Originally posted on February 13, 2018, on LindaSuskie.com
Today marks the release of the third edition of my book Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. I approached Jossey-Bass about doing a third edition in response to requests from some faculty who used it as a textbook but were required to use more recent editions. The second edition had been very successful, so I figured I’d update the references and a few chapters and be done. But as I started work on this edition, I was immediately struck by how outdated the second edition had become in just a few short years. The third edition is a complete reorganization and rewrite of the previous edition.
How has the world of higher ed assessment changed?
We are moving from Assessment 1.0 to Assessment 2.0: from getting assessment done—and in many cases not doing it very well—to getting assessment used. Many faculty and administrators still struggle to grasp that assessment is all about improving how we help students learn, not an end in itself, and that assessments should be planned with likely uses in mind. The last edition talked about using results, of course, but new edition adds a chapter on using assessment results to the beginning of the book. And throughout the book I talk not about “assessment results” but “evidence of student learning,” which is what this is really all about.
We have a lot of new resources. Many new assessment resources have emerged since the second edition was published, including the VALUE rubrics published by AAC&U, the many white papers published by NILOA, and the Degree Qualifications Profile sponsored by Lumina. Learning management systems and assessment information management systems are far more prevalent and sophisticated. This edition talks about these and other valuable new resources.
We are recognizing that different settings require different approaches to assessment. The more assessment we’ve done, the more we’ve come to realize that assessment practices vary depending on whether we’re assessing learning in courses, programs, general education curricula, or co-curricular experiences. The last edition didn’t draw many distinctions among assessment in these settings. This edition features a new chapter on the many settings of assessment, and several chapters discuss applying concepts to specific settings.
We’re realizing that curriculum design is a big piece of the assessment puzzle. We’ve found that, when faculty and staff struggle with assessment, it’s often because the learning outcomes they’ve identified aren’t addressed sufficiently—or at all—in the curriculum. So this book has a brand new chapter on curriculum design, and the old chapter on prompts has been expanded into one on creating meaningful assignments.
We have a much better understanding of rubrics. Rubrics are now so widespread that we have a much better idea of how to design and use them. A couple of years ago I did a literature review of rubric development that turned on a lot of lightbulbs for me, and this edition reflects my fresh thinking.
We’re recognizing that in some situations student learning is especially hard to assess. This edition has a new chapter on assessing the hard-to-assess, such as performances and learning that can’t be graded.
We’re increasingly appreciating the importance of setting appropriate standards and targets in order to interpret and use results appropriately. The chapter on this is completely rewritten, with a new section on setting standards for multiple choice tests.
We’re fighting the constant pull to make assessment too complicated. The pull of some accreditors’ overly complex requirements, some highly structured assessment information management systems, and some assessment practitioners with psychometric training to make things much more complicated than they need to be is strong. That this new edition is well over 400 pages says a lot! This book has a whole chapter on keeping assessment cost-effective, especially in terms of time.
We’re starting to recognize that, if assessment is to have real impact, results need to be synthesized into an overall picture of student learning. This edition stresses the need to sit back after looking through reams of assessment reports and ask, from a qualitative rather than quantitative perspective, what are we doing well? In what ways is student learning most disappointing?
Pushback to assessment is moving from resistance to foot-dragging. The voices saying assessment can’t be done are growing quieter because we now have decades of experience doing assessment. But while more people are doing assessment, in too many cases they’re doing it only to comply with an accreditation mandate. Helping people move from getting assessment done to using it in meaningful ways remains a challenge. So the two chapters on culture in the second edition are now six.
Data visualization and learning analytics are changing how we share assessment results. These things are so new that this edition only touches on them. I think that they will be the biggest drivers in changes to assessment over the coming decade.