Original_To:  BITNET%"edpolyan@asuacad"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edpolyan
Date:         Fri, 18 Dec 1992 16:29:00 MDT
              <EDPOLYAN@ASUACAD.BITNET>
From:         ADAVIS@CUDENVER.BITNET
Subject:      Assessment in Higher Ed

I confess I have not been attending closely to the national
discussion of mandated assessment in higher education, and
Dan Kelley's posting was the first time I had heard that the
state of New York had mandated campus-wide assessments of
learning outcomes.  Clearly it is time to wake up and join
the discussion.

I assume that the call for accountability in higher
education through formal assessment falls under Cronbach's
axiom that a call for formal accountability is a political
attack borne from the perception that things have been
sliding badly.  Perhaps the response to such a call should
depend on whether we agree with this assessment.  I'm not
convinced.

In the institution where I teach, we assess students in a
variety of ways.  Some give midterm and final examinations,
although there is a growing movement to replace these with
various papers and presentations.  For example, in the
introductory course on assessment and research for classroom
teachers, required for the masters in curriculum and
instruction, some used to give a 50-item multiple choice
test over technical concepts in testing and research design.
Now, students conduct their own action research projects for
the entire semester (with several intermediate products and
conferencing), and present them in a formal AERA-style
poster session at the end of the course and as term papers.
Quizzes on statistical and design concepts are given
periodically to identify areas for re-teaching.

At the end of masters work, students typically sit for a 4-
hour comprehensive examination (all essay).  Some divisions
are now requiring portfolios accumulated over the masters
program, which are reviewed periodically.  For students in
the teaching program, performance in student teaching is
assessed, and positive rating is required for certification.

I am inclined to believe that these sorts of assessments,
specific to the student's program of study, provide more
compelling evidence of learning than performance on more
generic outcomes (writing?  "problem solving"?) that one
would anticipate as part of "campus wide assessment."

I believe it is reasonable to ask me, "What does it mean for
a student to get an A in your class?  What evidence do you
have of your students' performance?"  I think it is
reasonable to ask my department, "What evidence do you have
that students whom you grant masters degrees possess
knowledge and skills?"  But it would be an encroachment on
academic freedom for the state to dictate my curriculum de
facto by developing a particular test of accountability for
my students on the topics of my courses.  There should be
standards, but I think they should be established
internally.

Nonetheless, I agree that internal forces work to erode
standards rather than to increase them.  Students are more
likely to complain about low grades than high grades, about
too much work rather than too little, about high standards
but not about low standards.  I suspect that basing the
evaluation of university teaching on student questionnaires
adds momentum to this sort of entropy.  Perhaps external
pressures are required to reverse this.  But I don't believe
generic assessments divorced from particular courses and
content will contribute to the re-establishment of
standards.  Instead, they imply that there is no content,
that glibness is valued above all else, that education is no
more than developing a modicum of "cognitive flexibility"
and the five-paragraph essay.

Alan Davis
University of Colorado at Denver
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