Measuring and Evaluating Student Learning

Aligning assessment with the learning objective is of benefit to both students and faculty. Students should be assessed on what they are taught and those assessments measure the degree of learning. When reviewing the assessments, faculty can readily see whether the students have successfully met the stated objectives. Assessment can be built into the instruction and be an integral part of the classroom activities.

There are two types of assessments: formative and summative. Formative assessments have a twofold purpose. The first is to help students identify their own strengths and weaknesses and adjust their learning strategies to make progress. The other purpose of to help faculty identify areas where students are struggling and make immediate adjustments and provide feedback to the students.

Summative assesments are exactly what the name implies. The goal is to evaluate student learning at an endpoint. This could be a chapter, a unit, or the entire course and are most often “high stakes” in that they have high point values.