Outcomes Assessment Resources

Ask

Yao Z. Hill, faculty specialist in the Assessment and Curriculum Support Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

    To design helpful assessment for your unit, Hill suggests asking four questions:

1. What is one area of learning that you think students could improve?

2. How do you know? (use your assessment data, observations, personal reflections, student feedback)

3. What would you do to help them improve in this way?

4. How would you be able to tell whether your change was effective?

Watch 

Anne Todgham Talks about Assessment

Student Learning Outcomes Assessment, Office of Undergraduate Education, UC Davis, April 10, 2020. This professor of Animal Science describes how assessment helps her focus on what her students truly need to know. 

Class Session 3: Designing a Course: Developing Learning Outcomes

MIT OpenCourseWare. Professor Janet Rankin demonstrates the value of clear student learning outcomes to students and faculty. 

SEE MINUTES 2:30-23:00

YouTube Series - "Six Steps for Student Learning Outcome Implementation"

Produced by COACH: California Outcomes Assessment Coordinators Hub, this series of brief informational presentations plus more comprehensive discussions can be a rich resource for programs and disciplines.

Read

   Where to Start: Backward Design

  "'Backward Design' is an approach to creating curriculum, subjects, and even single class sessions that treats the goal of teaching as not merely  “covering” a certain amount of content, but also facilitating student learning." Guidance from MIT Teaching and Learning Lab.

   Creating Learning Outcomes

Guidance from Stanford University Teaching Commons

   Formative and Summative Assessments

Guidance from Yale University's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning

   "Matching Assessments to Learning Outcomes" by Michelle Schwartz

This handout is a practical guide for designing assessments with learning outcomes in mind. (pdf)

   Assessment of Student Learning (Statement)

A statement from the Office of the Provost at Cornell University that frames why colleges and universities are engaging in this work.

   "An Outcome We Can All Agree On" by President Lane Glenn from Massachusetts Department of Higher Education

This summary of outcomes assessment’s value from Northern Essex Community College president Lane Glenn, highlighted on the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education website, reflects themes found throughout current outcomes assessment literature. 

   Documenting Educational Effectiveness

UCLA summarizes the central questions for unit-level student learning outcomes assessment:

“Two questions lie at the heart of outcomes assessment: Are students learning what faculty want them to learn? and Are faculty learning from that? In other words, how are faculty using the findings from their assessment efforts to enhance student learning?”

Books

 Assessment Essentials: Planning, Implementing, and Improving Assessment in Higher Education by Trudy Banta, Catherine  Palomba, and Jilian Kinzie

Assessment Essentials is considered by some to be a foundational text on higher education assessment. It contains a framework for assessment as well as examples from more than 100 campuses. 

Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide by Linda Suskie

Assessing Student Learning is a standard reference for college faculty and administrators, and the third edition of this highly regarded book continues to offer comprehensive, practical, plainspoken guidance. (Login in required for access)

   Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution by Peggy L. Maki

Assessing for Learning promotes an integrated and authentic approach to providing evidence of student learning based on the work that students produce along the chronology of their learning.