Considering the Student: The Unacknowledged Vector in Assessment

1. Considering the Student: The Unacknowledged Vector in Assessment Robert T. Mundhenk AAACL Conference 9 April 2009

2. Planning Assessment: • Internal Structures • Coordination • Faculty and Staff Involvement • Instruments • Reporting Mechanisms • Integration into Governance and Decision-making

3. BUT WHERE’S THE STUDENT IN ALL THIS?

4. The Student as Data Point • We assume: • A large degree of homogeneity among students • Student cooperation in assessment processes • Students fit traditional, decades-old models • Learning skills fit traditional, centuries-old models • Aggregated information is meaningful for planning • Our control of the process of assessment

5. The Student as Decider • Standardized instruments like NSSE and CAAP: extra commitment of time with no “reward” • Internal assessments and surveys: extra commitment of time with no “reward” • Student performance on SLOs is center of all assessment practice, yet we assume students are simply data points

6. Do We Control the Process? • To some degree, in embedded assessments, capstone courses, internships, clinical experiences, and the like—because students see the work as meaningful • In other areas, the extent of our control of student effort and student work in demonstrating their achievement of student learning outcomes is dubious at best • Effective assessment needs both understanding of and participation by the students who will demonstrate their achievement of SLOs

7. The Student as Vector: Involvement in Assessment • Understanding learning and assessment from the student’s perspective leads to more meaningful and usable assessment data • Meaningful assessment strategies have to be important to both student and institution • Student performance depends on student engagement, so assessment processes should see the student as a collaborator in improving learning

8. THREE KEY QUESTIONS: • HOW DO OUR STUDENTS DIFFER FROM THE STUDENTS WE WERE? • HOW DO OUR INSTITUTIONS DIFFER FROM THE INSTITUTIONS WE ATTENDED? • HOW HAS THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT CHANGED?

9. How Are Students Different—as Learners? • Students learn—and think about learning—differently • Blame Bert and Ernie for part of the difference • Early learning patterns value: • Immediacy • Brevity • Interactivity • Reactivity • Learning as Gratification

10. How Are Students Different—as Learners? • Accommodating learning “styles” is less the issue than understanding new ways of thinking and communicating • Internet research replaces the stacks • Wikipedia replaces Britannica • Facebook and Twitter partially replace conventional social interaction and engagement • Ours is a world of digital natives

11. How Are Students Different? • Students are increasingly diverse: • Race and ethnicity • Gender • Class • Age • Academic context • Preparedness • Employment status • External pressures

12. How Are Students Different? • Students are consumers, more likely to see the college experience as a transaction than as a transformation • Students are likely to concentrate solely on college less than in the past because of jobs, families, and other obligations

13. How Are Institutions Different? • Much less autonomy: accountability to various stakeholders, including parents, boards, and legislators • Many more reporting requirements: transparency requires communication • Much more variable “subjects” (students)

14. How Has the Learning Environment Changed? • Technology • Multiplicity of goals and outcomes, determined by students and stakeholders rather than institutions • Wide range of academic ability and interest

15. Yet Many Old Ways Remain • Discipline-based learning • Traditional formats • Implicit valorizing of traditional student life ways • Traditional assessment assumptions and strategies • Reductiveness of data-collection processes • Relative meaninglessness of criteria used to judge institutional effectiveness

16. How Do We Produce Meaningful Assessment? • Stop pretending that learning occurs in a closed, controllable environment—but establish systems that work across the institution • Plan to deal with variability of data and sources—but aim at consistency as well • Engage students not only in the process of learning but also in the process of assessment

17. And How Do We Engage Students in Assessment? • Informing them of outcomes and expectations • Incorporating their strategies for learning and communicating in our work with them • Aiming at “deep learning” • Incorporating assessments in student assignments frequently, deliberately, and openly

18. How Do We Engage Students in Assessment? • Showing them that their engagement has an effect, beyond vague promises of improvement • Making them active elements in the process rather than passive subjects of institutional research • Helping them understand the connection between their learning in a course or activity and institutional goals for them

19. And How Might This Happen in Arkansas?

20. Robert T. Mundhenk • Consultant in Higher Education Assessment • asmt357@aol.com