EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT

What are the characteristics of an effective assessment?

An effective assessment answers the question, “How well are our students achieving the outcomes that we have identified for the course (program, etc.)?” An effective assessment:

• Uses authentic information in order to improve student learning and development in specified areas
• Uses multiple strategies for measuring student growth with respect to the specified outcomes
• Uses both formative and summative assessment strategies
• Uses qualitative and quantitative assessment measures
• Seeks input and information from faculty and from students
• Identifies both strengths and weaknesses in courses and programs
• Outlines specific ways in which courses/programs will be changed to build upon their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses
• Connects findings and results to suggested changes
• Is systematic, continuous, and ongoing
• Provides evidence, not just assertions
• Uses evidence to make changes in courses or programs to continuously improve students’ learning and development

What issues should you consider when designing an assessment?

• Assessment is difficult and complex. Difficult questions about teaching, learning, and improvement of student learning are involved. Assessment is a “hard problem” to solve.

• Departments need “up-front” time to develop an assessment plan. It doesn’t work to put an assessment plan into place during the semester an assessment report is due.

• Putting an assessment plan into place is an ongoing process. Plans need refinement and adjustment as departments discover what works, what doesn’t, and which assessment strategies provide useful information about student learning.

• Assessment works best if it is embedded into existing course assignments and not an overlay to existing faculty work.

• Assessment is most meaningful if careful plans are made for using information gathered in the assessment process to improve teaching and students’ learning.

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What issues exist that are specific to Miami Plan Assessment?

• Miami Plan Assessment works best if the assessment plan is departmentally based. Departments are encouraged to conceptualize plans in consultation with the Office of Liberal Education and to tailor their plans to specific concerns the department may have.

• Departments must come to terms with what each of the four Miami Plan goals mean in their discipline and for specific courses. By necessity, current definitions - taken from the original Miami Plan Enabling document- of each of the Miami Plan goals are generic, broad and somewhat ambiguous and difficult to operationalize for assessment.

• Assessment must include some evidence that students are making progress with regard to each Miami Plan goals.

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How do individual assessment projects contribute to our overall understanding of student learning and development? (A metaphor for thinking about assessment)

The assessment of student outcomes in the undergraduate experience is often complex, multi-dimensional, and cumbersome. Often, it defies good quality research design in the classical sense. Whether viewed from a qualitative or quantitative perspective, trying to assess complex issues such as critical thinking is difficult. For example, departments should ask such questions as, "What is critical thinking?" "Where can we 'look' to see if students are 'doing' critical thinking?" "What events in the undergraduate experience help students develop critical thinking skills?" "How effective are these experiences in fostering critical thinking?" "How can we 'measure,' in an authentic sense, what goes on primarily in a student’s mind?" These questions are not easily answered.

A metaphor for thinking about assessing students' learning and development is to think about assessment as a process of taking “snapshots” - multiple and varied snapshots. Can we be photographers, snapping pictures from various perspectives, in various settings, at various times? Which snapshots would give us pictures of students’ critical thinking? Can we look at the album of our snapshots to build a mosaic of the undergraduate experience that we can interpret, understand, and then use to improve student learning? What kinds of paradigms do we use to interpret the mosaic (theories of critical thinking, theories of intellectual development, etc.)?

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