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In a 2018 , “Democratically Engaged Assessment,” the authors write that “assessment is too often experienced as a top-down, managerial, bureaucratic, required, and not terribly helpful activity . . . Too often, it is a ten-letter word to us, imposing priorities that are not aligned with, if not actually at odds with, our goals for learning, engagement, and change.”

In this edition of the Institutional Effectiveness - Teaching Connection, we ask, “What if assessment of student learning outcomes were meaningful, transformative, and even playful?”

Below are some principles and tips for making your program’s assessment activity more effective in improving student learning and perhaps even helpful to catalyze thoughtful conversations with your colleagues:

1. Understand the purpose of assessment. Good assessment is not about documenting what you already know you do well. The primary aim is to gather data and new insights so that you can transform your program, courses or teaching to deepen learning.
2. Focus on things you care about. Ask: What do you think students struggle with the most in terms of learning? Focus your assessment efforts on those outcomes or objectives that you worry about the most so that you can gain new insights.
3. Purposefully select what you want to assess. Where are students grappling with those outcomes that concern you? Focus on those assignments, projects or exams so that you can delve more deeply into the problem.
4. Align your assessment method(s) with those used in your discipline or field. For example, assessment of client-based projects may be perfect for business programs while the music performance major might focus on recitals. Since workshopping is integral to creative writers, it might be best to use peer review of student writing as an assessment measure for that program.
5. Keep it simple! While you should include at least three student learning outcomes in your assessment plan, you might want to focus on data relating to only one or two outcomes per assessment cycle so that you can delve more deeply into the analysis.
6. Change it up. If you start to notice that your assessment plan is not yielding meaningful data that you can use for teaching improvement, then adjust your plan to focus on a different learning objective or outcome where you believe students are struggling.
7. It takes a village. The best assessment of student learning outcomes occurs in departments that have a group of faculty (rather than a single coordinator) who oversees assessment and promote in-depth conversations with other faculty in the program about the assessment processes, data, and findings.

April 2024