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...learning. --Graham Gibbs, Oxford University, and Claire Simpson, Open University, UK
These are times of great uncertainty and challenge for those of us who have devoted our energies to encouraging faculty and student affairs colleagues to assess student learning outcomes for the purposes of improving academic progress and student services. We know the academy has been slow to realize the need for assessment to guide improvement, but now some faculty in virtually every institution are at least trying it out. Certainly the regional and disciplinary associations have been emphasizing outcomes assessment, and this is making a difference at most institutions today. Creative work on new tools to assess critical thinking, reflective judgment, and deep learning are being developed by faculty, some individually and some in consortia such as the one Wabash College is leading (www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/nationalstudy). At last, colleagues across the country are becoming aware of the potential for positive change offered by the kind of assessment we have championed for all these years.
Unfortunately, if we listen more carefully, we learn that the kind of assessment we believe is beginning to guide improvements in student learning is not what is being discussed by higher education policy makers. It is assessment for accountability, not improvement, that stakeholders outside the academy are proposing.
So those of us in the assessment community are asking each other, "Can assessment for accountability and assessment for improvement coexist? Can the current accountability focus actually strengthen assessment for improvement? Or will an accountability tidal wave roll across the fields, crushing the fragile green sprouts of assessment for improvement that have begun to appear?" In this essay I suggest how assessment for accountability may begin to complement, and even strengthen, assessment for improvement.
Lessons from Grades K-12
On my campus, I regularly convene a combined group of public school representatives and educators from multiple disciplines who are involved in preparing future teachers. From these colleagues I have heard the following comments: "Some of...
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