Assessment Primer: Assessment Planning

The Basic, No-Frills Departmental Assessment Plan
(Assessment Clear and Simple by Walvoord 2004)

• Does assessment lead to improvement so that the faculty can fulfill their responsibilities to students and to the public?  Two purposes for assessment: the need to assess for accountability and the need to assess for improvement – they lead to two fundamentally different approaches to assessment.
• Is assessment part of a larger set of conditions that promote change at the institution? Does it provide feedback to students and the institution?  Assessment should become integrated into existing processes like planning and resource allocation, catalog revision, and program review.
• Does assessment focus on using data to address questions that people in the program and at the institution really care about?  Focusing on questions such as
  • What do we want to know about our students’ learning?
  • What do we think we already know?
  • How can we verify what we think we know?
  • How will we use the information to get to make changes?
  • allows use of the data for improved learning in our programs.
• Does assessment flow from the institution’s mission and reflect the faculty’s educational values?  The mission and educational values of the institution should drive the teaching function of the institution.
• Does the educational program have clear, explicitly stated purposes that can guide assessment in the program?  The foundation for any assessment program is the faculty’s statement of student learning outcomes describing what graduates are expected to know, understand, and be able to do at the end of the academic program – When we are clear about what we intend students to learn, we know what we must assess.
• Is assessment based on a conceptual framework that explains relationships among teaching, curriculum, learning, and assessment at the institution?  The assessment process works best when faculty have a shared sense of how learning takes place and when their view of learning reflects the learner-centered perspective.
• Do the faculty feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for assessment?  Faculty must decide upon the intended learning outcomes of the curriculum and the measures that are used to assess them – this assessment data must then be used to make changes that are needed to strengthen and improve the curriculum.  Assessment may be viewed as the beginning of conversations about learning.
• Do the faculty focus on experiences leading to outcomes as well as on the outcomes themselves?  In the learner-centered paradigm, the curriculum is viewed as the vehicle for helping students reach our intended learning outcomes – assessment results at the program level provide information on whether or not the curriculum has been effective.
• Is assessment ongoing rather than episodic?  Assessment must become part of standard practices and procedures at the institution and in each program.
• Is assessment cost-effective and based on data gathered from multiple measures?  No one assessment measure can provide a complete picture of what and how students are learning – both direct and indirect measures should be used.