Trends in Assessment

Ideas, Opportunities, and Issues for Higher Education

Stephen P. Hundley, Susan Kahn

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781642670929
• eBook ISBN: 9781642670950
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

"Each of the chapters contained herein is worth reading by itself, but I hope that readers will take the time to consume all of the chapters in order to see meta-trends taking shape in various settings—and to observe as well the growing sophistication of assessment practices as they evolve to fit the ever-changing contexts of higher education."— From the foreword by Trudy W. Banta

Trends in Assessment provides readers with a survey of the state-of-the-art of the enduring assessment concepts and approaches developed over the past twenty-five years, and includes chapters by acknowledged experts who describe how emerging assessment trends and ideas apply to their programs and pedagogies, covering:

• Community Engagement
  
  

• ePortfolios
  
  

• Faculty Development
  
  

• Global Learning
  
  

• Graduate and Professional Education
  
  

• High-Impact Practices
  
  

• Learning Improvement and Innovation
  
  

• Assessment Trends from NILOA
  
  

• STEM
  
  

• Student Affairs Programs and Services
  
  

The concluding chapters point to a future of assessment and identify several meta-trends in assessment.

The book was conceived by organizers and contributors of the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis, the nation's oldest and largest higher education assessment event, and includes contributions by the followingpartners of the Institute: Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE); Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL); Association for General and Liberal Studies (AGLS); Association for Institutional Research (AIR); Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); Center for Postsecondary Research (CPR)/National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE); and Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium (HEDS).

Trends in Assessment serves as a vital resource for faculty, student affairs professionals, administrators, anyone involved in accreditation, and scholars in the field.

PART ONE

TRENDS IN ASSESSMENT

1

MOVEMENT AFOOT

Fostering Discourse on Assessment Scholarship

Natasha A. Jankowski and Gianina R. Baker

Assessment—the systematic collection, sense-making, and subsequent use of evidence of student learning to improve programs, institutions, and student learning—is an integral part of the work of U.S. colleges and universities. As institutions embed assessment processes into their organization and culture, questions proliferate about the current state of the field, about what other institutions are doing, and about what is working for whom and under what circumstances. While the assessment literature is historically practice driven with plentiful how-to manuals, assessment of student learning is also a disciplinary field with evolving directions, dialogues, and scholarly debates. For more than 30 years, considerable time and energy have been invested in advancing efforts to document and improve learning throughout a student’s educational journey.

Among the various venues for sharing the state of the art of assessing student learning in higher education, the oldest and largest event is the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis. Since 2011, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) has partnered with the Institute, offering a conference track on national research, trends, and emerging practices (Kuh & Ikenberry, 2018). For NILOA, the Institute provides an opportunity to hear from the field, identify examples of assessment practice, connect with those doing the hard work of assessing student learning, and learn about resource needs and gaps. The NILOA track, in turn, offers a place for reflection on where we are and where we are going, for a national perspective on the state of the art of assessment, and for updates on emerging projects and national initiatives.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the history of NILOA and the NILOA track at the Assessment Institute, reports on current challenges and debates in the field of assessment, discusses future directions, and concludes with final thoughts and reflective questions for the field.

History of NILOA and the NILOA Track

Established in 2008, NILOA serves as a research and resource-development organization, dedicated to documenting, advocating, and facilitating the systematic use of learning outcomes assessment to improve student learning. NILOA offers an evidence base of current practice, employing national surveys, focus groups, case studies, webscans, and document analysis, all openly shared on a regularly updated website (learningoutcomesassessment.org).¹

The NILOA track at the Assessment Institute brings together NILOA scholars and researchers, presenting in partnership with institutional representatives and other national organizations, to provide an annual snapshot of current assessment practice, share resources and research, and learn from participants about their current and emerging needs. For example, track sessions have addressed faculty involvement in assessment (Hutchings, 2010) and preliminary findings from national surveys of program and institution-level assessment activity (Ewell, Paulson, & Kinzie, 2011; Jankowski, Timmer, Kinzie, & Kuh, 2018). Each year, we sponsor sessions on transparency and effective communication, building on NILOA’s (2011) Transparency Framework, and discussions on how to better use evidence (Blaich & Wise, 2011). We have held sessions on national efforts such as the Degree Qualifications Profile (Lumina Foundation, 2011, 2014), Tuning, and the work of the Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Institute (McConnell & Rhodes, 2017); assignment design and assignment charrettes (Hutchings, Jankowski, & Ewell, 2014); and culturally responsive assessment—focusing on the relationship between equity and assessment (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2015, 2017).

Each year, we bring in partners leading forward-looking conversations on topics such as documenting learning in the form of comprehensive learner records or competency-based education, outlining approaches to using rubrics to engage in cross-institution comparisons, and considering the entire body of learning that adds up to a degree. We also seek to broaden the engagement of diverse institutional approaches to assessing student learning through conversations with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs; Orr, 2018) and Minority-Serving Institutions (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2015) and the multifaceted approaches to assessment undertaken by Excellence in Assessment designees.²

National Trends in Assessment

On a four-year cycle, NILOA surveys the landscape of institution-level assessment activity at all regionally accredited, undergraduate degree–­granting institutions in the United States by asking provosts about assessment efforts on their campuses. In the third iteration of our nationwide survey, we found that assessment continues to take new forms and revise old ones.

Movement Toward Authentic Assessment

Institutions are moving toward greater use of authentic measures of student learning such as class assignments, capstones, and rubrics, with the evidence of student learning derived from these embedded approaches deemed most valuable for improving that learning (Jankowski et al., 2018).

NILOA’s efforts to support use of well-designed assignments as assessments, underway since 2013, have focused on assignment charrettes. The assignment charrette process (NILOA, 2018a), which has been field-tested with more than 1,000 faculty and staff at more than 400 institutions (including statewide events in coordination with the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Quality Student Learning), has been instrumental for faculty development on assessment, addressing questions such as the following:

• Does the assignment address the intended learning outcomes?
• Are the activities, pedagogies, and scaffolding in place to support meaningful student engagement in completing the assignment?
• Do the evaluative criteria or rubric, if used, align with the assignment tasks and intended learning outcomes?

The charrette—a term borrowed from architecture education, denoting a collaborative design process—brings together groups of faculty for a peer-review, faculty-driven, collaborative process that examines the design and use of the various tasks, projects, papers, and performances we set for our students (NILOA, 2018a). Our goal in this work has been to promote an embedded, faculty-driven approach to assessment built on the authentic demonstrations of learning that emerge from well-designed assignments. The assignments that faculty require of their students are integral to the teaching and learning process and, therefore, more likely to lead to improvements in student learning than add-on, compliance-driven approaches. For faculty, working together on the design of assignments has turned out to be a powerful professional development experience that has elevated the intellectual rigor of assignment design. Findings from follow-up surveys with charrette participants indicate the following:

• Ninety-seven percent of assignment charrette participants reported that the event gave them a new way to think about their assignments and better see their assignments through the eyes of their students.
• Ninety-five percent of participants indicated that they are more aware of aligning their assignment with institutional outcomes. Six months after the charrette, 95% are looking at other assignments more critically and carefully in partnership with other faculty.
• Seventy-two percent have consistently, over time, better aligned their assignment to the agreed-on evaluative criteria. These findings hold for participants who have responded a year, and a year and a half, out from the charrette experience.
• Six months after the event, 82% of survey respondents reported that they more actively involved students in assignment design and prompts and clearly stated the learning expected from an assignment in a way they had not before.
• Seventy-two percent of participants indicated that the experience changed their thinking about assessment, and 6 months later, 75% had made substantial changes in their approach to teaching.

Assignment design conversations continue, with 62% of provosts reporting that their campuses are currently facilitating faculty work on assignment design (Jankowski et al., 2018). Furthermore, a focus on assignments provides a mechanism for launching other discussions; for example, a review of aligning not only assignments but also courses and learning experiences with desired learning outcomes (Hutchings, 2016; Jankowski & Marshall, 2017). The work of the VALUE Institute has been instrumental in this shift, as has technology, which allows course-level assessments to be rolled up to the institution level (Harrison & Braxton, 2018; Richman & Ariovich, 2013).

The use of assignments can connect assessment with teaching and learning, professional development, and faculty roles and responsibilities. But this approach also brings up questions about sampling, comparability, fitness, alignment, and fidelity, and organizational issues of undertaking embedded assessment approaches at scale. Authentic measures are being employed, but the implications of this trend for design, measurement, and implementation as part of institution-level assessment structures are still being debated. Furthermore, assignment conversations serve as an entry point to discussions of additional educational design issues, such as the contexts in which evidence from assignments can be documented and used and the use of portfolios to document and capture the developmental nature of attainment of desired learning.

Focus on Improvement and Equity

As we move toward more authentic measures of learning such as assignments, interest is also shifting to more authentic assessment drivers and processes of assessment. While accreditation remains a primary driver of assessment practice, improvement and equity are becoming increasingly important drivers (Jankowski et al., 2018). The emerging dialogues on the relationship between equity and assessment (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2015, 2017), real-time assessment that is responsive to individual learners (Maki, 2017), issues of social justice (Zerquera, Hernández, & Berumen, 2018), and inclusive assessment are advancing our understanding of the role ass...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Halftitle_1.html
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Trends in Assessment
• 1 Movement Afoot
• 2 Becoming More Hip
• 3 Evolving Practices in the Development and Assessment of Global Learning
• 4 Assessing Community Engagement
• 5 Understanding Students Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
• 6 Stem Education and Assessment
• 7 Assessment at the Highest Degree(s)
• 8 Measuring Faculty Learning
• 9 Transforming Assessment, Assessing Transformation
• Part Two: Looking to the Future
• 10 Lots of Assessment, Little Improvement?
• 11 Using Assessment Trends in Planning, Decision-Making, and Improvement
• 12 Meta-Trends in Assessment
• Editors and Contributors
• Index
• Add page