they got big enough start the next one. Well thanks so much for your time today really appreciate the conversation.

Jay: [00:36:22] Thank you Bonni it’s always a delight to talk with you.

Dawn: [00:36:25] Yes. Thank you so much Bonni.

Bonni: [00:36:29] What a pleasure it was to get to have another conversation with Dawn Zimmaro and Jay Parkes and thanks to both of them for lending their expertise about assessment on today’s episode.

Bonni: [00:36:41] If you’d like to look at the show notes for the episode they’re at teachinginhighered.com/205. And there you’ll also find information about the special deal that TextExpander has with us for being a sponsor of today’s episode and TextExpander you can go straight to textexpander.com/podcast for 20 percent off your first year. But if you don’t feel like writing down links right now you can always just go to the show notes next time you’re back at your computer and check out that offer.

Bonni: [00:37:12] And thanks to all of you for listening. I really appreciate the community that we’re growing and teaching in higher ed and look forward to seeing you next time.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.