Assessment at Highline

Please also refer to Highline’s primary assessment web site.

What is student assessment and why is it important?

Assessment helps colleges to understand the answers to big questions about student learning. Assessment can help us learn more about our students – who is learning and how much they are learning, and also about our course content – how much and which elements of the content are students learning effectively.   (Angelo & Cross, 1993).

Three levels of assessment are commonly used at community colleges, Highline included:

Course level assessment

This assessment involves assuring that the course learning outcomes (CLOs) are being met by students.  CLOs always specify what the students should be able to do, or know, as a result of learning and practicing the associated course content.  Occasionally, as in many technical fields,  CLOs may also specify the criteria under which the outcome is to be assessed, and what level of proficiency must be achieved.

A key concept of course level assessment is that CLOs should be ‘mapped’ to various elements of course content, including course activities, readings, assignments, and assessments.  This mapping is used to provide evidence and ensure that the student has adequate opportunities to practice and apply particular knowledge and skills throughout the course of the class, i.e. prior to the outcome being assessed.

Characteristics of effective course learning outcomes

Checklist for designing effective course-level outcomes

Alignment table for mapping CLOs to course content

Writing effective course-level outcomes – Highline workshop recording from the LTC (7.5 mins)

Program-level assessment

Program-Level Outcomes (PLOs) are statements that specify what students will know, be able to do, or demonstrate when they have completed a specific degree or certificate. These outcomes are available in the catalog on the program degrees and certificates pages. At Highline, PLOs are only applicable to Prof-Tech Programs, and are reviewed on an ongoing basis, especially as they relate to program reviews.  For some programs, PLOs are determined by industry standards and may even be specified by industry accreditors.

College-wide assessment

College-wide core competencies are statements that specify what students will know, be able to do, or demonstrate when they have completed any program of study at Highline. Core competencies are available in the catalog on the college-wide competencies page.

Core competencies are evaluated by using a set of rubrics from the  American Association of Colleges and Universities.  VALUE rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) provide needed tools to assess students’ own authentic work, to determine whether and how well students are meeting graduation level achievement in learning outcomes that both employers and faculty consider essential. There are sixteen rubrics, organized by learning outcome.

As part of Guided Pathways work,  Highline is currently piloting professional learning opportunities aimed at increasing faculty knowledge, expertise, and comfort in using these common rubrics to design assignments and assess student work with the goal of improving instruction.  For more information, you may reach out to the assessment committee.

Formative vs. Summative Assessment

Summative assessment is used at the end of an instructional lesson, unit, or module to evaluate student learning.  Examples include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a paper
• quizzes

Formative assessment helps monitor student learning to determine which students are learning various aspects of the course content and how well.

Some types of formative assessment include students:

• submitting an exit ticket with a question about the day’s topic
• holding up a certain number of fingers indicating how well they understand the topic
• using a polling system either in a face-to-face class or in the learning management system

These types of assessments are designed to have no point value (or minimal point value) and help the instructor determine if additional content or scaffolding needs to be delivered, while there’s still time to help the students cement their learning prior to a high stakes assessment.

For more information, visit the LTC formative assessment page.

Highline assessment tool

Documenting assessment activities and sharing them with others on campus helps us all improve our teaching methods. This documentation process is done through the Assessment Tool and Google Drive submission.  For more information, please visit the Highline assessment how-to web page.

Watch Highline assessment committee members present on how to use the assessment tool (Highline login required).  video recording

 

Funding for assessment projects

 

Professional development opportunities

 

View More…

 

Assessment related books in LTC collection

Additional resources and scholarship

General

• Creating Assessments for All Learners – adapting assessments for multicultural learners (Phi Delta Kappa International)
• How to Assess Students’ Learning and Performance (Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
• Assessment Basics  (Cornell Univ.)
• Student Assessment in Teaching and Learning (Vanderbilt Univ.)
• Educational Assessment  (Faculty Focus)

Formative and Summative Assessments

• Formative and Summative Assessments  (Yale Univ.)
• Summative and Formative Assessment (Indiana Univ.)
• Formative Assessment (Hunter College)

Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Bloom’s Taxonomy teacher toolkit
• Discussion on history/revisions to the taxonomy (Vanderbilt Univ.)

References:

Angelo, T.A., & Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers (2nd Ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Rhodes, T. (2010). Assessing outcomes and improving achievement: Tips and tools for using rubrics. Association of American Colleges and Universities.