Thinking About Assessment
There is assessment of student learning toward assignment of grades in the course. Then there is assessment that considers the course, course content, activities/assignments and pedagogical approaches. In this context, assessment doesn’t mean grading students. It means assessing whether the activity, assignment or the course helped students achieve the intended outcomes. It means finding out what works. The beauty of thinking about assessment in this way is it helps faculty learn what is and is not working in their course content and pedagogy toward helping students achieve your desired learning and at the levels that you want. You might start by asking yourself: How will I know what they learned from taking my class? And are they learning something different from what I intended … and is that valuable? And wouldn’t it be nice to know!
Assessment provides the evidence to document and validate that learning has occurred and what that learning is. Assessment also supports critically reflective teaching. Stephen Brookfield, in Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, argues that “a critically reflective teacher is much better placed to communicate to … students (as well as to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment” (Brookfield, 1995, p. 17) as opposed to assuming her course activities are supporting student learning in the ways she intended. Course evaluations are a form of assessment of the course and the instructor but we know they are limited value in assessment the effective of instruction and often contain bias. Assessments encourage instructors to reflect on what they expect students to learn through their course design and determine where it’s been effective, and where not, supporting reflection on where improvements might be made … and then testing it again. Assessment of student learning outcomes supports teaching decisions, measures their effectiveness and supports modifications in response. How do we know what students are learning?
Generally, the first step in assessment of student learning outcomes is development of a rubric.