Assessment+in+OBE


 * What is assessment? **
 * What knowledge, skills, and/or abilities should a student have when they are done with your course? When they graduate from your institution?

How do you know if students have achieved this?

 “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 **focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education**.” (Thomas A. Angelo, AAHE Bulletin, November 1995, p.7).

 “An assessment is a **tool designed to observe students’ behavior and produce data** that can be used **to draw reasonable inferences about what students know**.” (James W. Pellegrino, “The Challenge of Knowing What Students Know,” @http://bearcenter.berkeley.edu/measurement/docs/Pellegrino_1_1.pdf )

 Assessment should be seen as a continuous process, as if conducting as a closed loop (practice constantly informing improvement of the process) or, more tongue-in-cheek, as a spiral (an unending process) ||

A course may use multiple assessment formats with a combination of peer assessment, self-assessment, and assessment by the instructor
 * What are Assessment Formats? **


 *  1. Traditional assessment ** refers to testing methods commonly used in education, such as multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-false, matching, short-answer, or essay tests. (Short answer and essay questions are considered forms of traditional assessment, but they may also be thought of as authentic assessments if there is no single correct answer.) Traditional assessment methods are often called "forced-choice" or "objective tests" because there is a correct answer that students must choose from a predetermined set of responses. The tests often focus on measuring basic knowledge or comprehension.

 2.**Authentic assessment**, also known as alternative or performance-based assessment, requires students to develop responses to questions or tasks rather than select them from a predetermined list. This group includes projects, case studies, portfolios, and other activities that present students with realistic or real-world tasks. The activities usually involve higher-order outcomes where students must demonstrate critical or creative thinking, the application of essential knowledge, or the mastery of complex performance skills.

 A rubric is often used with authentic activities to help instructors to assess student work. A rubric is a scoring tool that articulates the criteria to be used in assessing levels of student performance. A rubric tells students what is expected and helps the instructor to grade student work. However, a rubric can be time-consuming to design. You might ask, Why use rubrics?

 3. **Peer and self-assessment** methods engage students in the evaluation and feedback process. Student performance is usually evaluated by an instructor. It is less common for learners to evaluate each other or to evaluate themselves. As discussed in the Unit 3 resources, there are several advantages and disadvantages to weigh in using these methods. However, if one of the program goals is to give students more responsibility for their own learning, then peer and self-assessment opportunities fit with that goal.

Resources: [|assessment in curriculum design]

[|Authentic Assessment Toolbox]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif';">[|Understanding by Design—a useful introduction to results-focused design]