John Warner who blogs for IHE, has posted a piece that proposes ways to do better assessment. He has some interesting ideas about measuring things, like student food security, that contribute to or detract from a “learning atmosphere.” I am not sure about the details of what he proposes, but he makes an important point. The current highly bureaucratized state of assessment ignores anything that is external to the curriculum and the classroom. I would argue that most of higher ed’s serious problems lie elsewhere and are far more complex and structural than anything that can be addressed by adding an extra critical thinking exercise or what ever your loop closer of choice is.
I like this passage, which perfectly captures the reality of assessment as it exists at the chalkboard face (or maybe white-board face would now be more appropriate).
As a frontline instructor, my role in the larger assessment regime has been largely pro-forma and somewhat mysterious. I have been asked to randomly collect artifacts that fit the “learning objectives” for the course – learning objectives imposed from somewhere above me[1]– and hand them over to some other body that does something to them, and then I do it again.
Assessment as practiced at the department and institutional level could not have been less relevant to my day-to-day work.
Are students improving at writing? The answer is yes.
How do I know? Because I do…and because students say so.
Take my word for it, except of course, taking my word for it is apparently not enough.
[1]The learning objectives are usually vague and unobjectionable and easy enough to attach to something I was planning on doing anyway.