What is Outcomes Assessment?
Defining Outcomes Assessment
Learning outcomes assessment, or simply outcomes assessment, may mean slightly different things to people with different perspectives. However, it is essential to ensure that your team (you and your program colleagues) has a shared understanding of what it means to you and your program and why it's important. Here are the ways some Lane faculty have defined outcomes assessment:
“For me, I think a simple definition of assessment works best: the process of identifying what students should learn and evaluating whether they have learned it.”
Erika Masaki, Political Science
“Assessment is how you evaluate whether you learned what you aimed to learn. I see the idea as a process: identify the problem/objective, develop a plan of action, gather data on the results, evaluate the data, make changes as appropriate, and try it again.”
Jill Gillett, Business and Accounting
“I defined assessment as the development of outcomes for student learning, the collection of evidence of learning, and evaluation/reflection with the goal of making decisions and improving student learning.”
Julie Pfaff, Adult Basic & Secondary Ed
Some of the foremost experts in outcomes assessment have chosen similar ways to define the term:
“Assessment is the systematic collection of information about student learning, using the time, knowledge, expertise, and resources available, in order to inform decisions that affect student learning.”
Barbara Walvoord
Assessment Clear and Simple
“Assessment is simply deciding what we want students to learn and making sure they learn it.”
Linda Suskie
Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide
“...systematic stock-taking—the gathering and use of evidence of student learning in decision making and in strengthening institutional performance and public accountability—is known as student learning outcomes assessment.”
Stanley Ikenberry & George Kuh
Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education
“...process of providing credible evidence of resources, implementation actions, and outcomes undertaken for the purpose of improving the effectiveness of instruction, programs, and services in higher education.”
Trudy Banta & Catherine Palomba
Assessment Essentials
The following are Lane-specific resources that help us understand assessment:
Engaging in Outcomes Assessment
All of these definitions help us understand what outcomes assessment is, but they don't tell us what to do. The next step is to engage in the assessment cycle.