Assessment FAQ

FAQ on Learning Outcomes Assessment

Why aren't course grades enough?

• Grades provide a judgment of quality of a student’s ability at one point in time.
• Assessment provides additional, more comprehensive information and feedback to students to help them learn.
• Assessment provides the tools to continue to learn beyond the classroom.
• Assessment methods provide information to teachers about what students are learning.
• Assessment methods provide explicit criteria and expectations to students before grading occurs.
• Assessment methods provide explicit criteria to students so that teachers will never get this question from students again: “Why did I get this grade?”
• Assessment focuses the student and teacher on learning rather than the “grade”.

Why do we want or need evidence of student achievement of learning outcomes?

• to improve student learning
• to know where to invest our resources
• to plan for improvement
• to know what we need to change
• to provide accountability to external constituents
• to empower students to manage their learning
• to improve institutional effectiveness
• to become intentional about what we are doing

How are we going to get this evidence?

• Plan for data collection
• Intentional collection and use of assessment data as opposed to haphazard methods.
• Internal assessment – performing formative and summative assessment for learning outcomes (course outcomes, program outcomes and core abilities).
• Use student summative assessment in courses to collect data for measurement of learning outcomes.

What are we going to do with it?

• Apply it for continuous improvement; collect data only when and if we know how we are going to use it
• Change practice or continue successful practices
• Tell students how they’re doing
• Show faculty and staff how we’re doing
• Continuous improvement of measures
• Replicate and share best practices
• Relate it to other Institutional Effectiveness measures
• Report data for National Accreditation via Academic Quality Improvement Project (AQIP)