Assessment
Questions & Answers
What is assessment?1
The ongoing process of understanding, improving, and documenting student
learning.
Why do assessment?1
To improve student learning.
Does assessment relate to faculty evaluation?
No! Assessment is conducted to
understand student learning, not evaluate faculty performance.
What are the benefits of assessment for faculty?2
Planning -- allows instructors
to develop clear objectives, processes, and anticipated outcomes and how
actual outcomes will be used for improvement.
Ownership -- assessment allows the faculty and those closely involved
with the program to determine the goals, objectives, and outcomes of a
program.
Sustainability -- Assessment produces credible evidence of student
learning. In an era of increasing accountability, this evidence makes a
strong argument for program sustainability.
Seeing the bigger picture -- By tying course outcomes to
institutional and programmatic goals, faculty gain a better understanding of
how programs relate to JJC's mission.
What are the benefits of assessment for students?3
Responsibility -- students
must be active participants in order for assessment to work. By encouraging
students to be active in constructing their learning experience, instead of
passive individuals responding to material, students share in the
responsibility for learning.
Resources -- assessment provides students with a rich catalog of
material, including papers, brochures, projects, or portfolios. Certainly,
these are more valuable, and are better evidence of learning, than grades.
Rewards -- assessment provides increased opportunities for feedback
from the instructor and opportunities for students to reflect on what they
have learned.
Why can't I just use grades?
Grades can be useful in assessment as
long as they are tied to course goals and objectives. The knock against
grades is that they are subjective, normative, and relative. See this site
from Southern Illinois University for more explanation:
http://www.siue.edu/%7Ededer/assess/cats/pta.html
What if the assessment shows
students in my class/program aren't meeting our goals for student learning?
First, results from assessment will
never be used to evaluate the people who teach or work in a program. Second,
state how you will use the results to improve your program so students can
meet learning goals. That is the purpose of assessment -- to learn and
continuously improve.
How does assessment relate to program review?
All programs at JJC must be reviewed
on a five-year cycle for the following 2 reasons: 1) for improvement and 2)
to meet state mandates. Assessment of student learning can provide valuable
information about how to improve programs.
1Questions
and answers taken from Moraine Valley Community College's Reference Guide
to Principles and Practices of Assessment
2From P.J. Gray &
T.W. Banta, The Campus-Level Impact of Assessment and A.M. Serban &
J. Friedlander, Assessing Student Learning Outcomes
3From C.A. Palomba & T.W. Banta, Assessment
Essentials: Planning, Implementing, and Improving Assessment in Higher
Education
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