Involving Students in Assessment

By Ann Damiano

In her keynote address at the Assessment Network of New York conference (April 2017), Natasha Jankowski, Director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes, challenged participants to develop assessment processes that are student-centered. She concluded that assessment is something we should do with students, not something that is done to students.

Multiple stakeholders should be involved in our assessment efforts, particularly when it comes to communicating and interpreting results, as well as generating plans based on these results.  Students are our most important stakeholder, and so their involvement in the process is imperative.

One way is to include students in the dissemination plan for institutional survey results.  Findings from NSSE, the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory, and even the Student Opinion on Teaching (SOOT) might be shared with student leaders.  If warranted, students could collaborate with personnel in Academic and Student Affairs to create plans or makes recommendations based on the survey results.  For example, if NSSE findings indicate that less than 60% of seniors perceive the College contributed to their understanding of people different from them, students might propose ways the institution could improves its curricular and co-curricular offerings so that we are more successful at achieving this tenet of our mission. 

When assessing student learning goals, we should not assume students share the same operational definitions as their faculty.  That they might not underscores the importance of getting their input into what results mean, and likewise, highlights the importance of using multiple methods to assess a single goal. 

Most recently (and at my previous institution), I assembled two student groups to review results related to integrating knowledge, problem-solving, quantitative reasoning, and intercultural competence.  For each of these learning goals, the findings from diverse sources either conflicted with one another or the results indicated that no matter what “improvements” faculty made to the curriculum, we were still not achieving the desired outcomes.  The students brought a different perspective to the discussion than that articulated by the three faculty groups that reviewed the data.  Important insights from the students included the following:

• Students defined “integrating knowledge” as applying classroom learning to real-life situations, whereas faculty used it to refer to apply what was learned in one course to another;
• Problem-solving is best developed in the co-curricular experience, where students are often forced to derive solutions independently, as opposed to in the curricular experience, which is much more structured and faculty-directed;
• While the college may provide numerous offerings related to inclusion and diversity, a lack of diversity on the faculty combined with pedagogies that do not promote inclusion and the absence of global perspectives in courses throughout the curriculum potentially contributed to students not achieving the desired outcome related to intercultural competence. 

The students’ interpretations of assessment findings dared the faculty to make improvements that challenged them in ways their own conclusions had not.  Rethinking one’s pedagogy, for instance, requires much greater effort and imagination than adjusting course requirements or modifying an assessment instrument.  Yet new pedagogical approaches may be necessary if we are going to help students achieve outcomes.

Collaborating with students on assessment results expands our understanding of what the results might mean.  As one faculty member noted, including students in our processes “sends a message that we do this for the students, that they’re the major stakeholder, and they literally have a seat at the table.”