Linking Student Assessment to Academic Management and Educational Improvement

Our research suggests that student assessment works best when it serves internal institutional purposes as well as external reporting and accreditation needs. Both are critical uses of student assessment. Nevertheless, it is important that both these purposes are served – that there is a balance of emphasis on internal and external purposes for student assessment. Moreover, it is helpful when these two often-divergent purposes can be made convergent. Several institutions in our case studies were able to modify external demands for student assessment to make them convergent with their own institutional purposes and needs. They did so by linking their student assessment activities with their institution’s academic management process or function and with its educational improvement activities.

Despite the considerable rhetoric about student assessment and the attempts by many institutions to develop an independent process of or office for student assessment responsible for designing, collecting, analyzing and reporting results, we found little evidence to support such an approach. The student assessment process and/or office need not only to serve useful institutional internal and external purposes, but also, to be closely integrated with the institution’s academic management and its educational improvement processes and functions.

Linking to Academic Management
Linking student assessment to an institution’s academic management processes and decision structures is an effective way to make student assessment serve the institution’s needs. This, of course, requires the establishment of a clearly identified and legitimate set of academic management processes like a quality improvement model, strategic planning, institutional evaluation, program review, performance budgeting, etc.

Linking to Educational Improvement
Linking student assessment to an institution’s educational improvement processes is an equally useful approach to integrating student assessment into the larger institutional purpose. Examples include embedding some or all aspects of student assessment into special campus processes for faculty development, instructional improvement or new program design and development.