Background: Experiential educators face difficulties assessing participants and programs because there are so many measurement tools to choose from, many measures have validity issues such as those based on self-reported data, objective tests may not adequately measure social or psychological outcomes, and tests in content disciplines often assess knowledge rather than skill in synthesis, analysis, or evaluation. Purpose: We hypothesized that an open-ended essay final would reliably measure individual growth, internalization of foundational threshold concepts in our disciplines, and the effectiveness of our outdoor, interdisciplinary program. Methodology/Approach: Student essays contained 36 student-generated concepts spread across our four disciplines (biology, writing, history, and recreation) which we compared with 20 threshold concepts from professional literature. Findings/Conclusions: Individual students identified about half of the concepts generated by the whole group, illustrating that their learning varied significantly. Our group identified 13 of the published threshold concepts. Students demonstrated comprehension of threshold concepts—foundational ways of seeing—as opposed to restatements of information from teachers’ lectures. Implications: Writing essays aids permanent cognitive and behavioral learning; coding responses to open-ended essay questions for threshold concepts can be a valuable tool for both individual student and program assessment in experiential education.

中文翻译：

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提出正确的问题：使用反思性文章进行体验评估

背景：体验式教育者在评估参与者和项目时面临困难，因为有太多的测量工具可供选择，许多测量存在有效性问题，例如基于自我报告数据的那些，客观测试可能无法充分衡量社会或心理结果，以及测试内容学科通常评估知识而不是综合、分析或评估技能。目的：我们假设开放式论文期末考试将可靠地衡量个人成长、我们学科中基础阈值概念的内化以及我们户外跨学科计划的有效性。方法/方法：学生论文包含 36 个学生生成的概念，分布在我们的四个学科（生物学、写作、历史、和娱乐），我们将其与专业文献中的 20 个阈值概念进行了比较。结果/结论：个别学生确定了整个小组产生的概念的大约一半，说明他们的学习差异很大。我们小组确定了 13 个已发布的阈值概念。学生表现出对阈值概念的理解——基本的观察方式——而不是重述教师讲座中的信息。影响：撰写论文有助于永久性的认知和行为学习；对阈值概念的开放式论文问题的编码回答可以成为体验式教育中个体学生和课程评估的宝贵工具。说明他们的学习差异很大。我们小组确定了 13 个已发布的阈值概念。学生表现出对阈值概念的理解——基本的观察方式——而不是重述教师讲座中的信息。影响：撰写论文有助于永久性的认知和行为学习；对阈值概念的开放式论文问题的编码回答可以成为体验式教育中个体学生和课程评估的宝贵工具。说明他们的学习差异很大。我们小组确定了 13 个已发布的阈值概念。学生表现出对阈值概念的理解——基本的观察方式——而不是重述教师讲座中的信息。影响：撰写论文有助于永久性的认知和行为学习；对阈值概念的开放式论文问题的编码回答可以成为体验式教育中个体学生和课程评估的宝贵工具。