Assessment

The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CTLA) supports instructors as they seek to measure their students’ achievement of learning outcomes, gains in and retention of knowledge, changes in attitudes and acquisition of competencies or skill sets.

The CTLA provides sessions and workshops to develop and sustain instructor competencies in assessment. In addition, the CTLA provides specific support for programmatic and University-wide assessment through its collaborations.

Types of Assessment

Assessment on the instructional level seeks to inform teaching, identifying how students respond to or what they gain from certain kinds of content or teaching strategies and developing evidence in support of that content or strategy. Assessment in this sense connects directly with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

From a broader perspective, assessment using a variety of performance measures, as well as demographic data, may seek to answer questions about curriculum and institutional performance or quality. This type of assessment attempts to capture amount or quality of student learning in a program, discipline or at the University through BRICKs, for example.

It is important to note that assessment is more than grading in that it links student performance to learning outcomes. Grades can, however, be a broad indicator of achievement or status, and specific items on exams, learning activities or assignments or skills developed as a result of writing lab reports may align with learning outcomes.

The CTLA works with individual instructors, instructional team, departments, colleges and curriculum committees to develop clear assessment plans, which is critical at any time but thoroughly infused in the design of new curriculum.

Assessment Process

The steps involved in the assessment process — whether on the course or curricular level — include:

• Identifying learning goals
• Identifying measurable student learning outcomes associated with those goals
• Defining assessment methods or evidence will best indicate whether students achieve outcomes
• Setting the benchmark or performance criteria for those methods
• Integrating assessment methods in a course or curriculum
• Communicating clearly the methods and criteria to all involved (students, instructors, staff, relevant academic leaders)
• Administering assessment
• Analyzing the results of assessment
• Communicating clearly the results of assessment to all involved (students, instructors, staff, relevant academic leaders)
• Reflecting on the assessment results and planning for course or curricular refinements or improvements for future use

There are a wide variety of approaches to assessment of student learning in a variety of contexts.