How To Measure Student Learning Outcomes

Student Assessment in Instruction and Learning

Past Michael R. Fisher, Jr.

Much scholarship has focused on the importance of student assessment in teaching and learning in higher education. Student assessment is a disquisitional aspect of the educational activity and learning process. Whether teaching at the undergraduate or graduate level, it is important for instructors to strategically evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching past measuring the extent to which students in the classroom are learning the course textile.

This teaching guide addresses the post-obit: 1) defines student assessment and why it is important, 2) identifies the forms and purposes of educatee assessment in the teaching and learning process, 3) discusses methods in pupil assessment, and 4) makes an important distinction between assessment and grading.

What is student assessment and why is information technology Important?

In their handbook for course-based review and cess, Martha Fifty. A. Stassen et al. define cess as "the systematic collection and analysis of information to ameliorate student learning." (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. five) This definition captures the essential task of student assessment in the teaching and learning process. Student assessment enables instructors to measure out the effectiveness of their teaching by linking pupil performance to specific learning objectives. As a issue, teachers are able to institutionalize effective teaching choices and revise ineffective ones in their education.

The measurement of student learning through assessment is important because it provides useful feedback to both instructors and students about the extent to which students are successfully coming together course learning objectives. In their book Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe offer a framework for classroom instruction—what they call "Astern Design"—that emphasizes the critical role of assessment. For Wiggens and McTighe, assessment enables instructors to determine the metrics of measurement for educatee understanding of and proficiency in grade learning objectives. They argue that cess provides the evidence needed to certificate and validate that meaningful learning has occurred in the classroom. Assessment is so vital in their pedagogical pattern that their approach "encourages teachers and curriculum planners to first 'think similar an assessor' before designing specific units and lessons, and thus to consider upward front how they volition determine if students take attained the desired understandings." (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005, pg. 18)

For more than on Wiggins and McTighe's "Backward Design" model, come across our Agreement by Blueprint pedagogy guide.

Educatee cess besides buttresses disquisitional reflective teaching. Stephen Brookfield, in Condign a Critically Cogitating Teacher, contends that critical reflection on 1'south teaching is an essential part of developing as an educator and enhancing the learning experience of students. Critical reflection on ane's educational activity has a multitude of benefits for instructors, including the development of rationale for didactics practices. Co-ordinate to Brookfield, "A critically reflective instructor is much meliorate placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well as to herself) the rationale backside her practice. She works from a position of informed delivery." (Brookfield, 1995, pg. 17) Pupil assessment, then, not only enables teachers to measure the effectiveness of their instruction, but is too useful in developing the rationale for pedagogical choices in the classroom.

Forms and Purposes of Student Cess

At that place are generally two forms of student assessment that are most frequently discussed in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The first, summative assessment, is assessment that is implemented at the end of the course of report. Its primary purpose is to produce a measure that "sums up" educatee learning. Summative assessment is comprehensive in nature and is fundamentally concerned with learning outcomes. While summative assessment is oftentimes useful to provide information virtually patterns of educatee achievement, it does so without providing the opportunity for students to reflect on and demonstrate growth in identified areas for improvement and does not provide an artery for the instructor to change didactics strategy during the teaching and learning procedure. (Maki, 2002) Examples of summative assessment include comprehensive final exams or papers.

The second grade, formative assessment, involves the evaluation of student learning over the form of time. Its central purpose is to estimate students' level of achievement in gild to heighten student learning during the learning process. By interpreting students' performance through formative assessment and sharing the results with them, instructors assistance students to "empathise their strengths and weaknesses and to reflect on how they need to improve over the course of their remaining studies." (Maki, 2002, pg. xi) Pat Hutchings refers to this form of assessment as cess backside outcomes. She states, "the hope of assessment—mandated or otherwise—is improved student learning, and improvement requires attention not only to terminal results but besides to how results occur. Assessment behind outcomes means looking more than carefully at the process and conditions that lead to the learning we care about…" (Hutchings, 1992, pg. half-dozen, original emphasis). Formative cess includes grade piece of work—where students receive feedback that identifies strengths, weaknesses, and other things to keep in mind for future assignments—discussions betwixt instructors and students, and cease-of-unit examinations that provide an opportunity for students to identify important areas for necessary growth and development for themselves. (Brown and Knight, 1994)

It is important to recognize that both summative and formative assessment indicate the purpose of assessment, non the method. Different methods of assessment (discussed in the side by side department) tin either be summative or formative in orientation depending on how the teacher implements them. Sally Dark-brown and Peter Knight in their book, Assessing Learners in College Education, caution against a conflation of the purposes of assessment its method. "Often the mistake is made of assuming that it is the method which is summative or determinative, and not the purpose. This, we suggest, is a serious error because it turns the assessor's attention away from the crucial issue of feedback." (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 17) If an instructor believes that a particular method is formative, he or she may fall into the trap of using the method without taking the requisite fourth dimension to review the implications of the feedback with students. In such cases, the method in question effectively functions equally a form of summative assessment despite the instructor's intentions. (Brown and Knight, 1994) Indeed, feedback and discussion is the critical gene that distinguishes between formative and summative cess.

Methods in Educatee Cess

Below are a few common methods of assessment identified by Brown and Knight that can be implemented in the classroom.[1] It should be noted that these methods work best when learning objectives have been identified, shared, and clearly articulated to students.

Cocky-Cess

The goal of implementing cocky-assessment in a class is to enable students to develop their own judgement. In self-assessment students are expected to appraise both process and product of their learning. While the assessment of the product is ofttimes the task of the instructor, implementing educatee assessment in the classroom encourages students to evaluate their ain work as well every bit the process that led them to the final event. Moreover, self-cess facilitates a sense of ownership of 1's learning and can pb to greater investment by the student. Information technology enables students to develop transferable skills in other areas of learning that involve group projects and teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving, as well as leadership roles in the teaching and learning process.

Things to Keep in Heed nigh Self-Assessment

Self-assessment is dissimilar from cocky-grading. According to Brown and Knight, "Self-assessment involves the use of evaluative processes in which judgement is involved, where cocky-grading is the marking of one'due south own piece of work confronting a set of criteria and potential outcomes provided by a tertiary person, usually the [teacher]." (Pg. 52)
Students may initially resist attempts to involve them in the assessment procedure. This is commonly due to insecurities or lack of confidence in their ability to objectively evaluate their ain piece of work. Brown and Knight note, all the same, that when students are asked to evaluate their work, frequently student-determined outcomes are very similar to those of instructors, particularly when the criteria and expectations take been made explicit in accelerate.
Methods of self-assessment vary widely and tin be equally eclectic every bit the instructor. Mutual forms of self-assessment include the portfolio, reflection logs, instructor-pupil interviews, learner diaries and dialog journals, and the similar.

Peer Cess

Peer cess is a blazon of collaborative learning technique where students evaluate the work of their peers and have their own evaluated by peers. This dimension of assessment is significantly grounded in theoretical approaches to active learning and adult learning. Like cocky-assessment, peer cess gives learners ownership of learning and focuses on the process of learning every bit students are able to "share with one another the experiences that they have undertaken." (Brown and Knight, 1994, pg. 52)

Things to Go on in Heed nigh Peer Cess

Students tin apply peer assessment as a tactic of antagonism or conflict with other students by giving unmerited low evaluations. Conversely, students tin besides provide overly favorable evaluations of their friends.
Students can occasionally apply unsophisticated judgements to their peers. For case, students who are boisterous and loquacious may receive college grades than those who are quieter, reserved, and shy.
Instructors should implement systems of evaluation in order to ensure valid peer assessment is based on show and identifiable criteria.

Essays

According to Euan Due south. Henderson, essays make two important contributions to learning and assessment: the development of skills and the cultivation of a learning style. (Henderson, 1980) Essays are a common course of writing assignment in courses and can be either a summative or determinative form of cess depending on how the instructor utilizes them in the classroom.

Things to Continue in Mind about Essays

A common challenge of the essay is that students can utilize them only to regurgitate rather than clarify and synthesize information to make arguments.
Instructors ordinarily assume that students know how to write essays and can see disappointment or frustration when they discover that this is non the case for some students. For this reason, it is important for instructors to make their expectations clear and be prepared to help or betrayal students to resources that will raise their writing skills.

Exams and fourth dimension-constrained, individual assessment

Examinations have traditionally been viewed as a gold standard of cess in educational activity, especially in university settings. Like essays they tin can be summative or formative forms of assessment.

Things to Keep in Mind about Exams

Exams can brand significant demands on students' factual noesis and tin have the side-issue of encouraging cramming and surface learning. On the other hand, they can also facilitate educatee demonstration of deep learning if essay questions or topics are appropriately selected. Unlike formats include in-class tests, open-book, have-habitation exams and the similar.
In the process of designing an exam, instructors should consider the following questions. What are the learning objectives that the exam seeks to evaluate? Have students been adequately prepared to meet exam expectations? What are the skills and abilities that students need to do well? How will this examination be utilized to enhance the student learning process?

As Brownish and Knight assert, utilizing multiple methods of cess, including more than than ane assessor, improves the reliability of data. Still, a master claiming to the multiple methods arroyo is how to weigh the scores produced by multiple methods of cess. When detail methods produce higher range of marks than others, instructors can potentially misinterpret their assessment of overall student performance. When multiple methods produce different messages nearly the same student, instructors should be mindful that the methods are likely assessing different forms of achievement. (Brown and Knight, 1994).

For additional methods of cess not listed here, see "Assessment on the Page" and "Assessment Off the Page" in Assessing Learners in Higher Education.

In add-on to the various methods of assessment listed above, classroom assessment techniques also provide a useful fashion to evaluate student understanding of class fabric in the instruction and learning process. For more than on these, run across our Classroom Cess Techniques teaching guide.

Assessment is More than Grading

Instructors frequently conflate assessment with grading. This is a mistake. It must be understood that student assessment is more than simply grading. Remember that assessment links student performance to specific learning objectives in club to provide useful information to instructors and students about student accomplishment. Traditional grading on the other paw, co-ordinate to Stassen et al. does non provide the level of detailed and specific information essential to link student performance with improvement. "Because grades don't tell you almost student performance on individual (or specific) learning goals or outcomes, they provide lilliputian information on the overall success of your course in helping students to attain the specific and singled-out learning objectives of interest." (Stassen et al., 2001, pg. six) Instructors, therefore, must always remember that grading is an aspect of student assessment but does non constitute its totality.

Teaching Guides Related to Educatee Assessment

Below is a list of other CFT educational activity guides that supplement this one. They include:

Active Learning
An Introduction to Lecturing
Beyond the Essay: Making Student Thinking Visible in the Humanities
Flower'southward Taxonomy
How People Learn
Syllabus Construction

References and Boosted Resource

This instruction guide draws upon a number of resources listed beneath. These sources should prove useful for instructors seeking to raise their pedagogy and effectiveness equally teachers.

Angelo, Thomas A., and Chiliad. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for
College Teachers. 2^nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. Print.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Condign a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1995. Impress.

Brownish, Sally, and Peter Knight. Assessing Learners in College Educational activity. 1 edition. London ;
Philadelphia: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Cameron, Jeanne et al. "Cess equally Critical Praxis: A Community College Experience."
Teaching Sociology thirty.4 (2002): 414–429. JSTOR. Web.

Gibbs, Graham and Claire Simpson. "Conditions under which Assessment Supports Student Learning. Learning and Didactics in Higher Education ane (2004): 3-31.

Henderson, Euan Due south. "The Essay in Continuous Cess." Studies in College Didactics v.2 (1980): 197–203. Taylor and Francis+NEJM. Web.

Maki, Peggy 50. "Developing an Assessment Programme to Learn nigh Student Learning." The Periodical of Academic Librarianship 28.1 (2002): 8–13. ScienceDirect. Spider web. The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Sharkey, Stephen, and William S. Johnson. Assessing Undergraduate Learning in Sociology. ASA Teaching Resources Eye, 1992. Impress.

Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Agreement Past Blueprint. 2d Expanded edition. Alexandria, VA: Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Evolution, 2005. Print.

[i] Dark-brown and Night talk over the first two in their chapter entitled "Dimensions of Cess." However, because this chapter begins the second part of the volume that outlines assessment methods, I have complanate the ii under the category of methods for the purposes of continuity.