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Originally posted on January 31, 2019, on LindaSuskie.com Last year was not one of the best for higher ed assessment. A couple of very negat...

Value and respect: The keys to assessment success

 Originally posted on March 28, 2018, on LindaSuskie.com

In my February 28 blog post, I noted that many faculty express frustration with assessment along the following lines:

  • What I most want students to learn is not what’s being assessed.

  • I’m being told what and how to assess, without any input from me.

  • I’m being told what to teach, without any input from me.

  • I’m being told to assess skills that employers want, but I teach other things that I think are more important.

  • A committee is doing a second review of my students’ work. I’m not trusted to assess student work fairly and accurately through my grading processes.

  • I’m being asked to quantify student learning, but I don’t think that’s appropriate for what I’m teaching.

  • I’m being asked to do this on top of everything else I’m already doing.

  • Assessment treats learning as a scientific process, when it’s a human endeavor; every student and teacher is different.

The underlying theme here is that these faculty don’t feel that they and their views are valued and respected. When we value and respect people:

  • We design assessment processes so the results are clearly useful in helping to make important decisions, not paper-pushing exercises designed solely to get through accreditation.

  • We make assessment work worthwhile by using results to make important decisions, such as on resource allocations, as discussed in my March 13 blog post.

  • We truly value great teaching and actively encourage the scholarship of teaching as a form of scholarship.

  • We truly value innovation, especially in improving one’s teaching because, if no one wants to change anything, there’s no point in assessing.

  • We take the time to give faculty and staff clear guidance and coordination, so they understand what they are to do and why.

  • We invest in helping them learn what to do: how to use research-informed teaching strategies as well as how to assess.

  • We support their work with appropriate resources.

  • We help them find time to work on assessment and to keep assessment work cost-effective, because we respect how busy they are.

  • We take a flexible approach to assessment, recognizing that one size does not fit all. We do not mandate a single institution-wide assessment approach but instead encourage a variety of assessment strategies, both quantitative and qualitative. The more choices we give faculty, the more they feel empowered.

  • We design assessment processes so faculty are leaders rather than providers of assessment. We help them work collaboratively rather than in silos, inviting them to contribute to decisions on what, why, and how we assess. We try to assess those learning outcomes that the institutional community most values. More than anything else, we spend more time listening than telling.

  • We recognize and honor assessment work in tangible ways, perhaps through a celebratory event, public commendations, or consideration in promotion, tenure, and merit pay applications.

For more information on these and other strategies to value and respect people who work on assessment, see Chapter 14, “Valuing Assessment and the People Who Contribute,” in the new third edition of my book Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide.