Assessment Workshop

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Assessment Workshop

• Dr. Jeff Liles
• Assistant Professor of Education
• St. John Fisher College
• Rochester, New York

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Sources

• National Research Council. (2001). Knowing what
  students know The science and design of
  educational assessment. Washington D.C. National
  Academy of Sciences
• Nichols, J.O. (1995). The departmental guide and
  record book for student outcomes assessment and
  institutional effectiveness. New York Agathon
  Press.

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Outcomes for today

• Overview of assessment basics
• View and discuss assessment models and plans
• Discuss your needs and begin creating and
  conceptualizing

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Process vs. ResultsOriented Education

• Process - Oriented
• Focuses on educational process -what educators do
• Concerned with what educators intend to do

• Results - Oriented
• Focuses on results of the educational process -
  what students can do
• Concerned with the impact or results of what
  educators do

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Basic Assessment Goals

• Identify intended educational and/or public
  service, research, administrative outcomes
• Develop and implement appropriate assessment
  procedures to determine the accomplishments of
  their departmental or programmatic expectations
  identified
• Be able to demonstrate use of assessment results
  to improve student learning or departmental
  operations

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Assessment

• Can be an end or a means.
• State-mandated, standardized testing end.
• Bridge between student outcomes and the use of
  results to improve instruction and learning
  means.

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Basic Elements of an Assessment Plan

• Mission
• Outcomes
• Means of Assessment
• Set Criteria
• Results
• Use of Results

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Results Oriented Intended Student Outcomes

• What students will know (cognitive)
• What students will think (attitudinal)
• What students will be able to do
  (behavioral/performance)
• Service substitute patron for students if you
  wish

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Stating Intended Student Outcomes

• There is no agreement on one best way of stating
  outcomes (behaviorist vs. constructivist models)
• Clear, focused, simple language
• Understood by all participants and stake holders
• Appropriate for content and methods of discipline

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How many outcomes?

• Experts recommend three to five statements of
  intended student/educational outcomes per
  academic program in a department.

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Means of Assessment

• How are you going to find out what students know,
  think, or can do?
• Indirect Means Ask students their for their
  opinions of what they think, know, or can do,
  i.e. How well do you think you learned how to
• Direct Means Ask students to perform tasks that
  will demonstrate what they know, think, or can do

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Setting Criteria

• Academic abilities of students
• Level of rigor in the classes
• Resources available to support the instructional
  process

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Collect the Results

• Who, what, when, where, and how?
• Access to results
• Format for interpretation

14
Use of Results

• Complete the loop
• How will the process of using the results to
  improve instruction/services work?

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Final Points

• Assessment activities should be perceived as a
  means toward improvement of academic programming
  not an end in themselves.
• Assessment results find their primary meaning in
  relationship to intended (student) outcomes.
• Assessment activities, while detailed and
  occasionally technical, are not beyond the grasp
  or comprehension of faculty when accomplished
  with a desirable level of simplicity.
• While faculty have a vital interest in
  assessment, providing the logistical support to
  see that assessment gets done is an
  administrative responsibility.

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• Educators assess students to learn about what
  they know and can do, but assessments do not
  offer a direct pipeline into a students mind.
• Assessing educational outcomes is not as
  straightforward as measuring height or weight
  the attributes to be measured are mental
  representations and processes that are not
  outwardly visible.

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• We must draw inferences about what students know
  and can do on the basis of what one sees them
  say, do, or make in a handful of particular
  situations.
• Assessment users always reason in the presence of
  uncertainty as a result, the information
  produced by an assessment is typically
  incomplete, inconclusive, and amenable to more
  than one explanation.