Assessment & Outcomes
by Richard Frye, Office of Institutional
Assessment, WWU
Introduction: Focus on Student Learning Outcomes
Both the Washington State Legislature and the Northwest Association of
Schools and Colleges (Western's accrediting agency) require all degree-granting
programs to develop a plan for the assessment of student learning outcomes,
and to document its use for continual program improvement. That both agencies
now focus on the importance of student learning outcomes represents a
significant convergence of two major trends in higher education: the assessment
movement and the accountability movement.
Assessment has evolved from efforts to improve the quality
of educational outcomes by continually improving teaching and learning,
while accountability has evolved primarily from the efforts
of state legislatures to make higher education more cost-effective. Simply
put, assessment has historically been oriented toward internal review
for improving student learning, while accountability has historically
been associated with external review for proving institutional
effectiveness.
Assessment is an iterative process for gathering, interpreting, and applying
outcomes data from courses, programs, or entire curricula to improve program
effectiveness, particularly as measured by student learning outcomes.
Assessment is intricately associated with a "student-centered," or "learner-centered" model
of institutional effectiveness, and represents a fundamental shift in
how educational institutions define their missions and measure their effectiveness.
Accountability is essentially the same iterative process as assessment
except that it is aimed at external reporting and review of educational
outcomes. Accountability measures required by agencies like the Washington
State Higher Education Coordinating Board (HEC Board) were originally
oriented toward finding measurements of overall institutional efficiency
in higher education, such as time-to-degree, graduation efficiency, and
student retention. These have gradually given way to the view that the
primary "output" of higher education is learning; as a result,
accountability measures increasingly focus on student learning as the
central measure of program effectiveness.
In the NWASC accreditation site visit report in 1999, Western was specifically
directed "to identify and publish expected learning outcomes
for each of its degree and certificate programs, and to actively engage
faculty in defining learning objectives and developing specific plans
to assess and evaluate outcomes at the course and educational program
level."
Similarly, the HEC Board now requires each
academic degree program, in its periodic review process, to include a
formal plan for assessing how well program objectives in general, and
student learning objectives in particular, are being met. See the HEC
Board's Guidelines
for Program Planning, Approval, and Review (PDF). Each
unit must also demonstrate in periodic reviews: 1) how assessment data
has been regularly gathered, and 2) how it has been used to improve program
effectiveness and student learning. These requirements have been formalized
in Western's
Assessment Plan, which outlines program assessment responsibilities.
In addition, higher education has increasingly taken on the attributes
of a market commodity, and schools increasingly compete for the best students
and their tuition dollars. Prospective students and their parents, as
well as legislators, are increasingly demanding convincing evidence of
institutional effectiveness as part of their decision framework. If they
are going to "buy" Western, they want to know what they are
getting. Assessment data about student achievements, graduate placement,
and alumni and employer satisfaction are an important part of the evidence
prospective "customers" want to see about the quality of a Western
degree.
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