The examination of current assessment instruments is nested
in both the current political climate—U.S. Department of
Education efforts to develop a national policy for higher
education—and increasing local, state, and peer-group pressures on institutions to document their performances for
elected officials, local departments of education, and
donors—none of whom are willing to leave “money on the
stump” to fund higher education. Today governments,
students, parents, foundations, and business leaders view
higher education both as an invaluable asset and as an investment to scrutinize and qualify.
With increasing frequency and regularity, institutions of
higher education are expected to tell their performance stories
to a range of audiences (including prospective or current
students, parents, alumni, community leaders, trustees,
external reviewers, and elected officials) with a variety of
purposes (to garner alumni or other donations, foster support
from the business sector, compete for students, or leverage
state house resources). The public perception of postsecondary
education grows from many versions of performance stories
told to different audiences in different contexts with different
purposes. Too often, the story of institutional performance has
been reported exclusively in simple metrics that are used for
benchmarking against peers or competitors—the average ACT
scores of matriculating students or satisfaction and graduation
rates. While those data provide easy comparison points, they
fail to comment on the most important qualities of true institutional performance. Accordingly, colleges and universities of
all types are being asked to supply more systematic data documenting their performance in advancing student learning,
promoting student success, and achieving desired student
outcomes. The Department of Education’s report on the
future of higher education issued in Fall 2006 put systematic
assessment of learning front and center as a challenge for
higher education. Regardless of the specific methods and regulations, it is clear that the assessment of learning and its
outcomes must become a central focus of accountability.
Unfortunately, a pre-eminent challenge facing institutions as
they seek to assess student learning is the limited capacity of
current measurement tools.
and generalize, among other factors. The ability of institutional leaders, government officials, legislators, and other
observers to differentiate information garnered from various
kinds of assessment processes and practices is growing. The
stakeholders of higher education are no longer satisfied with
vague reassurances or simple presentations of “dashboard indicators.” What was once considered the province of abstruse
and arcane technical jargon—differentiations of process from
outcome, inputs from outputs, and operational from impact
data—has become practically necessary for a broader range of
audiences to address the increasingly astute questions asked of
higher education. Unfortunately, often there is too little
capacity to transform terms emerging from educational measurement into commonly understood and useful descriptions
of educational practice.
Assessment should help institutions improve their performance in pursuit of their missions, help stakeholders determine
institutional performance against goals, and help the public
understand the work and contributions of higher education in
an era of greater accountability and higher expectations. The
usefulness of assessment information can be considered in
relation to the type of information developed, how that information is shared, and the extent to which the information is
utilized. Critiques of assessment often highlight information
that fails to respond to key questions, is not presented in a
manner that raises data to the level of helpful information, or
is not operationalized in such a way as to influence institutional decisionmaking—the data are not used. ICSSIA intends
to increase the appropriate institutional use of the available
assessment tools, particularly within student affairs divisions,
by providing descriptive and evaluative information to
support instrument selection.
Assessment and Student Success
Through its study, ICSSIA sought to inventory, categorize,
and evaluate existing assessment tools that aim to examine
questions related to student success in
college. The inquiry looked at the tools
available to assess student success in
college and exactly what those tools
claimed to assess.
Systematically defined, collected, and
reported data become increasingly
important in an environment in which
comparative performance data are
deemed necessary and essential. This
study begins with the a priori
understanding that systematic information is
not made equally; it differs in reliability, Use of data
validity, and the ability to reproduce
Utilizing the Catalog of Information
The full findings from the review are available at
www.icssia.org, an interactive Web site searchable by both
assessment instrument name and desired information/admin-istration type. Thirteen assessment instruments commonly
employed in higher education are distributed on the site;
instruments used primarily to focus on specific narrow
content areas, such as health risk behaviors, were not
included. Following the conceptual orientation of usefulness,
comparative implementation information about assessment
instruments is displayed in a multi-table format. Categories of
data generated from the instrument review are noted below.
DATA REPORTED FOR EACH ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT
Information Category How Data Can Be Utilized
Description Acquaint oneself with available tools
Categorize administration, Learn how instruments can be used;
analysis, and reporting compare between instruments
Categorize content Identify type of information to be gathered
by each instrument
Timing and type of data Show when instrument is administered and
whether data are process or outcome
Examine evidence as to use in different contexts
