Online Resources for Higher Education Assessment

9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning

• From the American Association for Higher Education Assessment Forum. AAHE went out of business in summer 2005 and their website is no longer available. This page is from Indiana University Kokomo.
• Also see What is "Good" Assessment? A Synthesis of Principles of Good Practice.

Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education

Assessment in Higher Education

Assessment Rubrics

• Winona State University's extensive list of rubrics for various disciplines, skills, and college-level assignments includes examples from many campuses. Note the link you can use to suggest additional examples.
• Examples of rubrics for general education outcomes from Bowling Green State University. Also has links to other information about assessment rubrics.
• Examples of rubrics for general education outcomes from Brenau University. Select
  Forms and Rubrics and follow the drop-down menus. (Word documents.)
• Examples of rubrics for general education outcomes from California State University, Fresno, with suggestions for developing and using rubrics.
• Washington State University rubric for critical thinking.
• Sites designed for K-12 education, but useful as models and adaptable for higher education performance assessments.
• • Assessment Matters! has lots of rubric examples, plus other K-12-oriented assessment links.
  • Assessment and Rubric Information: Examples of evaluation scales/rubrics for various student and faculty activities.
  • Rubric generators create rubrics for various topics.
  • RubiStar lets you find, create, and save rubrics. From the Advanced Learning Technologies (ALTEC) project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.
  • Steps in creating an assessment rubric, from the WebQuest site at San Diego State University.

Association for Institutional Research

• Internet Resources for Institutional Research is an extensive, well-organized list of links on a wide range of topics including assessment.
• Measuring Quality: Choosing Among Surveys and Other Assessments of College Quality describes and compares nationally standardized assessment instruments.
• "Best practices" series on assessment in the disciplines. The first two volumes deal with assessment of mathematics programs and business schools.
• The Electronic AIR email newsletter sometimes includes items related to assessment in higher education. Back issues are available online.

Association of American Colleges & Universities

Benchmarking

• EBI Educational Benchmarking
  • See Knowledge Base / Articles for EBI's approach to benchmarking.
• Higher Education Benchmarking, from BearingPoint
  • Information about and from benchmarking studies in human resources, research management, student affairs, & financial analysis.

Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Center for Education Assessment

Collegiate Learning Assessment Project (CLA)

• Standardized assessment of general education skills & abilities.
• Reports emphasize institutional value-added.
• From the Council for Aid to Education (CAE).

Commission on the Future of Higher Education

Council for Advancement of Standards in Higher Education

Distance Education

• Assessment resources for on-line courses, from the University of Texas at Austin Center for Instructional Technologies.
• Distance Education Clearinghouse, from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.

Educational Testing Service (ETS)

EDUCAUSE Transformative Assessment Project

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)

Faculty Development Associates

Glossaries: Assessment Terms

• Assessment in Higher Education includes a list of glossaries.
• Assessment and Accreditation Glossary, from California State University, Stanislaus (pdf file).
• Assessment Definitions, from California State University, Long Beach
• Assessment Glossary, from Dartmouth College
• Assessment Glossary, from Millersville University.
• Assessment Glossary, from the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
• Assessment Glossary of Terms, from California State University, Sacramento.
• Assessment Terminology: A Glossary of Useful Terms.
• Assessment Terms, from Northern Illinois University.
  Beyond Confusion: An Assessment Glossary, from Association of American Colleges & Universities Peer Review.
• CRESST Assessment Glossary, from UCLA's National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.
• Dictionary of Student Outcome Assessment. Searcheable. From James Madison University.
• Glossary, from Borough of Manhattan Community College's General Education Assessment Resource Center.
• Glossary, from the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Georgia.
• Glossary, from Miami University.
• Glossary, from the University of Texas at Austin
• Glossary of Assessment Terms, from the American Public University System
• Glossary of Assessment Terms, from SUNY-Potsdam (pdf document).
• Glossary of Evaluation Terms (searcheable) and Teacher Evaluation Glossary from The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University.
• Glossary of Outcomes Assessment Terms, from Montgomery College.
• Glossary of Useful Terms, from the Massachussets Dept. of Education's System for Adult Basic Education (SABES).
• Local Lexicon of Assessment Terms, from California State University, Fresno.
• Learning Outcomes Assessment Glossary, from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
• Student Outcomes Assessment Review and Report: Key Terms, from Tidewater Community College.
• Unit-Level Effectiveness Assessment Documentation Terms, from Austin Community College (pdf file).

Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)

Institutional support for enhancing student assessment

National Assessment Governing Board

• Information about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). These are assessments of students in grades 4, 8, and 12, not of college students. Relevant to assessment in higher education as illustration of a current national model for assessing student learning.
• The NCES site "The Nation's Report Card" has details about and reports from NAEP assessments in various subject areas.
• Other sites includes information about the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

The National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment

• The web site includes summaries of NCTLA research projects.
• NCTLA is part of Penn State's Center for the Study of Higher Education.

National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC)

• A project of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
• NPEC student outcomes projects focus on assessment policy, methods, coordination, and/or data use.
• pdf files of papers from some NPEC projects on assessment are available.
• Definitions and assessment methods for various general-education areas.
• Answers (Accessing National Surveys With Electronic Research Sources)
  • Online tools for information about national datasets of institutional data (IPEDS, etc.). What surveys are there? What do they ask? How are standard variables defined? Etc.
  • Annotated bibliographies on developing surveys and on using national datasets.

National Study of Living-Learning Programs

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

• Nationally-normed survey of students' exposure to good practices in undergraduate education.
• pdf demonstration versions of the survey.
• Register your institution online for the next administration.
• Some institutions' assessment sites include NSSE reports.
• The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) taps entering students' pre-college experiences and their expectations for participating in the educational practices that NSSE examines.
• The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) taps faculty opinions about students' exposure to the educational practices that NSSE examines.
• NSSE is designed for four-year institutions. The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) is a similar project for two-year institutions.

Nationally Standardized Instruments

• Inventory of Higher Education Assessment Instruments, from the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement (NCPI) and the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research (SIHER). Information about instruments for institutional effectiveness, basic skills (general education), affective development, and major-field assessment.
• ICSSIA Assessment Instrument Project: Searchable database of information about (some) nationally-standardized surveys and tests. The executive summary (pdf file) has additional information about each instrument.
• Measuring Quality: Choosing Among Surveys and Other Assessments of College Quality (pdf file). Describes and compares nationally standardized assessment instruments.
• NPECSourcebooks on Assessment include definitions, information about tests and other instruments. Volumes include Definitions and Assessment Methods for: (pdf files)
  • Communication, Leadership, Information Literacy, Quantitative Reasoning and Quantitative Skills
  • Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Writing
• Notes: 
  • Some instrument names and details have changed since these reports were published. E.g., ETS' Academic Profile is now the MAPP (Measure of Academic Progress & Proficiency) and HERI's College Student Survey is now the College Senior Survey. If the reports' links don't forward you to the latest versions, search the publishers' sites. 
  • Instruments too recent to be included in these reports include:
    • Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE).
    • General education instruments GOAL and UniLOA.
    • Profile of the American College Student (Profile). Demographics, campus involvement, technology use, values & beliefs, and personal development.

Portfolio Assessment

• Extensive list of links to information about alternative assessment and electronic portfolios, from Helen Barrett at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
• Catalyst Portfolio Project Builder, from the University of Washington.
• Report on computer- based portfolio assessment project at Palomar College.
• Diagnostic Digital Portfolio at Alverno College. Enter and Demo are restricted to Alverno students, faculty, & staff.
• Elon University student portfolios. Information for students, with online examples of various types of portfolios.
• Epsilen ePortfolio, from Bowling Green State University.
• Faculty and student guides for Focus Assessment ePortfolio, from Buena Vista University (pdf files).
• Günter Krumme in the University of Washington Geography Department has posted information about learning portfolios at UW, in the department, and at other institutions.
• Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research campus-based research projects on whether & how the use of portfolios affects student learning.
• Kalamazoo College web-based portfolio, including examples and links to Internet resources.
• myMAPP (Mapping Academic Performance through e-Portfolios), from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
• Open Source Portfolio (OSP), an open source software project coordinated with Sakai, an open source learning environment (course management system) project.
  • Up-to-date information includes OSP documentation. The OSP 2.0 Demo site was not available when last checked.
  • The article mentioned in the University of Minnesota Electronic Portfolio entry, below, includes information about OSP (p. 9).
• University of Minnesota's Electronic Portfolio. Development of the University of Minnesota's
  ePortfolio system is described in the 2003 Educause article Electronic portfolios need standards to thrive (pdf file, requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or better).
• RosE Portfolio from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The demo and the student and instructor
  Help manuals (pdf files) were not available when last checked.
• Truman State University portfolio project: FAQ, portfolio prompts, and portfolio guidelines for students and faculty.
• University of Denver Portfolio Community. Guest registration allows browsing.
• University of Minnesota DuluthePortfolio, including examples and resources for students and faculty. Click on the Navigate menu's cubes to see what's available. (Yes, they're cubes. Try it and see.)
• Commercial products to manage on-line portfolios
  • Angel ePortfolio assessment and management tool, can link to Angel's learning management tools.
  • Blackboard Portfolio, part of Blackboard's Academic Suite.
  • CampusTools HigherEd and CampusWide from TK20 have portfolio tools as part of a system to gather and organize assessment information. 
  • Chalk & Wire's e-Portfolio.
  • iWebfolio, from Nuventive.
  • TaskStream's e-portfolio assessment tools.
  • TrueOutcomes offers professional portfolios for individual students and course-related juried portfolios for performance assessment. Performance portfolios can be summarized for the unit, the course, or the learning outcome.
  • Also see Helen Barrett's list of commercial e-portfolio vendors.
  • In the ASSESS discussion-list archive, select May 2005 and scroll down to Electronic Portfolio Software and Assessment, Renee Corbin's list of e-portfolio products. Open the message and then click [text/html] at the bottom of the page for a version with "live" (clickable) links.

Qualitative data analysis methods and tools

• In the ASSESS discussion-list archive select September 2007 and scroll down to the thread
  Qualitative Data Analysis Question, initiated by Mitzi Lewis. In October 2007, scroll down to the thread
  Qualitative Data Analysis Question - Summary for Mitzi's summary of responses and some more discussion.

Service-learning and assessment

• Aberdeen Service-Learning Project at Northern State University.
• Assessment links from the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

StudentTracker, from the National Student Clearinghouse

Tools to Help Organize Assessment Information

• Assessment Management Software. This 2006 ASSESS post from Margie Hobbs at the University of Mississippi includes a Word document with information from a number of vendors. (Thanks, Margie.) A link to download the document is at the bottom of the archived message. The ASSESS archive has earlier posts in this thread from folks who have used some of the products.
• Blackboard Outcomes System. Platform for assessment processes, information, and reports. Integrated with the Blackboard Academic Suite for course information, surveys, document and portfolio management, and user-community interaction.
• eLumen Achievement database for assessment processes, rubrics, results, and reports. Select
  How eLumen Achievement Models the Essential Process for annotated screen shots.
• CampusTools HigherEd and CampusWide from Tk20 include tools for electronic portfolios and online surveys.
• Institutional Effectiveness Associates offer guidebooks, workshops, and organizing worksheets.
• myMAPP (Mapping Academic Performance through e-Portfolios), from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
• openIGOR: A free Linux-based open-source program to manage information about program outcomes and assessment-related documents. From Coker College.
• TaskStream's Accountability Management System, competency assessment, and resource/communications management tools.
• The Teacher Education Assessment System (TEAS), the Education Program Identification Framework (EPIF), and the CEA-Candidate Tracking (CEA-CAT), from the Center for Education Assessment, facilitate NCATE and state-level education accreditation reviews. They can also be used to organize program assessment information in other academic areas.  Select Software.
• ThinkTank, from GroupSystems, facilitates collaboration and records and stores information from assessment group meetings.
• TracDat database for assessment processes, information, and reports. From Nuventive .
• TrueCurriculum, from TrueOutcomes, keeps track of course-level learning outcomes and can create a course*outcomes matrix.
• Waypoint Outcomes keeps track of assignment-level outcomes within and across courses. From Subjective Metrics. Note: this site disables your browser's (B)ack button.
• WEAVEonline database for assessment processes, information, and reports. Originally developed at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Urban Universities Portfolio Project

• Project funded by Pew Charitable Trusts, cosponsored by AAHE.
  • 6 urban comprehensive universities.
  • Specifying and communicating institutional characteristics and effectiveness, including undergraduate learning outcomes.
• Overview, project plans, institution profiles and snapshots, preliminary portfolios.
• Statistical portrait project (PUMA: Portrait of Universities with Metropolitan Alliances).
• Also see assessment pages from participating institutions:
  • California State: Sacramento
  • Georgia State University
  • IUPUI
  • Portland State University
  • University of Illinois at Chicago
  • University of Massachussetts Boston

What is "Good" Assessment? A Synthesis of Principles of Good Practice (pdf file)

• Five dimensions of good assessment practice, summarized from national organizations and assessment experts. With references to and summaries of the sources.
• From Linda Suskie at MSA-CHE.

What Outcomes Assessment Misses

• From TLT Group's Flashlight program, so it focuses on assessment about technology -- but the general points apply to any assessment project.