Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) Assessment began in the
second term of the Bush Administration as one response to the growing
discontent voiced by business people and parents, who thought that higher
education was turning out graduates at a very high cost but without the skills and
knowledge needed to be productive workers and citizens. Accrediting agencies adopted the approach and
it is gradually filtering into every level of higher education.
Here at Ashland considerable resources were
put towards assessment, both in dollars and in faculty, student, and administrators' time. On pain of not being re-accredited,
we were expected to develop a “culture of assessment” (as opposed, say, to a
culture of learning). But is there any
solid evidence that SLO assessment actually improves student learning? In this column, Dean Erik Gilbert argues that
no one knows. It is high time this question was asked and answered in a serious way. Not everyone argues that SLO Assessment is
completely useless, though there are some who do. The real questions are these:
does the time, effort, and money spent on SLO assessment yield increments of
learning commensurate with the costs? And, does the approach to teaching, learning,
and the human soul implied in assessment actually do some harm to teaching and learning? Here are Erik Gilbert's conclusions:
If advocates could point to evidence that good assessment has led to improvements that are external to the process itself — like changes in a college’s reputation, ranking, or employment prospects for its students — I suspect faculty would give it more support.
Assessment is one of those things that we keep telling ourselves will pay off if we could just get it right, but we never seem to get there. It’s time for us to demand that the accreditors who are driving assessment provide evidence that it offers benefits commensurate with the expense that goes into it. We should no longer accept on faith or intuition that learning-outcomes assessment has positive and consequential effects on our institutions — or students.Here is the whole column:
Does Assessment Make Colleges Better? Who Knows?
By Erik Gilbert
AUGUST
14, 2015
Last year the younger
of my two sons went off to college. As we went through the search process, we
looked at university and department websites, checked faculty research
interests, looked for evidence of faculty involving students in their research,
flinched at the prices, marveled at the climbing walls, and considered quality
of the food on campus. Basically we did all the things a typical middle-class
family would do in a college search, along with a few insider concerns like
looking at faculty publications and grants and checking that the university
libraries had at least one of my books. In retrospect one question that never
crossed my mind was, "I wonder what this place’s assessment program is
like?" I suspect I am not alone in this.
My lack of curiosity about
assessment when making an important choice about my children’s education
probably surprises no one, but it should. It’s unsurprising in that no one,
higher-ed insider or not, ever seems to worry about this when choosing a
college. No admissions officer ever touted his institution’s assessment
results. No parent ever exclaimed, "Suzy just got into Prestigious College
X. I hear they are just nailing their student learning outcomes!" But it’s
still a little surprising in that I am a professor and an administrator who has
been involved in assessment in various forms for a long time. I have been
dutifully doing assessment in my classes almost since I started teaching a
decade and half ago.
