Building Your Assessment Plan

Esther Isabelle WilderLehman College

The assessment of student learning is the process of . . . “Establishing clear, measurable expected outcomes of student

learning Ensuring that students have sufficient opportunities to

achieve those objectives Systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting

evidence to determine how well student learning matches our expectations

Using the resulting information to understanding and improve student learning” Source: Suskie, Linda. 2003. Assessing Student Learning: A

Common Sense Guide. San Francisco, CA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc. Pg. 3.

Assessment as a Four-Step Continuous Cycle

Source: Suskie, Linda. Pg. 4.

Good Learning Assessment Practices Give useful information that is accurate to the

extent possible Are ethically fair to students and instructors Are practical, realistic and cost-effective Are systematic (not one-shot deals) Yield results that are put to good use and

shared with interested parties, including students

Creating an Assessment Plan The rationale for assessment? How will assessment be carried out? What support structures will be provided? How will you monitor and evaluate

assessment activities?

Developing Learning Goals When you develop learning goals, aim for ones that are neither too broad

nor too specific and use concrete action words To vague: Students will demonstrate quantitative literacy skills. Too specific: Students will be able to calculate a mean for a class

grade distribution. Better: Students will be able to understand and apply measures of

central tendency such as mean, median and mode. Avoid fuzzy terms (e.g., “think critically”) Focus on the most important goals and what skills they should have after

they have completed the materials in the course Working with others to establish goals is also recommended (Suskie

2003).

Other Considerations in Developing an Assessment Strategy Formative (taken while student learning is taking place, often to improve

teaching) vs. Summative assessment (taken at the end of course/assignment). Direct (e.g., skills tests, portfolios) vs. Indirect measures of student learning

assessment (student perceptions of learning, etc.) Objective vs. Subjective Quantitative vs. Qualitative Different perspectives for assessment (Suskie 2003):

Standards-based: Are students meeting a minimum standard? Benchmarking: Are students improving? – difficult to do because it is hard to

motivate students to do their best on pre-assessments. Best-practice perspectives: How do students compare to the best of their peers? Longitudinal: Is program improving? – compare students to peers in previous years. Capability perspective: Are students living up to their capability (difficult to measure

what students’ capability should be)

Assessment Tools Rubrics for course assignments

create scoring guides for assignments, i.e., a simply list or guide that indicates the criteria used to evaluate an assignment)

Create “effective assignments” (Sukie, 2003) Include learning goals and have meaningful tasks that correspond to goals Make the assignment a worthwhile use of learning time Set realistic but challenging goals that students can achieve

Encourage student reflection Ask them to reflect on what, how and why they have learned (e.g., journals,

self-ratings, etc.) Portfolios (folders that contain samples of student work and evidence of

learning) Create objective tests or use pre-existing published tests Surveys, focus groups and interviews

Making the Most of Assessments Aggregate and summarize results (tables, graphs,

etc.) Evaluate the assessment

Are the results representative? Did the test/rubric/etc. work as intended?

Analyze results (multivariate techniques, etc.) Share the results Use the findings to better promote student learning