Connecting Assessment with Teaching through Faculty Capacity Building: An Example of an Oral Communication Assessment Project

Abstract

Connecting assessment with teaching through faculty capacity building can be a design principle in any assessment project aimed at improving student learning. This design principle is supported by the evaluation capacity-building literature, backward design curriculum approach, research on learning, and inquiry-driven assessment-for-learning framework. This paper provides an example of how this design principle guided the implementation of an institutional oral communication assessment project at a large public research-intensive university throughout an assessment cycle, from developing learning outcomes to using assessment results. Steered by five operating principles (be transparent, provide teaching support, foster shared understanding, form collaborations and value faculty expertise, and offer technical support), our center and campus groups carried out major strategies such as building and restructuring a project website, providing pedagogy workshops and panels for faculty, compiling and publicizing teaching and assessment resources, organizing faculty study groups on assessment, and collaborating with and motivating stakeholders and faculty to use assessment results. We advocate that connecting assessment with teaching should be intentional in the design and implementation of an assessment project to maximize the meaning and usefulness of assessment, ideally, through capacity-building activities.