Table of Contents

• ASSESSMENT: A COMPLEX PROCESS
• • Definition of Assessment
  • Principles of Assessment
  • The Assessment Process
     
• ASSESSMENT METHODS
• • A Description of 10 Assessment Methods
     
• DEVELOPMENT OF ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
• • Sample Rubric
     
• WEB LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ASSESSMENT
• • Assessment and Evaluation
  • Guidelines for Quality Assessment of Teaching (Sections)
  • Ability Based Education
  • Assessment, Graduate Student
  • Higher Education and Professional Portfolio Examples
    
     

Project by: Jill Frank
Asilomar-Assessment group
Group facilitator- Joyce Arntson
 

1. ``Student assessments have two main purposes: to evaluate students' progress and to help students learn.  Some of the other uses for assessment are testing teaching effectiveness, encouraging educators to reflect on their teaching and material, provoking student thought and action, encouraging students to ask questions, and motivating students to learn."  ``You can use assessments to indicate whether components of the course have been clearly understood by the students.  You can record the results of assessments and check the results of student assessments to see how well they are performing.  Students' wrong answers can also be recorded and analyzed to determine the nature of the misunderstandings.  Based on the results of assessments, you can implement remedial lessons or expansion and clarification of material." (McCormack & Jones, 1998)

2. Definition¹: Assessment is the systematic collection of information about                      student learning and the use of that information to improve the learning and teaching          process in the classroom, department and general education programs.
    
3. Principles for Assessment²:
   1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.
   2. Assessment is more effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time.
   3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes.
   4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.
   5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not episodic.
   6. Assessment fosters wider improvement when representative from across the educational community are involved.
   7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions that people really care about.
   8. Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that promote change.
   9. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public.
       

   ``Business teachers, along with all teachers, need to participate in choosing goals that are worthy of their attention and articulating these goals in meaningful ways as they develop instructional engagements."  ``Assessment is the essence of teaching in that it provides essential feedback to both teachers and learners about the results of their efforts."
    

4. Types of Assessment³:Articulated by Zeliff and Schultz (1998)
   • These types of assessment are used to provide feedback for students in business education.
   • Traditional- traditional assessment typically measures lower-level cognitive skills.  This domain includes factual recall and comprehension.
   • Alternative- alternative assessment measures the affective domain and includes team activities. Evaluations of self and peers, and reflection through logs and portfolios.
   • Performance- performance assessment measures the psychomotor domain and includes students' demonstrations of competence in a skill or task, e.g., formatting documents, completing financial statement and transcribing dictation.
      
5. The Process: 
   • Determine the course objectives- Use words like discuss, outline, classify, define, collaborate, derive, name, state, synthesize, infer, compute, design, appreciate, and integrate.
   • Consider what you want your students to learn- Use words like develop, qualify, list, sort, express, build, describe, analyze, argue, solve, create, compare, examine, define, identify, explain, assess, and measure. 
   • Evaluate various assessment methods- See methods below
   • Decide upon and create assessment methods- Assessment methods should meet your course objectives.
   • Develop the criteria for evaluation- See development of criteria below
      
6. Assessment Methods: Click the link for additional information
   • Testing (written/oral)
   • Writing (essays, research papers, case studies)
   • Portfolios
   • Presentation
   • Self-Evaluation
   • Journals
   • Surveys/Student Feedback
   • Projects (individual/group)
   • Interviews
   • Capstone
      
7. Means of evaluation⁴:The primary purpose of the evaluation process is to detect differences between expected and/or desired outcomes and actual outcomes so that processes and outcomes can be continually improved.
   • Summative- An overall evaluation is made of the success of an endeavor and the level of accomplishment attained.  If the purpose is to make assessment about the end result of an educational endeavor, such as a unit of instruction, a course or a class of students, then the assessment is called summative measure of learning outcomes.  It is important to note that in order for the evaluation to be considered summative, the assessments are completed after the instructional events have occurred.
   • Formative- A continuous evaluation of the course of instruction rather than a final evaluation at the completion of a course.  This type of evaluation allows for changes in practice to occur while the course is in progress.  In addition, formative evaluation practices reveal whether objectives and expectations are being fulfilled.
      
8. Development of assessment criteria
   1. Identify the desired outcome
   2. Develop a benchmark to measure student achievement
   3. Sample rubric
       
9. Links: (Joyce Diamond)
   Assessment and Evaluation

   http://ericae.net/nintbod.htm Assessment & Evaluation on the Internet, Liselle Drake & Lawrence Rudner.  ERIC/AE (http://ericae.net/) July 14, 1995; last revised Dec 20, 1999

   ``…Click on a category of Internet resources on the left, and you will see annotated links to the best sites on the Internet that address educational assessment, evaluation and research. We have worked hard to develop this resource and have won several awards."

   http://ivc-dl.ivc.cc.ca.us/DistanceLearning/guidelines/index.html Guide to Evaluating Online Instruction

   What better way to evaluate the effectiveness of your online instruction than through the success and learning of your students!   This evaluation guide uses the characteristics of the successful online student as the measurement of the value of the online class.

   http://gilligan.esu7.k12.ne.us/~esu7web/resources/assess.html AAHE's Assessment Forum.  Notes from AAHE Assessment Conference 2000 Solution Sessions, Including

   • How Can We Increase Attention to Issues of Diversity and Assessment?
   • What are the Keys to Creating a Culture of Assessment?
   • How Can We Counter Cheating and Plagiarism?
   • Is It Time to Reconsider AAHE's Principles of Good Assessment?
   • Why Do Faculty Resist Assessment?
   • How Can Standardized Tests Be Used Effectively in an Assessment Program?
   • How Can We Assess General Education Programs Effectively?
   • What is on the Horizon for American Higher Education?

   http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ae/ ``ae" is assessment and evaluation - a project of the maricopa center for learning & instruction - Maricopa community colleges

   http://www.aahe.org/Bulletin/may2.htm Fair Assessment PracticesGiving Students Equitable Opportunities to Demonstrate LearningBy Linda Suskie.From the May 2000, AAHE Bulletin.  Well-researched with a useful bibliography.

   http://math.uc.edu/onex/demo.html Online Exercises System provides automatically generated computer-gradedsmart exercises for instruction via the Web. HTML documents with graphs, links, and complex formulas are created individually for every student. The system supports answers as numerical or algebraic formulas, true/false, and multiple choice. Scores, and the actual student answers are stored in the logs.

   http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/assessment/ Assessment and Program Improvement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -The Task Force on Assessment and Program Improvement. August 1997

   http://cba.scit.wlv.ac.uk/ From the Wolverhampton University Computer Based Assessment Project (UK). The downloadable Computer Based Assessment tests in this project were designed and used at the University of Wolverhampton to replace written tests. Each tests generates an exam randomly from a possible 80,000 variations and then delivers the exam, marks it and gives feedback .

   http://www.cudenver.edu/public/OTE/nn/vol5/5_4.htm Assessment of Our Students IV - Essay Tests. A short paper from Univ. of CO's Nutshell Notes, Volume 2 Number 1, 1997. This issue has several on assessment.

   http://mailer.fsu.edu/~jflake/assess.html Authentic Assessment

   http://gilligan.esu7.k12.ne.us/~esu7web/resources/assess.html Assessment Resources

   http://ericae2.educ.cua.edu/intass.htm Alternative Assessment/Performance Based Assessment: 

   http://vocserve.berkeley.edu/CenterFocus/CF10a.html Alternative Approaches to Outcomes Assessment for Postsecondary Education: 

   http://www.eval.org/ American Evaluation Association

   http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=4&n=2 Questions To Ask When Evaluating Tests. By Lawrence M. Rudner, ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation.

   http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/anet/education/baker-report/baker.section5.html SECTION 5:INTEGRATING OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS WITH THE TEACHING ASSESSMENT MODEL ``This section is in part a contribution to the development of accounting education outcome assessment to be used in a wide spectrum of institutions and programs…"

   http://vocserve.berkeley.edu/CenterFocus/CF10a.html Alternative Approaches to Outcomes Assessment for Postsecondary Education.  National Center for Research in Vocational Education, UC Berkeley, 1995.

   http://transition.alaska.edu/www/Portfolios/bookmarks.html#hied Dr. Helen Barrett's favorite links on Alternative Assessment & Electronic Portfolios

   http://www-tep.ucsd.edu/portfolionews/PNHomePage.html Portfolio News A newsletter published by the Portfolio Assessment Clearinghouse, which serves as a network for educators involved with portfolio assessment.

   http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/assessment/ Assessment and Program Improvement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -The Task Force on Assessment and Program Improvement. August 1997

   http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/qa/g.htm Guidelines for Quality Assessment of Teaching. Loughborough University (UK), 4/2000.

   SECTIONS:

   • Guidelines for the Direct Observation of Teaching
   • An Assessor's Guide to Effective Teaching Behaviours
   • Guidelines for creating a Teaching Portfolio
   • Guidelines for creating a Teaching Folder
   • The HEFCE Structure of Self-Assessments
   • Assessor's Report the observation of a Promotion candidate (including from Lecturer A to Lecturer B)

   Download a Teaching Observation Report Form

Student Assessment-as-learning

Assessment, Graduate Student

Higher Ed & Professional Portfolio Examples

• http://www.aahe.org/teaching/pfoliosearch3.cfm Portfolio Program – 40 colleges review their portfolio programs.

  http://www-tep.ucsd.edu/portfolionews/PNHomePage.html Portfolio News A newsletter published by the Portfolio Assessment Clearinghouse, which serves as a network for educators involved with portfolio assessment.

  http://www.kzoo.edu/pfolio/ The Kalamazoo portfolio: reflections, connections, life. A comprehensive college-wide application of portfolios.

  http://ddp.alverno.edu/ Alverno College's Diagnostic Digital Portfolio.   An early pioneer in the use of portfolios in Teacher Education, here is the website for their Diagnostic Digital Portfolio which maintains key performances.

• http://www.public.iastate.edu/~teaching_info/port.html Teaching Portfolios.  Article on How to Document your Teaching for faculty members preparing materials for promotion/tenure. (from Center for Teaching Excellence at Iowa State University)

  http://www.wa.gov/esd/lmea/soicc/prtfolio.htm Career Development Portfolios.  The Washington SOICC provides support for career development portfolios.

  http://www.portfolios.com/faq.html Portfolios Online: FAQ. A website for visual artists and communication professionals to post their portfolios.

  http://www.cuttingedge.rmit.edu.au/samples/folio01.html Women @ the Cutting Edge.  This group from RMIT University, Kodak Australia, and Moreland City College in Australia is offering a course in developing multimedia professional portfolios.

  http://www.pedanet.jyu.fi/cato/ or http://www.pedanet.jyu.fi/portfolio/ CATO project at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. An active research project entitled, Collaboration and Authenticity in Open Technologically-Enriched Learning Contexts.

  http://www.pedanet.jyu.fi/cato/study2.html Collaborative school portfolios: Flexible learning and teaching in technologically enriched childhood environments. A research project to enhance mutual collaboration and understanding between kindergartens and schools. The development work is made visible, followed and assessed through the research network by means of digital portfolios. In this study there is an emphasis on teacher support in the form of teacher training in educational technology.

  http://www.pedanet.jyu.fi/cato/earlidoc.html Communication and Collaboration through Networking and Digital Portfolios.  Paper presented at the EARLI conference in Athens, 26 - 30 August 1997.  Flexible learning and teaching in Childhood Environments.  Paper presented by Marja Kankaanranta at the EARLI conference in Athens, 26 - 30 August 1997

  http://portfolioinfo.efa.nl/uk/index.html Portfolio Info Site at the Amsterdam Faculty of Education. This brand new web site was developed by the Educative Faculty of the Netherlands as an experimental project in portfolio development.  The site was custom-designed to their specifications, and has both public and restricted access. An active research project, presented at the SITE conference in San Diego on a CD-ROM entitled, "Dutch Courage".

"This web-site has two functions:

• Supporting tutors and students in creating their portfolio by means of demo portfolios, user guides and background articles.
• Information and communication with people from other institutions who are interested in the portfolio."

Description of Assessment Methods: 
 

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Sample Rubric for Developing Assessment Criteria⁵:
 

Step 1: How does the lesson involve students' use of the Internet as a learning tool?

• A. To communicate with peers and/or experts to increase their own understanding
• B. To contribute to the body of knowledge by sharing their learning.

If the lesson involves students in communicating, collaborating, or contributing...then it can be considered an INTERACTIVE lesson.

• C. To access and manage information that is pertinent to their topic

If the lesson involves students in managing information resources found on the Web, then it can be considered a RESOURCE lesson.

If the lesson does NOT involve students in any of these activities, then the entry is disqualified.

Step 2: If the lesson resides on a teacher-created web page that is well crafted, free of grammatical or technical errors, and easy to use, it will be awarded a 2-point bonus.

Step 3: The rubric below is what ED's Oasis staff uses to evaluate the lesson. You can use it as a guide as you design your lesson.

POINTS

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© ED's Oasis *www.edsoasis.org
*Permission to copy or reprint this rubric is granted only if the copyright notice is included. Any use of these materials for commercial gain is prohibited.

Resources:

Denton, J. (2000). Using the Grading Process for Departmental & Institutional Assessment.  Oakland. 

National Business Education Association, (2000).  Assessment in Business Education.

© ED's Oasis *www.edsoasis.org

Links provided by Joyce Diamond, Research Coordinator Foundation For CA Community Colleges

McCormack, C. & Jones, D. (1998).  Building a Web-Based Education System. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Carfax Publishing, Taylor & Francis Ltd. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Volume 25 Number 1 March 2000.

Peggy Maki, Ph.D. (2000).  Student Outcomes Assessment: Strategies for Getting Started and Sustaining the Momentum. 

Muataz Al-Barwani, et al.  Instructional Assessment in Higher Education.  The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning.

California Assessment Institute, (2000).  The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.  Oakland.

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¹Denton, J. (2000).  Using the Grading Process for Departmental & Institutional Assessment.  Oakland 

²National Business Education Association, (2000). Assessment in Business Education. (pgs. 36-37)

³National Business Education Association, (2000). Assessment in Business Education. (pg. 17)

⁴National Business Education Association, (2000). Assessment in Business Education. (pgs. 26-29)

⁵© ED's Oasis *www.edsoasis.org