Scribd
Upload
84 views2 pages

Nineprinciples PDF

The nine principles of good practice for assessing student learning developed by the American Association of Higher Education focus on using assessment as a tool for educational improvement rather than an end in itself. The principles emphasize that assessment should reflect multidimensional and integrated learning, have clear educational values and program purposes, consider both student outcomes and experiences, be ongoing rather than episodic, involve representatives from across the educational community, begin with issues of use, and be part of broader efforts to promote change. Assessment helps educators meet their responsibilities to students and the public by providing information to improve educational performance.

Uploaded by

Sher Awan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
84 views2 pages

Nineprinciples PDF

The nine principles of good practice for assessing student learning developed by the American Association of Higher Education focus on using assessment as a tool for educational improvement rather than an end in itself. The principles emphasize that assessment should reflect multidimensional and integrated learning, have clear educational values and program purposes, consider both student outcomes and experiences, be ongoing rather than episodic, involve representatives from across the educational community, begin with issues of use, and be part of broader efforts to promote change. Assessment helps educators meet their responsibilities to students and the public by providing information to improve educational performance.

Uploaded by

Sher Awan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Nine Principles Of Good Practice For

Assessing Student Learning


The American Association of Higher Education has devised nine principles of good practice for assessing
student learning. These can also be helpful when thinking about how to avoid plagiarism and cheating in
online courses.

The principles are:

1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment is not an end in
itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, begins with and enacts a
vision of the kinds of learning we most value for students and strive to help them achieve. Educational
values should drive not only what we choose to assess but also how we do so. Where questions
about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in
measuring what’s easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.

2. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional,


integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. It entails not only
what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and
abilities but values, attitudes, and habits of mind that affect both academic success and performance
beyond the classroom. Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse
array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to
reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more
complete and accurate picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students’
educational experience.

3. Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated
purposes. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. It entails comparing educational performance
with educational purposes and expectations—those derived from the institution’s mission, from
faculty intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students’ own goals. Where
program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward
clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where
and how program goals will be taught and learned. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the
cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful.

4. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to
those outcomes. Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students “end up” matters
greatly. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experience along the way—about
the curricula, teaching, and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can
help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes
the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.

5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic. Assessment is a process whose power is
cumulative. Though isolated, “one-shot” assessment can be better than none, improvement is best
fostered when assessment entails a linked series of activities undertaken over time. This may mean
tracking the process of individual students, or of cohorts of students; it may mean collecting the same
examples of student performance or using the same instrument semester after semester. The point
is to monitor progress toward intended goals in a spirit of continous improvement. Along the way, the
assessment process itself should be evaluated and refined in light of emerging insights.
6. Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from across the educational
community are involved. Student learning is a campus-wide responsibility, and assessment is a way
of enacting that responsibility. Thus, while assessment efforts may start small, the aim over time is to
involve people from across the educational community. Faculty play an especially important role, but
assessment’s questions can’t be fully addressed without participation by student-affairs educators,
librarians, administrators, and students. Assessment may also involve individuals from beyond the
campus (alumni/ae, trustees, employers) whose experience can enrich the sense of appropriate
aims and standards for learning. Thus understood, assessment is not a task for small groups of
experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider, better-informed attention to student learning by
all parties with a stake in its improvement.

7. Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use and illuminates questions
that people really care about. Assessment recognizes the value of information in the process of
improvement. But to be useful, information must be connected to issues or questions that people
really care about. This implies assessment approaches that produce evidence that relevant parties
will find credible, suggestive, and applicable to decisions that need to be made. It means thinking
in advance about how the information will be used, and by whom. The point of assessment is not to
gather data and return “results”; it is a process that starts with the questions of decision-makers, that
involves them in the gathering and interpreting of data, and that informs and helps guide continous
improvement.

8. Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of a larger set of conditions that
promote change. Assessment alone changes little. Its greatest contribution comes on campuses
where the quality of teaching and learning is visibly valued and worked at. On such campuses, the
push to improve educational performance is a visible and primary goal of leadership; improving the
quality of undergraduate education is central to the institution’s planning, budgeting, and personnel
decisions. On such campuses, information about learning outcomes is seen as an integral part of
decision making, and avidly sought.

9. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the public. There is a
compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a responsibility to the publics that
support or depend on us to provide information about the ways in which our students meet goals
and expectations. But that responsibility goes beyond the reporting of such information; our deeper
obligation—to ourselves, our students, and society—is to improve. Those to whom educators are
accountable have a corresponding obligation to support such attempts at improvement.

Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J.
Marchese; Kay M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright

These principles were developed under the auspices of the AAHE Assessment Forum with support from the Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education with additional support for publication and dissemination from the Exxon Education
Foundation. Copies may be made without restriction.

You might also like