Performance Assessment
Assessment
Assessment Definitions
 
 
     
Assessment Overview
What is Assessment?
Assessment can be defined in many ways, and is often used to describe evaluation processes that co-exist on several levels (level of the learner, the classroom, the program, the institution). The following quote by Thomas Angelo captures clearly and succinctly the essential elements of assessment. It describes the assessment process, and points to the connections between assessment of student learning/performance and program/institutional integrity and improvement.

Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education.

Thus, assessment is an active and typically shared involvement/commitment to understanding and improving student learning. Assessment often leads to thoughtful change and deeper questions about learning, curricular coherency, and student success. The following quote, by key resources at Alverno College (a nationally recognized leadership institution in the area of ability-based education and assessment), delineates the difference between assessment and testing/measurement:


Testing can tell us how much and what kind of knowledge someone has. Assessment gives us a basis for inferring what that person can do with that knowledge. By judging a person's performance against pre-set, agreed-upon and public criteria, assessment aims to give it a meaning out of which he or she can build future performance.


From a skill standards-based perspective, the critical aspect is designing and implementing assessment methods that require learners to perform to the level of knowledge, skill, or ability as described in the standard (thus, outcomes-based or competency-based assessment). Faculty need to create and facilitate learning opportunities for exposure, practice, and demonstration of the key skills and abilities. Assessing those skills and abilities (to the level of the standard) can, and should be, both formative and summative. Faculty must determine what will constitute evidence of learning, and build into the assessment process ways for learners to perform successfully (to meet or exceed the learning outcomes).

Source 1: Thomas A. Angelo. "Transforming Assessment: High Standards for Higher Learning," AAHE Bulletin, April 1996, page 3. Loacker, Cromwell, and O'Brien.
Source 2: "Assessment in Higher Education: To Serve the Learner." Alverno College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This page represents one section of the Assessment Chapter of the CDK. Other sections include:
  • Tools for Faculty
  • Assessment in the Broader Context of Teaching and Learning

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