1.
The assessment of student learning begins with
educational values.
Assessment
is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective
practice, then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we
most value for students and strive to help them achieve.
Educational values should
drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do
so. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over,
assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a
process of improving what we really care about.
2.
Assessment is most effective when it reflects an
understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in
performance over time.
Learning
is a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can
do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values,
attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance
beyond the classroom.
Assessment should reflect these understandings by
employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual
performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing
degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate
picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students'
educational experience.
3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.
Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational
performance with educational purposes and expectations -- those derived from the
institution's mission, from faculty intentions in program and course design, and from
knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity
or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where
to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where
and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared,
implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful.
4.
Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and
equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.
Information
about outcomes is of high importance; where students "end up" matters
greatly. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way --
about the curricula, teaching, and kind of student effort that lead to particular
outcomes.
Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what
conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their
learning.
5.
Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic.
Assessment
is a process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, "one-shot"
assessment can be better than none, improvement is best fostered when
assessment entails a linked series of activities undertaken over time. This may
mean tracking the process of individual students, or of cohorts of students; it
may mean collecting the same examples of student performance or using the same
instrument semester after semester. The point is to monitor progress toward
intended goals in a spirit of continous improvement. Along the way, the
assessment process itself should be evaluated and refined in light of emerging
insights.
6.
Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives
from across the educational community are involved.
Student
learning is a campus-wide responsibility, and assessment is a way of enacting that
responsibility. Thus, while assessment efforts may start small, the aim over time is to
involve people from across the educational community. Faculty play an especially
important role, but assessment's questions can't be fully addressed without
participation by student affairs educators, librarians, administrators, and students.
Assessment may also involve individuals from beyond the campus (alumni/ae,
trustees, employers) whose experience can enrich the sense of appropriate aims
and standards for learning. Thus understood, assessment is not a task for
small groups of experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider, better-informed
attention to student learning by all parties with a stake in its improvement.
7.
Assessment makes a difference when it begins with
issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.
Assessment
recognizes the value of information in the process of improvement. But to
be useful, information must be connected to issues or questions that people really
care about. This implies assessment approaches that produce evidence that
relevant parties will find credible, suggestive, and applicable to decisions that
need to be made. It means thinking in advance about how the information will be
used, and by whom.
The point of assessment is not to gather data and return
"results"; it is a process that starts with the questions of decision-makers, that
involves them in the gathering and interpreting of data, and that informs and
helps guide continuous improvement.
8.
Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when
it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.
Assessment
alone changes little. Its greatest contribution comes on campuses where the quality of
teaching and learning is visibly valued and worked at. On such campuses,
the push to improve educational performance is a visible and primary goal of
leadership; improving the quality of undergraduate education is central to the
institution's planning, budgeting, and personnel decisions.
On such campuses,
information about learning outcomes is seen as an integral part of decision
making, and avidly sought.
9.
Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to
students and to the public.
There
is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a responsibility to the
publics that support or depend on us to provide information about the ways in which our
students meet goals and expectations. But that
responsibility goes beyond the reporting of such
information; our deeper obligation -- to ourselves, our students, and society -- is
to improve. Those to whom educators are accountable have a corresponding
obligation to support such attempts at improvement.
Authors:
Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross;
Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay M. McClenney;
Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright
