Learn to analyze student assessment tools

Madison, Wis.—December 4, 2008 — How do you evaluate published instruments for student assessment? According to Linda Suskie, vice president of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, you need to ask the right questions.

Before you begin you’ll want to have a clear purpose for the test and understand the learning outcomes to be assessed. And because testing sets up expectations that you’ll do something with the results, you’ll also need to know what you plan to do based on the findings. Are you prepared to take steps to improve teaching or make changes to your curriculum based on what you find out?

The foundation of successful assessment is having clear goals and learning outcomes with clear strategies to achieve those goals. Suskie discussed many of the published instruments that measure general education competencies and other popular published instruments during the recent online seminar, Choosing a Published Instrument to Assess Student Learning: 2008.

When you’re considering various published tests, you can generally find information about the price, learn how to administer the test and obtain sample test questions from the publisher. Suskie also addresses more complex issues such as whether the test matches your needs and whether it’s practical to administer. She also goes further into finding out about the instrument’s validity, reliability and the quality of the norm groups.

After asking these questions and examining the published instruments, you may find that your learning goals don’t match the published tests’ goals. Or the published tests may not provide the needed diagnostic information. Then developing a local assessment may be your best option. In the next (and final) seminar in this series, Suskie will address locally developed alternatives to published instruments.

If you missed the seminar and would like to purchase it for your institution, you can order the program in CD or print transcript format, both of which include the presenter's handouts.

Magna Publications is a leading publisher of newsletters and other information products in the higher education segment. Magna also manages onsite and online conferences on topics of interest to higher education.

For more information please contact David Burns, Publisher, Magna Publications, Inc., at 608-227-8109, or dburns@magnapubs.com.