Primary Trait Analysis (PTA) is a way to take what we already do ---record grades--- and translate that process into an assessment device (B. Walvoord and L.P. McCarthy, 1990. Thinking and writing in college. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English). Advantages of PTA for assessment include (1) using information that is already available, (2) bringing to consciousness the mostly subconscious processes that go into recording grades, and (3) looking at performance strengths and weakenesses in individual pieces of an assignment, course, or curriculum. PTA is a particularly powerful device because one can apply it at the level of the institution, department, curriculum, course, single class, or classroom assignment. What follows illustrates how PTA works on individual classroom assignments.

          Each teaching professor has a view of what (s)he wants students to accomplish. The view, even if it is an unconscious one, pictures ideal student achievements at the end of a particular class, a unit of instruction, or an entire curriculum. At the end of an assignment or course, students who achieve the goals and "look like" the ideal tend to get As; those who look a bit less like the ideal get Bs, and so on. Because students (and professors) aren't perfect, achievement of goals is usually uneven. Students may excel in one area and be merely adequate in another. Nevertheless, professors record a single, holistic grade that tends to sum the student's performance and provide an overall judgment of merit.

          When professors talk grades, they can have animated conversations about students, but they can't talk meaningfully about comparative strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum. When professors talk assessment through Primary Trait Analysis (PTA), they can decompose the curriculum (or a course, a class, or an assignment) into parts and have a meaningful conversation about teaching and learning. This is because Primary Trait Analysis does not yield a single, holistic grade. Instead, it reveals parts. Two examples follow in parallel, one approximating what professors do when recording grades, another outlining what professors could do with the same information when performing PTA.

Click here for the exciting parallel     examples.

Click here for some thoughts that seem       significant.