American Association for Higher Education
ASSESSMENT FORUM
9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
- The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment
is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice,
then, begins with and enacts a vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students
and strive to help them achieve. Educational values should drive not only what we
choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions about educational mission
and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's
easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.
- Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as
multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is
a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can do with what
they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, and habits
of mind that affect both academic success and performance beyond the classroom. Assessment
should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including
those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change,
growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete
and accurate picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students'
educational experience.
- Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear,
explicitly stated purposes. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails
comparing educational performance with educational purposes and expectations -- those
derived from the institution's mission, from faculty intentions in program and course
design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity
or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where to aim
and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program
goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone
for assessment that is focused and useful.
- Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the
experiences that lead to those outcomes. Information about outcomes is of high
importance; where students "end up" matters greatly. But to improve outcomes, we
need to know about student experience along the way -- about the curricula, teaching, and
kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand
which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to
improve the whole of their learning.
- Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic. Assessment is a
process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, "one-shot" assessment can be
better than none, improvement is best fostered when assessment entails a linked series of
activities undertaken over time. This may mean tracking the process of individual
students, or of cohorts of students; it may mean collecting the same examples of student
performance or using the same instrument semester after semester. The point is to monitor
progress toward intended goals in a spirit of continous improvement. Along the way, the
assessment process itself should be evaluated and refined in light of emerging insights.
- Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the
educational community are involved. Student learning is a campus-wide
responsibility, and assessment is a way of enacting that responsibility. Thus, while
assessment efforts may start small, the aim over time is to involve people from across the
educational community. Faculty play an especially important role, but assessment's
questions can't be fully addressed without participation by student-affairs educators,
librarians, administrators, and students. Assessment may also involve individuals from
beyond the campus (alumni/ae, trustees, employers) whose experience can enrich the sense
of appropriate aims and standards for learning. Thus understood, assessment is not a task
for small groups of experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider,
better-informed attention to student learning by all parties with a stake in its
improvement.
- Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates
questions that people really care about. Assessment recognizes the value of
information in the process of improvement. But to be useful, information must be connected
to issues or questions that people really care about. This implies assessment approaches
that produce evidence that relevant parties will find credible, suggestive, and applicable
to decisions that need to be made. It means thinking in advance about how the information
will be used, and by whom. The point of assessment is not to gather data and return
"results"; it is a process that starts with the questions of decision-makers,
that involves them in the gathering and interpreting of data, and that informs and helps
guide continous improvement.
- Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set
of conditions that promote change. Assessment alone changes little. Its greatest
contribution comes on campuses where the quality of teaching and learning is visibly
valued and worked at. On such campuses, the push to improve educational performance is a
visible and primary goal of leadership; improving the quality of undergraduate education
is central to the institution's planning, budgeting, and personnel decisions. On such
campuses, information about learning outcomes is seen as an integral part of decision
making, and avidly sought.
- Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the
public. There is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a
responsibility to the publics that support or depend on us to provide information about
the ways in which our students meet goals and expectations. But that responsibility goes
beyond the reporting of such information; our deeper obligation -- to ourselves, our
students, and society -- is to improve. Those to whom educators are accountable have a
corresponding obligation to support such attempts at improvement.
Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K.
Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay
M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright
This document was developed under the auspices of the AAHE Assessment
Forum with support from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education with
additional support for publication and dissemination from the Exxon Education Foundation.
Copies may be made without restriction.