Assessment
What is Assessment?
Assessment is about strengthening the student learning experience inside and outside of the classroom!
The term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. Assessment serves as a toolkit, when used properly, it allows you to improve student learning and success at the activity, course, program, and institutional levels.
Click through the presentation below for an in-depth look at assessing student learning at WSU Tech!
WSU Tech Assessment Plan FA22-SP25
Click through the 3-page presentation below to view the ACTION plan for Assessment at WSU Tech!
How do we Assess?
Good assessment follows an intentional and reflective process which begins with a solid plan. This process can be used for both curricular and co-curricular assessment. Well-designed assessment methods provide valuable information about student learning!
PLAN: Identify learning outcomes and design the assessment.
A formal Outcomes Assessment Plan (OAP) is used for planning institutional assessment.
Co-Curricular Assessment planning utilizes a standardized form.
DO: Implement the plan! Provide instruction, facilitate the activity/experience and assess learning.
CHECK: Analyze the data and design an intervention to improve student learning.
ACT: Implement the intervention and reassess learning.
HLC - 4.B.1. "The institution has effective processes for assessment of student learning and for achievement of learning goals in academic and cocurricular offerings."
Assessment Strategies
All of us are familiar with the traditional methods of assessing student learning such as an exam or a quiz, however there are many tools that can be used to assess student learning. Tools may be direct or indirect, depending upon how they are used and their purposes.
Direct Assessment is the most effective form of assessment when you are measuring a single learning outcome, objective, or goal. This type of assessment gives you the most clear, compelling, and actionable information.
Examples: Self-assessment of learned knowledge, Project, Survey with likert scale and open-ended questions, Portfolio, student publications, student presentations at conferences
Indirect assessment is often an extremely useful tool in combination with direct assessment to offer a more comprehensive view of student learning. Indirect assessment can give you information about how a student feels about what they know – for example, does that student feel confident in his or her ability to apply the knowledge in the future?
Examples: Focus group interviews, student perception surveys, reflective writings of experiences, participation
What do we Assess?
While every aspect of learning may be assessed from a confused facial expression to test performance, formal assessment includes identifying and measuring success on key learning outcomes. A learning outcome describes in observable and measurable terms what a student can do as a result of completing a learning experience.
At WSU Tech we holistically assess student learning by measuring student success inside and outside of the classroom.