Those of us in higher education are increasingly called to accountability, and rightly so. The accountability concerns student learning, and thus the focus on any account needs to reside there. But like so many trends in education, which have intrinsic value, the ends have to be kept in focus: understanding how and what students learn and working to improve both. To think otherwise is to make assessment a fetish, and a new talisman is not going to help Johnny read (or Judy deconstruct a postmodern novel).
So the basics (as I see them): There are outcomes or objectives or (my preferred term)
expectations that refer to what a student successfully does, knows or
values at any given time in a course or in a curriculum. These
outcomes, objectives or expectations must be clearly expressed so students and faculty alike know what they are after. They also need to be assessed in a manner
independent of individual course grades in order to obtain a measure of
collective attainment. Such assessments may be indirect (surveys, focus
groups, etc.) or direct (student work, portfolios, etc.) as best suits
the outcomes, objective or expectation and fits reasonably within the
abilities and resources of the institution or department.
The point of such practices, as I said, is primarily to improve learning and teaching (and only secondarily, but importantly, to create accountability), so
priorities must be established concerning which outcomes, objectives or
expectations are assessed and when. While ideally one could have an
assessment plan that assesses all outcomes, objectives or expectations
over a multiple-year cycle, professional judgment concerning questions and
issues should be allowed to direct the annual assessments. Completing the cycle
for completion’s sake (or unifying language for unity’s sake) misses
the point that the end is improvement, not the assessment itself.
Initially, as we try to bring such practices more and more into the
life of a university, one must be willing to be flexible and tolerant of
diverse vocabularies and possible ambiguity. The doing of the work to
achieve the ends we seek, however irregular or unorthodox, is better
than delaying implementation until we get all the details just right.
Sometimes it’s best to allow things to go forward and make adjustments
through learning rather then try to create the best from the beginning.
My concern is we will be caught assessing for things that we do not believe are issues
or problems when more obvious issues of problems confront us.is It is also important that we do not waste time and energy on debates concerning taxonomies and vocabulary (or worrying about thoroughness or obsessing about reliability at the 95 percent confidence interval), but that we frame the right questions, select the appropriate assessment instrument, and get results that are usable as evidence for decisions on improvement. The point is always about the students and their learning, and how we should be open to learning ourselves
Recent Comments