Review of "Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education"

Since I'll be headed to an assessment conference later this month, and since our assessment efforts will be taking much of our administrative time this year, I thought I should read through some assessment literature to acquaint myself with a field that I've been pretty much ignorant of in the past.

After trying to read through this book, I'm reminded again of why I have been avoiding these issues. I'm sure the authors are well-intentioned, but the key chapter reviewing "A Decade of Assessing Student Learning" sums up the problem pretty well. Basically, the chapter says "we've been trying for 10 years to get people interested, but most people still aren't convinced it's a good idea and aren't doing it right even when they are so convinced."

All the reasons the chapter mentions fit me as well. Even though I'm generally well disposed toward measuring such things as teaching effectiveness (student evaluations), institutional effectiveness (graduation rates, job placements, etc.), acquisition of basic knowledge and skills (MFAT, CLA, etc.), and constituency satisfaction (NSSE, SSI, etc.), most of this assessment literature appears to me to be an indirect assault on educational freedom and innovation by technocrats who have little evidence of performance improvement in support of their widesweeping efforts. We all are supposed to do our work the way the educational establishment now operates, and I just don't see much value in that approach. None of the case studies or systems ideas in this book convinced me otherwise. They all assumed that this approach would lead to better results, and then suggested developing grandiose mission statements with very complicated processes. No thanks.

If "assessing student learning" means give me a few basic measure (CLA, NSSE, MFATs, student evals), provide some support mechanisms to improve on these measures, offer some incentives to make these improvements, and then let the individual groups involved work together to make those improvements, I'm all for it. But that's not what's on display here. Ugh.

Back to organizational behavior books that at least seem to understand that if you can't give a "Assessment for Dummies" version in the first chapter, you ain't going to convince people to get on board.