| What do you want students to know, or be able to do, when they finish
your course? How do you know if your students achieve those learning outcomes? Assessment
can help you find the answers. The documented results of an assessment can:
- verify that student performance matches expectations and standards
- explain why student performance doesn't match expectations or standards
- identify how student performance might be improved
Assessment encourages instructors and institutions to be reflective about their courses
and accountable to students. Over time, this leads to improved educational effectiveness.
To effectively conduct an assessment, you must make your expectations and standards
clear - both to you and your students. Then you can accurately analyze and interpret how
well your students meet those standards.
"Assessment requires making expectations and standards for quality explicit and
public; systematically gathering evidence on how well performance matches those
expectations and standards; analyzing and interpreting the evidence; and using the
resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance" (Thomas A.
Angelo, AAHE Bulletin, April 1995, p.11). http://www.aahe.org/Bulletin/
The links on the left panel in this section provide information about assessment principles, models, and
standards, as well as information about assessment practices in online/distance education. |
