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Glossary of Assessment Terms

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Assessment of Student Learning: measures both direct and indirect, used to evaluate student learning in order to change, improve, and enhance student learning and the college experience. In doing so, the College provides accountability measures to serve the internal need of the College and in meeting requirements of external agencies.
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Backload (--ed, --ing): amount of effort after the data collection
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Competency: level at which performance is acceptable

Course Assessment: using direct and indirect measures to determine if the student outcomes at the course level have been met and using this data to enhance student learning.

Criterion-referenced: criterion-referenced tests determine what test takers can do and what they know, not how they compare to others. Criterion-referenced tests report how well students are doing relative to a pre-determined performance level on a specified set of educational goals or outcomes included in the curriculum.
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Direct Measurements: standardized or non-standardized objective measures demonstrating competency in specific areas.
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Forced-choice: the respondent only has a choice among given responses (e.g., very poor, poor, fair, good, very good).

Formative Assessment: intended to assess ongoing program/project activity and provide information to improve the project. Assessment feedback is short term in duration.

Frontload (--ed, --ing): amount of effort required in the early stage of assessment method development of data collection..
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Indirect Measurements: opinion surveys, interviews, and other subjective data combined with enrollment analyses, retention rates, graduation rates, employment data, transfer data, and other measures that provide data that can be analyzed as indicators of student learning.

Institutional Assessment:  assessment of institutional mission and goal statements including student services, financial stability, business and industry training, adult education, as well as academic programs.
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Learning Outcomes: changes or consequences that occur as a result of enrollment in a particular educational institution and involvement in its courses and programs. What a student is able to know, demonstrate, analyze, and synthesize following course and program instruction.

Levels of Implementation: is a tool to assist institutions in understanding and strengthening their programs for assessment of student academic achievement, and to provide evaluation teams with some useful characteristics or descriptors, of progress to inform their consultation and their recommendations related to those programs.


::NCA Levels of Implementation

Longitudinal Studies: data collected from the same population at different points in time.
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Norm-reference: A norm-referenced test is designed to highlight achievement differences between and among students to produce a dependable rank order of students across a continuum of achievement from high achievers to low achievers.
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Observer Effect: the degree to which the assessment results are affected by the presence of an observer.

Open-ended: assessment questions that are designed to permit spontaneous and unguided responses.
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Program Assessment (Program Review): The program outcomes are based on how each part is interacting with the rest of the parts, not on how each part is doing individually. The knowledge, skills, and abilities that students achieve at the end of their programs are affected by how well courses and other experiences in the curriculum fit together and build on each other throughout the undergraduate years.

Program Objectives: reflects student learning outcomes and achievements related to the academic program as a unit rather than an individual course.
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Reliability: Reliability is the extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure yields the same result on repeated trials.

Rubrics: A rubric is a set of categories that define and describe the important components of the work being completed, critiqued, or assessed. Each category contains a gradation of levels of completion or competence with a score assigned to each level and a clear description of what criteria need to be met to attain the score at each level.
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Stakeholder: anyone who has a vested interest in the outcome of the program/project.

Summative Assessment: assessment that is done at the conclusion of a course or some larger instructional period (e.g., at the end of the program). The purpose is to determine success or to what extend the program/project/course met its goals.
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Third Party: person(s) other than those directly involved in the educational process (e.g., employers, parents, consultants).

Triangulation: the use of a combination of assessment methods in a study. An example of triangulation would be an assessment that incorporated surveys, interviews, and observations.
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Utility: the usefulness of assessment results.
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Validity: refers to the degree to which a study accurately reflects or assesses the specific concept that the researcher is attempting to measure. Validity has three components: relevance (direct measurement), accuracy (how precise are the measurements), and utility (how clear are the implications for improvement).

Variable:observable characteristics that vary among individual responses.
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