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Student Learning Assessment: Campus Resources
AAHE Assessment Principles
Campus Best Practices: Mission Statements (PDF)
Campus Best Practices: Learning Goals & Objectives (PDF)
Rating Form for Assessment Plans (PDF)
Annual Assessment Report Template (PDF)
Definitions of Student Learning Outcomes
Questions to Consider
Departmental Guidelines for Student Learning Assessment Plans
Writing Assessable Goals & Objectives

Definitions of Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes:

  1. 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 (Thomas A. Angelo, AAHE Bulletin, November 1995, p.7). [American Association of Higher Education website: http://www.aahe.org/


  2. Assessment is defined as the systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students. More specifically, assessment is the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using information to increase students' learning and development" (T. Dary Erwin, Assessing Student Learning and Development, Jossey-Bass, 1991, see pp.14-19).


  3. A Definition of Assessment that goes Beyond Student Learning Outcomes:
    "I shall consider assessment to include the gathering of information concerning the functioning of students, staff, and institutions of higher education. The information may or may not be in numerical form, but the basic motive for gathering it is to improve the functioning of the institution and its people. I used functioning to refer to the broad social purposes of a college or university: to facilitate student learning and development, to advance the frontiers of knowledge, and to contribute to the community, and the society" (Alexander Astin, Assessment for Excellence, Oryx Press, 1993, p.2)


 

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