About the
Institute:

Assessment Institute

  

January 8-11, 2008

Institute Objectives

By participating in this event you will :

  1. Experience and validate new tools and techniques for doing quality assessment.

  2. Improve your ability to perform quality self-assessment.

  3. Strengthen facilitation and mentoring skills so you can improve the growth in your students’ life-long learning skills.

  4. Learn the design principles and processes for building appropriate assessment systems and data collection tools.

  5. Embed formative assessment in instructional design, program design, annual review, and strategic planning processes and systems.

  6. Heighten your interest and ability to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning through the practice of active research.

  7. Understanding QEP and how to design a quality project.

Principles of Sound Assessment

Building a Culture of Assessment

The American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) endorses the following principles as the basis for quality assessment at the class, course, program, and institutional level.

  1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values.
  2. Assessment is most 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 representatives from across the educational community are involved.
  7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions 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.

Assessment is a process used for the purpose of improving quality and is critical for growing life-long learning skills and elevating performance in diverse contexts. However, the value of assessment is not always apparent, nor is the process always understood. Also, the lack of clarity in higher education between two necessary but complementary processes—evaluation and assessment—has made the effective use of assessment more difficult. A major aim of this event is to build a greater understanding of assessment and its practice, resulting in cultural change at institutions and serving as a catalyst for elevating teaching and learning performance.

Institute Activities

This four-day institute features hands-on, interactive sessions where participants will experiment with new techniques, share discoveries through group discussion, and reinforce important principles through just-in-time lectures and consulting sessions. Participants work alongside colleagues from a wide variety of academic disciplines, expanding their network of peers committed to quality teaching and learning.

Pre-institute Activity

The Changing Landscape for Assessment in Higher Education:

  • Draw distinctions between assessment and evaluation processes, identifying strengths and limitations of each both inside and outside the classroom for their intended purpose.

  • Review how assessment and evaluation have been adopted in the classroom throughout higher education institutions.

Institute Agenda

Day 1
 

Internalizing a Positive Assessment Mind-set

  • Share personal backgrounds and formulate goals along with measurable outcomes for the Institute.

  • Survey best practices in assessment that will be illustrated throughout the Institute.

  • Examine and establish consensus on criteria for a quality assessor.

Learning Fundamentals for Doing Quality Assessment

  • Explore an assessment methodology that can be used to elevate the quality of assessment design, data collection, and reporting.

  • Apply a simple assessment format (SII) that includes describing Strengths, areas for Improvement, and Insights associated with a work product or a performance.

  • Discover applications for self-assessment in various contexts and receive feedback on self-assessments from mentors.

  • Illustrate how taking time to assess assessment reports done by others can elevate the quality of assessments.

Day 2
 

Implementing Formative Assessment

  • Learn how to effectively use a learning journal (for faculty and students) to document growth in knowledge and comprehension.

  • Learn how to effectively use a learning assessment journal (for faculty and students) to document growth in skills and attitudes.

  • Inventory classroom assessment techniques that support formative assessment.

Improving Learner Performance in Self-Growth

  • Apply Bloom’s taxonomy to write learning objectives for specific situations.

  • Design performance criteria for courses and classes based upon learning objectives.

  • Assess progress toward personal learning outcomes with the purpose of identifying changes in time management, effort, and focus that are needed to achieve personal goals for the Institute.

Day 3
 

Designing Assessment Systems with Appropriate Measures

  • Experience steps in the process of designing an efficient and effective program assessment system.

  • Experience steps in the process of designing an effective course assessment system.

  • Design a quality enhancement plan (QEP).
     

Improving the Assessor’s Performance

  • Differentiate between techniques used for assessing a process as opposed to a product.

  • Identify opportunities for constructive intervention and gain experience implementing these in fishbowl teaching/learning activities.

Day 4
 

Integrating Assessment with Evaluation

  • Explore strategies for linking course assessment systems with course evaluation (grading) systems.

  • Inventory techniques to change an evaluation culture into an assessment culture.

  • Design a quality assessment system for faculty to support tenure and promotion.
     

Putting Assessment into Practice

  • Recognize how assessment can be used to enhance scholarship in teaching/learning.

  • Scope and sequence personal assessments to achieve important long-term goals.