Matching Assessment to Student Learning Outcomes

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Matching Assessment to Student Learning Outcomes

• Roy M. Bohlin, Ph.D
• Director, Center for Enhancement of Teaching and
  Learning
• For New Faculty Orientation

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Learning outcomes appropriate to higher education
include

• Higher order thinking?
• Connection to the real world?Application of
  theory to practical "real life" situations
• Metacognition ?Knowing what you know, knowing
  what you don't know, knowing how to learn
• Research?Knowing how experts proceed in the
  discipline

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Choosing Objectives by Level

• Using Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
  choose objectives that
• Match the course level
• Stretch the students, but are not beyond their
  abilities
• Vary as appropriate

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Hierarchy of the Cognitive Domain

• Evaluation - Ability to make a judgement of the
  worth of something
• Synthesis - Ability to combine separate elements
  into a whole
• Analysis - Ability to break a problem into its
  constituent parts and establish relationships
• Application - Ability to apply rephrased
  knowledge in a novel situation
• Manipulation - Ability to rephrase knowledge
• Knowledge - That which can be recalled

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Connection to the real world

• ?It is important that students have the
  opportunity to apply newly learned theory to
  practical "real life" situations.
• This prepares them for later life and is more
  motivating and satisfying for learners.

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Metacognition

• Knowing what one knows,
• Knowing what one doesn't know,
• Knowing how to learn.
• Key element is reflection -- The Reflective
  Practitioner by Donald Schön.

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Nature of your discipline

• Expert vs. Novice?
• It is important that students learn how experts
  proceed in the discipline

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Assessing Learning

• More than 80 of assessment in universities
  comprises essays, reports, and traditional
  time-constrained exams.
• Is this how the real world of practice operates?

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What is classroom assessment?

• Systematic collection and analysis of information
  to improve educational practice
• Method for understanding student learning-based
  on the belief that the more you know about what
  your students know and how they learn, the better
  you can plan your learning activities and
  structure your teaching

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Choose Appropriate Assessment Methods

• Consider a wide range of methods in light of your
  teaching aims and learning outcomes.
• It is important to decide when to use any
  particular method individually or in combination.
  
• Assessment that is 'fit for purpose' uses the
  best method of assessment appropriate to the
  context, the students, the level, the subject and
  the institution.

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Select Assessment Measures

• Direct assessments of student learning projects,
  products, papers/theses, exhibitions,
  performances, case studies, clinical evaluations,
  portfolios, interviews, oral exams These yield
  comprehensive information for analyzing,
  discussing, and judging a learners performance
  of desired abilities and skills.
• Indirect assessments of student learning surveys
  or interviews of students

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Purposes of Assessment

• 1. Determine Current Competence or Attitudes
• 2. Prediction
• 3. Assessing Individual Differences
• 4. Diagnosis
• 5. Pre- and Post-Instructional Assessment

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Choose the most appropriate assessment type

• Some considerations
• If you want a written assessment instrument,
  which of the following would you choose ?
• Consider the best uses of essays, reports,
  reviews, summaries, dissertations, theses,
  annotated bibliographies, case studies, journal
  articles, presentations and exams.

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More considerations

• 2. Is a visual component important?
• When it is, you might choose portfolios, poster
  displays, 'critique' sessions or exhibitions.

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More considerations

• 3. Should the method be time-constrained?
• Exams and "in-class" activities might well be the
  most appropriate for the occasion. Time
  constrained tests put students under pressure,
  but are usually fairly good at preventing
  cheating.

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More considerations

• 4. Is it important that students use technology?
• When this is the case, computer-based assessments
  may be best, either getting students to answer
  multiple-choice questions, or write their own
  programmes, or prepare databases, or write
  information stacks for hypertext, or material for
  use in CD-ROM systems or on the Internet.

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More considerations

• 5. Do you wish to try to assess innovation or
  creativity?
• Some assessment methods that allow students to
  demonstrate these include performances,
  exhibitions, poster displays, presentations,
  projects, student-led assessed seminars, videos,
  websites, simulations and games.

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More considerations

• 6. Do you want to encourage students to develop
  oral skills?
• If so, you might choose to assess presentations,
  debates, audio and video tapes made by students,
  assessed discussions or seminars, interviews or
  simulations.

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More considerations

• 7. Do you want to assess the ways in which
  students interact together?
• You might then assess negotiations, debates, role
  plays, interviews, discussion boards, selection
  panels, and case studies.

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Creating Authentic Assessment Tasks

• Authentic Assessment is representative of
  students' capacity to perform in a broadly
  meaningful setting.
• Will the task support the purpose of the course
  of learning?
• Will the task enable students to demonstrate what
  they have learned in such a way as to support the
  purposes of the assessment?

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Make Feedback Consequential

• Arguably feedback is one of the most important
  elements of assessment.
• Ideally, it should offer students the opportunity
  to improve subsequent efforts.
• It should be timely

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Rubrics

• Rubrics are explicit schemes for classifying
  products or behaviors into categories that vary
  along a continuum.
• They clearly identify descriptions of the major
  characteristics of an assessment product at each
  level of performance.
• They can be used to provide formative feedback to
  students, to grade students, and/or to assess
  programs.

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Two Major Types of Rubrics

• Holistic rubric (one global, holistic rating for
  a product or behavior)
• Analytic rubric (separate, holistic ratings of
  specified characteristics of a product or
  behavior)

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Strengths of Rubrics

• Complex products or behaviors can be examined
  efficiently.
• Developing a rubric helps to precisely define
  faculty expectations.
• Rubrics are criterion-referenced, rather than
  norm-referenced.
• Ratings can be done by students to assess their
  own work, or they can be done by others, such as
  peers, fieldwork supervisions, or faculty.

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