NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

Considerable discussions from members of many universities provided this recent definition of assessment as a process:

Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us to focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education.

from T.A. Angelo, November, 1995, AAHE Bulletin v. 48, n. 3, p. 7.

From the above, we see that good assessment involves devising a systematic way to gather and use selected data as part of our day-to-day activities. This stands in sharp contrast to the punctuated "assessments" that often result from inept responses to a mandate for accountability. The latter is usually what gives assessment a bad image in the minds of faculty. Defensive gathering of data is never a sustainable way to operate. Such efforts drain resources from essential duties, and while they may produce reports, they don't result in the desired outcome—an institutional culture that understands continuous improvement as part of daily activities.

When assessment is absent, crisis-management usually takes its place. The latter is typified by episodic events of laborious, broad data-gathering in response to a criticism or mandate. Data-gathering is followed by efforts to achieve insights from a muddle of information, and the event culminates in the usual hastily written (hopefully credible) thick report that is soon filed and forgotten. Such hapless events will likely be relived anew, with slight variations, every few years. In contrast, assessment continuously gathers essential data in ways that address clearly formulated hypotheses. More importantly, assessment creates a system of routinely utilized knowledge that can be easily built upon. Assessment prevents crises.

While learning is complex, a trait of good assessment is still a certain simplicity. A user or reviewer should be able to understand easily what expectations are being tested and what constitutes successful performance. If an assessment plan is convoluted, it won't be understood and therefore won't be successfully implemented.

Even good assessment plans can have their results torpedoed by reporting that does not address the needs of readers from the general public. A document replete with the passive voice of bureaucratic writing, purple prose, and "adminibabble" jargon does not make "... expectations explicit and public...." Where funding and support depend upon demonstrating good use of resources, it is imperative to present assessment in a way that the public can understand. Expectations, results, and the systems put in place to assure quality should be clearly stated.

Finally, the purpose of assessment is not to identify for punishment "those who don't measure up." Any evaluation program not accompanied by a system that supports improvement is not assessment, but rather is a counter-productive exercise. Assessment, at its best, produces collective pride by allowing everyone within an institution to identify themselves with high standards of student learning, commitment to improvement, and an experience of support for that commitment.