Gregg Meyer and his life before Teaching....

Gregg Meyer teaches Engineering at Sylvania

The Tokyo Two-Step
Circling in on continuous improvement

I enjoy change. Yet curiously, whenever I find myself in a totally new setting, my brain tries to map the present to the past much like Google Maps plunks down green and red pins and draws a zigzagging purple line between them. The transition from industry to education has forced many such correlation ponderings this past year. New acronyms, rules and terminologies spring up almost daily; will they ever slow down? Last Fall, I began hearing the “A” word echoing through our cold concrete corridors until one day it burst its way right through our SAC meeting door. It arrived with less welcome than dear old Uncle Bob received when he showed up just in time for our Thanksgiving feast.

Silently, I contemplated the reactions of my new peers. Were they merely resistant to change? Were they staunch protectors of their freedom to instruct as they pleased? Or, perhaps their apprehensions were symptomatic of “Initiative Fatigue”. You know, that syndrome brought on by the endless fad cycles imposed upon employees by management and their teams of highly paid consultants. Hmmm.

After 30 years in corporate manufacturing I’d become numb to the continuum of packaged paradigms each hailed as the solution to all our woes. Just In Time (JIT) inventory, Agile, Lean and Six Sigma (obviously one through five failed miserably); the epiphanies never waned— all proof that Dilbert was not a cartoon!

Thus, for those of you whose knee-jerk reaction to “Assessments” has left you with bruised chins, I get it. What in the world will they think of next? How can they make their jobs easier and yours… well… not? I have a surprise— Assessments can actually make your jobs easier and even more rewarding! Skeptical? Read on…

I call it the “Tokyo Two-Step: Hoshin & Kaizen”. These intertwined disciplines are the only two lingo artifacts I’ve observed to have stood the test of time. Pre-dating my manufacturing career by decades these Japanese expressions ironically have their roots tied to a crusty American gent named Dr. Edward W Deming. In the early 1950’s, Deming flew to Japan to help rebuild their war-decimated industry by employing his statistical process control techniques. Requiring no costly measurement devices, companies like Toyota Motor Company latched onto both his methodology and unwavering focus on quality. Although Deming went on to pen a total of 14 Principles of Transformative Leadership, his prime directive was simple: “Create constancy of purpose towards continuous improvement”. Hoshin, like many foreign terms, is difficult to distill into a single concept. The one I’ve most easily internalized suggests that Hoshin represents a cyclical process that spirals ever inward towards your Reason for Being.

Pop Quiz: What was Toyota’s first car called? Answer: the “Toyopet” (your likely failure is forgiven, but no worries, future assessment opportunities await:-). Notice how that name never got resurrected? I’ll just go on record that this 27hp wondercar wouldn’t have been a JD Power candidate. Yet post-Deming, Toyota’s encoding of quality into their DNA and universal buy-in to countless Hoshin cycles has earned them the highest dependability rating and netted them more quality awards than any auto manufacturer in history. As commercial-like as this sounds, Deming is acknowledged to have had a greater positive impact on Japanese manufacturing than any individual of non-Japanese heritage (an honor that subsequently earned him their “Order of the Sacred Treasure” award on behalf of Emperor Hirohito; of closer to home interest— Deming was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Oregon State for his advancements in manufacturing quality).

If Hoshin maps effective planning, Kaizen is the compass. Kaizen represents daily actions that ever so gradually guide your journey. Together, Hoshin and Kaizen form a reverse engineering team dismantling your mission, parsing it into one to three year objectives (read Assessment Plans) and measuring it terms of simple and sequential tasks. Each atom of action is to be practiced daily until it gets relegated to your brain’s background processing. Isn’t it ironic that actions requiring no thought are the ones that most consistently get done? This is Kaizen in action!

Pop Quiz #2: “Did you lock your car today?” Most will answer “yes”, but few can actually recall the specific act (your assessments are showing signs of improvement).

My Kaizen thought experiment:

If I were to take roll every single class period until the process became fully habitualized, would I get to know my students’ names more quickly? Would this in turn help build deeper individual connections? Don’t better connections foster trust? If a student were to trust me, perhaps they would share a little more about themselves and what makes them tick. With such insights, I could ensure the points I make in class come from relevant perspectives and improve the odds of them catching the balls I toss. Wow, learning might now really be taking root! When I administer my next exam I’ll bet they give better answers and that will save perhaps five hours of grading time. Result: Now I can focus on the more interesting aspects of teaching. Step, step, repeat. Win.

Final Quiz:
1. Might this daily work geared toward accumulating Kaizen wins pay off when program assessments come due?
2. “With a constancy of purpose towards continuous improvement” could Hoshin planning help PCC’s Six Core Outcomes thrive?
3. In the picture below, can you visualize the underlying element leading towards a long-term goal? Can you spot the Hoshin cycles or little Kaizen wins? How might you make real-time adjustments to keep the system in tune?

Leaps and other acts of joy....

One time I prefaced a remark to my son with the following comment:

"Honey, you are probably going to think I am off the wall when I say this, but I...."

At that point, he interrupted me. He said:

"Mom, everyone already knows that you are completely off the wall. You don't need to try to hide it any more....:"

I found this exchange oddly liberating. If it was widely understood that I believed non-standard things, and saw connections that others thought non-existent, but people still talked to me (at least on most days) .... then maybe I didn't need to worry so much !


I mention this, because I am about to make one of those odd-ball connections (or leaps) that I am inclined to preface with some sort of warning....


There is a new book out about Integrative Education, written by one of my heroes, Palmer Parker (The Courage to Teach), along with Arthur Zajonc. It is called The Heart of Education, a Call to Renewal. Parker and Zajonc are calling for a new approach to best educational practices -- one that is crafted to help people think deeply about their values, discover more of their own potential, search for their own deepest aspirations, and reflect on their place in reality and the nature of the human struggle for meaning. Palmer and Zajonc think educators should educate, not just offer what has the best cost/benefit ratio in the next budgeting cycle.


Many people would take the "bean counter" mentality of the assessment movement to be part of what Parker and Zajonc are railing against. Assessment is all about trying to measure effects in the world -- those pesky "outcomes" that are "out there" -- and so it skews toward things that are measurable. Deep aspirations, meaning, values.... those things are hard (maybe impossible) to measure. So lots of people worry that in our rush to measure, we will forget what we are trying to do in the first place.


But here's my leap:

Palmer and Zajonc are offering an approach to education they call "integrative." (I've been reading some of Palmer's earlier work on this emerging approach to higher ed.) Among the things they are calling us to reconsider is our traditional way of breaking out disciplines, and then hunkering inside of our specialized fields. They remind us that education has, at its core, a mission that spills across all discipline boundaries. The search for truth and meaning, the understanding of a self in a universe -- this takes everyone remembering what is at the heart of our common educational mission. We need to focus on what is in common across our many different fields, looking for how we each contribute to our core mission.


To me, it sounds like core outcomes. PCC has some of them. You know about them, right?


And that is what we are asked to assess.


The assessment movement asks that we remember why we are here as educators, why what we do matters.... and then it reminds us that it matters so much that we can't afford to fail. Our world needs self-reflective problem solvers, able to collaborate across divisions of culture and profession -- willing to turn toward our collective social and environmental problems (instead of turning away.) Helping create such consciousness and skill is what Palmer and Zajonc say is at the heart of education. The assessment movement then chimes in to say: and please, figure out how to do this well by taking a look at what you are currently accomplishing and not accomplishing in student learning.


It is hard to figure out how to measure what matters. But if you know what matters -- that counts as a good start. Palmer and Zajonc reminds us of what matters.


We are all in this together.


Let us collaborate, and in that way help our students learn to integrate. And let us devise ever more accurate ways to tell what we are accomplishing, and what we have left to do. Our students, and our world, will be the better for it....

Assessment drives collaboration around what matters. Palmer and Zajonc ask us to remember what matters, and then collaborate around it. I see assessment taking us to where Palmer and Zajonc say we should be.


Hmmmm. Maybe it's not such a big leap after all....

Deborah Sipe's Doctoral Work

Assessment Primer

by Ruth Stiehl & Les Lewchuk

Corvallis, OR: The Learning Organization (2008)

Stiehl’s goal, with this work, is to present a new way of assessing student learning. Her approach is a reaction and answer to the many calls for reform in improving student retention, accountability, meaningful learning for students, and appropriately assessing student learning. Her approach calls for a systems or holistic view of student learning. In her approach, all the factors involved in student learning become intertwined: curriculum development, assessment, and student learning experiences. She thus sees student assessment from the systems perspective in that it is one of the many parts that are interconnected in student learning.

Stiehl calls for viewing student learning from the perspective of how students experience the learning process in college and she uses the metaphor of rafting a river as a visual organizer . Students enter or “put in” at a certain point, travel along in their learning, encounter rapids (such as tests and projects), and “take out” or leave school at a certain point, preferably when they have completed the program. The student is the paddler on raft, along with fellow paddlers, and the instructor is the guide. Stiehl sees the river as the knowledge base for students.

To illustrate her suggested approach, Stiehl outlines a river rafting journey, both through storytelling and visual representation. Thus, the process of assessing students becomes part of the whole story and the graphic representation. Stiehl begins by noting what is involved in the put in phase for a student: figuring out where they’re going, what equipment they need to have, etc. This description is a useful reminder of the importance of student support services, such as counseling and guidance.

Stiehl is essentially asks that faculty see their responsibilities from a new perspective:

1. Guiding the paddlers down the river;
2. Constructing the river;
3. Adjusting the river based on a flow of evidence. (p.20)

This metaphor emphasizes the importance of formative assessment; the continual flow of assessment information about student learning aids the instructor in “adjusting the river.” The metaphor also reminds the reader of an essential element of systems thinking: that continual information is needed by the system to adjust and reorganize itself. Thus, assessment information helps the instructor adjust the curriculum to meet student learning needs in order to reach the desired outcome.

Stiehl notes that intended student outcomes are the “take out” phase of a student’s learning journey. She strongly advocates that intended outcomes, what instructors expect students to be able to do as a result of the specific learning journey, should drive curriculum development. In order for student outcomes to provide clear direction for curriculum development, they need to be “robust”; clear yet complex and flexible. Stiehl provides a number of examples to illustrate her concept of robust outcomes. She notes the difference between program and college wide outcomes and those intended for courses.

In carrying out student assessment, Stiehl advocates for creating student work tasks that are appropriate and occur during the flow of student learning. She suggests the importance of authentic tasks to make the learning more meaningful, and notes that the periods between assessments are “wake-up rapids”, when students gather information, study issues, and so on, to prepare for tests or assignments. Stiehl sees the patterning of assessments as part of the overall “program map” for helping students negotiate their journey down the river of learning. The “rapids” students encounter should be distributed throughout the learning process to allow for instructors to use the assessment information, and should be centralized in something like a capstone project at the end of the course or program. Such a project, in which the student takes the gained knowledge and applies it, allow the instructor to note what has been learned, if the student has applied it, and, ultimately, if the student outcome has been achieved.

Stiehl does not deal directly with student assessment until the third part of her book, after she has set assessment within the whole system of student learning. She explores three areas here: why assess student learning, what should be assessed, and how student learning should be assessed. Stiehl asserts that student learning is assessed to assist, to adjust, and to advance, with assessing to assist being the most important of those three because it is so crucial in helping to guide the learning experience. She notes that when assessing to advance, instructors should not be focusing on what the student has achieved, but whether the student is ready to go forward to the next learning. The concept of assessing to adjust speaks both to the need to review assessment information to adjust curriculum is presented to students, but also to review assessment processes to ensure they are providing the information needed. This point could be more clearly explained. Stiehl contends that what should be assessed are not only the students, but also the challenges of the content and the process itself. This viewpoint again reflects the systems thinking approach in that there are interconnections amongst the students, the process, and the content.

In the following section, Stiehl focuses on a key question: how to decide the criteria for quality in student work. She notes the importance of professional judgment and student input, but notes the influence of social values on this question. As a result, there can be no perfect, objective criteria, rather, Stiehl argues for a process that can be used in determining the criteria for quality. Later, however, she asserts that “good criteria is criteria that assists students, provides data for making decisions, about advancing the student, and making decisions about adjusting learning experiences.” (p. 72). Stiehl then discusses three types of assessment tools: the checklist, the scoring guide, and the rubric, providing many visual illustrations. As to the timing of assessment, she notes that data can be gathered at any point in the student’s learning journey and that the accumulated evidence, like the confluence of smaller streams to a river, provides us with a rich amount of information. Stiehl notes the value of indirect evidence of learning, such as student satisfaction surveys, as well as direct evidence. She also argues that the entire college system itself can and should be a part of this evidence-gathering process. In her final chapters, Stiehl discusses methods for course adjustment, then expanding the idea of adjustment to a discussion of what it is involved in a program review.

Overall, Stiehl work is a very comprehensive view of the assessment process as it occurs in the context of student learning and within the college structure itself. As such, she views assessment both in terms of a linear system and of the wider system of the college. Stiehl very carefully explains her metaphors, through stories, visuals, and examples. Also using a systems approach, she attends to the details of the assessment process, addressing key questions of why, what, and how. The tone of her prose is positive, inspiring, and hopeful and her narrative is clear and informal, yet continually instructional. Her work provides clear guidance to those embarking on the journey of assessment or those who already doing so, but who lack clear guidance on its role in student learning.

Grade Fog and..... Fog Lights

Assessment Blog Jan 25 2011



Extra! Extra! Hear All About it!!

There is fast-breaking news in the assessment world. The Lumina Foundation (which is funded in part with Gates money) has just released a report that has the potential to shake up Higher Ed in profound ways. It is called The Degree Qualifications Profile. The U.S. Higher Ed system has been playing catch-up with the European Union (and their Bologna Process.) And this counts as a significant step forward.

What's it all about? Diligent readers of this blog may be familiar with the phrase "grade fog." Since teachers are in charge of how they determine student grades, it is impossible to meaningfully compare one student's grade of B (from Instructor #1) to the next student's grade of B (From instructor #2.) #1 might try to factor in effort, and award students with good grades for trying hard. #2 doesn't care about effort -- or attendance or participation -- just the results. Those are very, very different grades of B. And that's in one institution, where both instructors belong to the same department or SAC and are teaching under the same CCOGs (or equivalent.) Comparisons get all the more obscure as we go from one institution to another, across divides of public and private, research centers and community colleges, for-profit and non-profit schools.

Into this foggy mess, the Lumina Foundation has just put out a preliminary report. They are setting outcomes associated with "quality" degrees. The purpose is to have clear and explicit outcomes that are generally accepted, across institutions, for college degrees (associates through masters -- doctorates are not yet covered.) And wherever there are outcomes, assessments are not far behind. At this point, the document is very general and abstract. The plan, it appears, it to use this as a framework for on-going conversations about how to fill in the details...

Is this a good thing for Higher Ed? Well, like most everything in life, the matter appears mixed.

From my point of view, outcomes coming from a non-profit foundation sound better than outcomes dictated by the Department of Education (with money tied.) And setting out outcomes can be better or worse, depending on assessments. The Biggest drawback of the No Child Left Behind approach (to my mind) is not that outcomes became required for each grade level, but that certain high stakes tests became the one and only way they were measured. So I will be waiting to see what happens when the assessment shoe drops (so to speak.)

Also from my point of view, though, one of the most vexing and intriguing pieces of the assessment whirl is what is often referred to as "measuring the unmeasurable." Here at PCC, we have language for some of what we are trying to do in our Core Outcomes. We promise that our students will become increasingly self-reflective and willing to turn toward our collective social and environmental problems (instead of running away.) We say our students will learn to understand who they are in this world through increased awareness of cultural variation and vast differences in the shared human venture of "meaning making." How has the Lumina Project benchmarked these vital aspects of education?

This is what the report says:

In addition, many colleges and universities emphasize their role in fostering personal growth and helping students examine their values and commitments. But such elements of institutional mission rarely are specified as criteria for awarding degrees. Therefore, they are not explicitly included in this Degree Profile, even though values reflection and personal growth are inherent in many of the competencies that the Profile does include.

I think I'll be staring at this paragraph a long, long time. If we measure what matters, and we are not measuring this...... well, you can see where that reasoning goes.

Here's the link to an Inside Higher Ed take on things:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/25/defining_what_a_college_degree_recipient_should_know_and_be_able_to_do

Here's the Lumina Foundation page:
http://www.luminafoundation.org/

Here's the report itself:
http://www.luminafoundation.org/publications/The_Degree_Qualifications_Profile.pdf


If you work in Higher Ed, this report will change your job. Check it out!

Testing, testing, 1,2,3....

This week I want to direct your attention to a disconcerting book just being published, with some main points summarized at Inside Higher Ed.

Many people have been worried that the emphasis on "accountability" in colleges and universities would lead to the universally required adoption of some high stakes tests, similar to the pattern in K-12 from "No Child Left Behind." Members of the faculty Learning Assessment Council, as part of our first year of inquiry (2008-9), investigated the different tests, and organizations that created and administer the tests, that are most used for this purpose. One in particular, the CLA (College Learning Assessment), looks poised to win the testing wars. It has been adopted by all universities in the California and Texas Higher Ed system, and is administered at Lewis and Clark (closest to home.) The test also comes close to the vision of the original Spellings Commission -- to provide a meaningful way to compare the results of one institution to another. The results are bench-marked based on information about the institution, its student population, and other demographics. This test has a pre- and post design. A sample of in-coming students are tested, and then a sample of students leaving with degrees. The difference is the "value added" by the college experience

The report in Inside Higher Ed uses results of the CLA to look generally at how Higher Ed is doing in value added (which they say is not very good), and then to try to isolate what characteristics in a student's experience account for the best gains.

There is lots to think about -- not just in the results of the study, but in the methodology. The CLA looks to me to be the best of the tests out there (it is the only one that uses essay answers, instead of multiple choice or T/F.) But is it good enough to be used in this way -- to tell how colleges and universities are doing on their core mission?

At the council's recommendation, PCC did not adopt the version of the CLA created for community colleges. We thought meaningful assessment -- useful for program improvement -- needed to be closer to the people who matter, the instructors. But if the CLA continues to be widely adopted, and used in ways like this study, there may come a time when we will have to use it. Either it will be mandated (!!) or its use will be so standard that it would hurt us to opt out. Either way, the CLA and its uses is an important piece of the assessment story in colleges and universities.

Shirlee
chair, faculty Learning Assessment Council 2010-11

Assessment and Blind Dates

Jeff Pettit’s Fear

The fear of assessment feels like the fear of a blind date. It seems like some person I don’t know will sit down, take a brief glimpse of who they think I am and then criticize me for something I do or something I say or something I don't do or something I don't say, or just out-right fails to see how great I am, despite my flaws.

Currently, for the most part, assessment is like the morning look in the mirror: working alone, fixing what can be fixed, briefly regretting the imperfections, … self-critiquing before heading out the door. I agree with Phil Seder's post from Nov 2 that this kind of self-critique is largely how most individual teachers improve, and the only improvement most teachers have time for. I don't agree with him that assessment should be abandoned to the status quo of teachers-as-islands and Peter Seaman's post from Nov 8 is a clear outline that there is a better way.

Assessment is not brief; it is recursive. Assessment is not a glimpse, but a continually improving probe into any area to which it is applied. It is not done by someone I don't know; here at PCC it is done by you and by me.

Assessment is also several separate things. It is Instructors assessing students to maximize their learning; I’m not going to talk about that much. It is also assessing Instructors to maximize their instruction; this is the look in the mirror. I’m going to talk about that a little. Most importantly, at least at this point in time for PCC overall, it is assessing courses, programs and everything departmental in the learning process. This is what I want to talk about, because this is what we fear.

We at PCC are in a unique position and I am relieved and glad for it. We have been told to assess PCC (courses, programs, departments, etc.) effectively, so we must. This is a new atmosphere from decades past, and some are saying, “No I won’t, because I’m afraid when you look at courses, you might take a peek at me and find fault in me and fire me.” This resistance to assessment is tilting at windmills, which are turning by the winds of change. But when viewed without fear, assessment is not a mandate to change, but an opportunity to improve. And by improve, I mean improve everything from curriculum, to textbook choice, to course outcomes, to instructor and student support. As other educational institutions drive improvement from the hierarchy above, or from private assessment companies, or in the case of No Child Left Behind, from the government, we at PCC get to trust the job of assessment to ourselves.

If we are to assess, this is the least frightening scenario. But it is, for most people, frightening nonetheless. Of all the good people at PCC with whom I’ve discussed assessment, none of them seems afraid of assessing themselves, or assessing others, or assessing courses, or departments, or administrators. But nearly all hold some fear of others assessing them! This fear spills over into a fear of assessment overall. When we imagine others looking at us (or even near us) in order to make improvements it would be difficult not to be afraid. Accepting criticism from others (whether it reflects on our own short-comings or the short-comings of our department) requires trust, vulnerability and openness. So the real question is this: do you trust your colleagues? Should you trust them? If you trust them completely, there should be no fear. If you don’t trust them, the problem is either your difficulty in trusting people, or their difficulty in trustworthiness. Maybe both. If you have trouble trusting people, stop it. But if our colleagues are not trustworthy, what then? I don’t know. Perhaps faith.

Or perhaps we can remove them from the process. The strangers and the untrustworthy are not asking what we are doing in our classes. We are simply tasked with assessing and improving our overall method of improvement. We are not being asked to prove we are good at our jobs.

This leads me to my following vision for assessment: Empirical relevant data is regularly and anonymously gathered from all Instructors teaching a set of particular courses. Student performance is pooled and posted internally. Neither student names nor instructor names are recorded nor is data organized or connected by class. However, (and this is where I am talking about individual Instructors improving themselves) Instructors can privately compare their students’ data to the over-all data if they record it before submitting (perhaps the assessment is even used by most Instructors as part of the students’ class assessment). Instructors can use this information to improve individually. More importantly, on the department level, based on the overall data, improvements and support are offered to improve courses overall. But the key is data, accurate data. Data data data. And accurate data can only come when we are free of fear – when everyone participates, when no one tries to gloss over imperfections as if they are on a blind date, when we all work together to improve PCC. This scenario can work because currently all that is being asked for externally is a workable method (and continually improving method) of gathering data, not the data itself. No one other than I would need to see how well my students are doing; no one outside the department would need see how well the department is doing. Privacy, in fact, will increase the accuracy of the data, increase participation, and reduce (eliminate?) fear! As long as the method of generating accurate and meaningful data is continually improved, the machine is alive and evolving and limitless.

True to my discipline, I will close with a mathematical proof.

Given:

1. Course improvements are implemented by Instructors.
2. Each instructor can improve.
3. Each Instructor is either able to improve or is not able to improve and either desires to improve or does not desire to improve.
   
   
4. Now, let T be a member from the set of all teachers who are able to improve and desire to improve (that's probably everybody). Because T needs to improve, T is imperfect. If T relies solely on T's-self for improvement, T's improvement is limited due to imperfection.

Therefore, T should not rely solely on T for improvement; otherwise improvement will be finitely limited.

Likewise, unless T's mentor is a demigod (which would contradict “2)” which is given), if T relies solely on advice from other teachers (T1, T2, … , Tn) for improvement, the limit of improvement might be larger, but still finitely limited due to individual imperfection (proven above).

Since T cannot improve based solely on other T’s, any course, degree or department created by a set of T’s is limited and will eventually reach it’s limited potential.

However, recursive assessment of courses is unbounded and therefore provides the possibility of infinite data, which must, by definition, be infinitely useful.

Therefore, in order to achieve limitless improvement: all teachers in the set of teachers that wish to improve themselves, their courses, their departments and PCC overall should set-up an accurate and continually improving system applied in such a way that no one is afraid of it. The continually improving system that everyone creates should gather data about how well students are learning, and base improvement on that data. In doing so we will not only continually and limitlessly improve, but also help others to overcome fear! Now everything is better and everyone is happier!

Woo!

Jeff Pettit is a math instructor here at PCC. He was an active (and fun!) participant in the Assessment class in Fall 2010 (The class is offered through the Learning Assessment Council -- watch for announcements of future classes.) He agreed to write a blog, and reveal to us some of his thinking process about assessment....

Don't miss the Anderson Conference

The Anderson Conference is coming!! This year TLC coordinators have invited some local assessment experts, who will come share both assessment theory and practice. Their main focus will be assessment at the course level. The conference title says a lot, I think:

Shifting from a Grading Culture to a Learning Culture: Assessment Theory & Practice

The sessions rotate through some of our campuses. You are welcome to come to some sessions, even if you don't make them all. For each campus session attended, PT Faculty will receive a $25 stipend.

January 27th at Rock Creek: 1:00pm-4:15pm
keynote:Student Assessment That Boosts Learning
January 28^th at Cascade: 9:00am-12:00pm
keynote: Assessment for Learning Using Rubrics
January 28^th at Sylvania: 1:00pm-4:00pm
keynote: Descriptive Feedback

The TLC coordinators have forwarded to me the bios of the two main presenters (with break out sessions being offered after each keynote.) So I am sharing them with you here:

Judy Arter has worked at all levels of assessment from college to elementary school and from large-scale high-stakes testing to classroom/course assessment for learning. Her passion is formative assessment (assessment that supports student learning). She has developed performance assessments and rubrics for many contexts and subject areas.

Judy has facilitated over 1200 trainings in the area of student assessment since 1978. She worked at the Assessment Training Institute in Portland, OR from 1999 to 2010 and was director of Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's (now Education Northwest) assessment unit from 1990 to 1999.

Judy is a co-author of Scoring Rubrics in the Classroom: Using Performance Criteria for Assessing and Improving Student Performance (2001), Assessment FOR Learning: An Action Guide for School Leaders (2005), Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right –Using It Well (2004), and Creating and Recognizing Quality Rubrics (2006).
She has a PhD in special education (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1976) and a BS in mathematics (University of California, San Diego, 1971).

Loren Ford has a Master's Degree in Psychology and is a Licensed Professional Counselor. Over the last 33 years he has taught numerous psychology and history courses at Clackamas Community College. After years of using assessment strictly to give grades, he is experimenting with strategies to use student assessment differently to (1) motivate students to do practice work, and (2) as an instructional methodology to help students learn more quickly and deeply. For example, he is developing rubrics to help students understand the communication and reasoning proficiencies necessary for success in school and daily living.

The conference breakout sessions will address such topics as grading strategies, rubrics, providing effective feedback, and more.