What Is Assessment?

What Is Assessment?

Assessment is the process of collecting evidence to see if students are actually learning what were teaching. The focus is on seeing what the student is able to do or demonstrate, rather than just listing an inventory of what was covered in a particular class. Here is a useful definition from Linda Suskie in her book Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide (p. 3).

Assessment is the ongoing process of:

• Establishing clear, measurable expected outcomes of student learning.
• Ensuring that students have sufficient opportunities to achieve those outcomes.
• Systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well student learning matches our expectations.
• Using the resulting information to understand and improve student learning.

 

As you may know, the accrediting commission (ACCJC) has changed its standards, and colleges will need to meet a new set of criteria to keep their accreditation. The new standards heavily emphasize outcomes and assessment at the course level, program level, and institution level. This represents a dramatic shift in focus, and it means that if we as a college can demonstrate that were practicing assessment, we could lose our accreditation.

On the next accreditation self-study report and visit, we will need to show what assessment we have been doing. If we haven’t done anything, we will be in trouble! Assessment is supposed to be faculty-driven. So if we as faculty are supposed to decide how to do it, it would be a good idea for us to figure out what it is and the many things that can be done to assess student learning. The good news is that there are lots of possibilities, and nobody HAS to do it in any particular way. You can choose assessment methods that will work for you and that will give you information you can really use to improve student learning.

Assessment isn’t the same as assigning grades. Grades alone do not give enough information on specific strengths and weaknesses of students. In addition, grading standards might be vague, while assessment information is very specific.

 

Benefits of Assessment:

The instructor is more proactive in helping students learn. Expectations are made very clear, so that students know what to expect and know where to focus their energies. There should be frequent prompt feedback that gives enough detail so that students understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Faculty should be curious to learn how their teaching impacts student learning and, as rational decision-makers, they should want to reflect on evidence, rather than rely on conjecture, to guide decision-making.?(Mary Allen, Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education, p. 13.)

 

Advice on starting assessment:

• Keep it simple and sustainable. Start small.
• You don’t have to assess every outcome every year.
• Accrediting commissions aren’t necessarily interested in the content of our assessment results. They want to know that we have processes in place that insure that assessment and improvement is occurring on our campus.

 

Steps of Assessment: (Mary Allen, Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education, p. 10.)

1. Develop learning outcomes.

2. Check for alignment between the curriculum and the outcomes.

3. Develop an assessment plan.

4. Collect assessment data.

5. Use results to improve the program.

6. Routinely examine the assessment process and correct, as needed.

Assessments should be useful, accurate, truthful, fair, ethical, systematized, and cost effective.

 

Direct Methods of Assessment:

• Published tests
• Locally developed tests
• Embedded assignments and course activities
• Competence interviews
• Portfolios of student work
• Collective portfolios

 

Indirect Methods of Assessment:

• Surveys
• Interviews
• Focus Groups
• Reflective Essays