Components

Measuring student learning is typically delineated by direct and indirect measures. It is generally recommended that these measures be utilized together in order to develop a more comprehensive picture of students’ learning in a degree program.

• Direct Measures are the most common form of student learning assessment. They measure the student’s performance on pedagogical activities within a course, and allow faculty to gauge directly a student’s performance in their course and across their degree program. Direct measures include, but are not limited to: course exams (mid-terms, finals, etc.), quizzes, papers, portfolios, presentations, performance, profession-specific mock exams (NCLEX, LSAT, Praxis, GRE, etc.).
• Indirect Measures are often utilized outside of student learning assessment and can be used to gauge the correlates of direct measures to other outcomes. Self-report surveys of students, focus groups, interviews, course and degree evaluations, alumni surveys, and data trends (retention rates, course enrollment, student success rates in courses, etc.) are all examples of indirect measures.
• Using both direct and indirect measures together can provide a powerful assessment of student learning at the degree and course level. As an example, if a survey of major degree students reveal a strong longitudinal trend indicating that a considerable majority of students want to learn specific skill and utilize it in specific areas of a profession related to the major, but course level assessments indicate that students are struggling with or not attaining a level of mastery with skills and knowledge related to those aforementioned areas, this differentiation between what students wish to learn and what they are struggling with provides faculty with more insight into how they can strategically tailor pedagogy and other tools such as advising to address the gap, thereby improving both course and degree outcomes.

Like direct and indirect measures, approaches to assessment generally fall into two categories: summative and formative assessment. Both can be used to triangulate and evaluate student learning outcomes within a course. Formative assessment is assessment for growing learning, while summative assessment is assessment of total learning.

• Summative assessment is generally preferred in degree and course-level reporting of student learning, particularly at the degree-level. This type of assessment is meant to gauge the totality of student learning by comparing a student’s performance against specific learning outcomes to provide a measurable quantity of learning, such as a grade. Formative assessment usually happens at the midpoint or endpoint of a course and can include the entirety of or specific sections of midterms, final exams, and final papers/projects.
• Formative assessment is the means by which students receive feedback and identify strengths and weaknesses in their skills and knowledge in order to improve on a given set of learning outcomes over the course of a term. Weekly quizzes, reflections, and one-on-one advising sessions are examples of ways in which assessment can be formative.
• Using both formative and summative assessment is recommended. For example, if weekly surveys of students’ confidence in their learning reveal that students are overall struggling with acquiring a particular set of knowledge that will be necessary in order to learn a skill later in the course, the instructor has time to adapt to the challenges students are facing to improve the acquisition of the later skillset and improve student success overall.

Tool & Forms	Common Assessment Uses	Assessment Strategy Notes
Multiple choice, fill in the blank tests	Can be used for both summative and formative assessment	If you are using multi-choice exam to assess multiple learning outcomes, align each question to specific outcomes so that you can better determine student performance on each outcome relative to aggregate and individual questions
Rubrics	Common for qualitative-based course work. Can be used for both summative and formative assessment.	Rubrics can allow you to share multitudes of feedback to students. For degree programs, standard or common rubrics across courses for which an outcome of assessment is measured can help maintain consistency.
Surveys	Common in indirect assessment at both the course and degree level. Generally recommended for the flexibility and speed of measurement, particularly in online modes.	Surveys are powerful tools that can allow the surveyor to better identify and address problem areas in student learning at both the degree and course level. For assistance with online surveys, please feel free to reach out to Institution Research and Effectiveness.
Focus Groups	Common in indirect assessment at the degree level.	Focus groups used in conjunction with surveys can allow for more qualitative data of information revealed in a largely quantitative survey to be explicated, effectively allowing the nuances of issues related to student learning to be discovered
Portfolios	Can be designed as both formative and summative types of assessment	Portfolios can be used both at the course and degree level to detail student learning and acquisition of skills across the content of a course and a degree program.
Projects	Often multi-disciplinary and multifaceted in use of qualitative and quantitative skills/knowledge. Engaging students in research, structured community engagement, and real-world simulations can be the basis and culmination of projects	Projects are a great way to combine formative and summative assessment of multiple learning outcomes. They are appropriate at both the degree and course level.
Presentations	Generally summative, but may be formative.	Oral and poster presentations assessed with a rubric can be utilized to assess multiple skill sets and can address both course and degree learning outcomes.

• Rice University Student Workload Calculator (Rice University)
• 14 Rules for Writing Multiple-Choice Questions (Brigham Young University)
• Appropriate Criteria: Key to Effective Rubrics (Frontiers)
• Writing Survey Questions (Pew Research Center)
• The Power of Portfolios: A Positive Practice (Edutopia)
• How Students Benefit From Project-Based Assessments (Schoology)
• Tips for Developing an Effective Presentation (Rochester Institute of Technology)