I spent my summer vacation like many assessment professionals – steeped in data! Summer is when we have the time in our office to review assessment data from both the general education curriculum and the career and technical programs on campus. I will admit to being a little bit disappointed as I reviewed some of the data sets. What emerged from the results was a form of grade inflation in student learning outcomes.
The College has been very deliberate in its message about the use of assessment data for improving student learning in the classroom – NOT faculty evaluation. However, I believe faculty still harbor concerns that the data on assessment will be used as an evaluation tool, and this is causing a new type of inflation not of grades, but of data. I’m not sure what to call this trend. Data-gate, data-inflation, or learning-inflation? All in all it does not benefit the students or the faculty. I am still grappling with how to address this with faculty. We have talked about the basics like Bloom’s Taxonomy to ensure instruments are assessing at the right cognitive level. We have also discussed the importance of assessment as a tool to improve student learning in the classroom.
One encouraging story I can share from this summer involves a faculty member that assessed some different approaches to affect student’s time management skills in a large discipline project in the course. The faculty member was excited to have a “before and after” picture of student performance that will influence how the project will be approached in the future, as well as identifying best practices for the class.
This coming academic year I will continue to work with faculty in all our courses and programs. I will send the same message – assessment is about improving student learning, NOT faculty evaluation. We will discuss Bloom’s and look at potential assessment instruments and I will patiently wait until next summer – hoping to see a new trend in the data.
