The Assessment Evaluation Rubric: Promoting Learning and Learner-Centered Teaching through Assessment in Face-to-Face or Distanced Higher Education

Rochelle E Tractenberg

doi:10.3390/educsci11080441

Abstract

It is common to create courses for the higher education context that accomplish content-driven teaching goals and then develop assessments (quizzes and exams) based on the target content. However, content-driven assessment can tend to support teaching- or teacher-centered instruction. Adult learning and educational psychology theories suggest that instead, assessment should be aligned with learning, not teaching, objectives. To support the alignment of assessments with instruction in higher education, the Assessment Evaluation Rubric (AER) was developed. The AER can be utilized to guide the development and evaluation/revision of assessments that are already used. The AER describes, or permits the evaluation of, four features of an assessment: its general alignment with learning goal(s), whether the assessment is intended to/effective as formative or summative, whether some systematic approach to cognitive complexity is reflected, and whether the assessment (instructions as well as results) itself is clearly interpretable. Each dimension (alignment, utility, complexity, and clarity) has four questions that can be rated as present/absent. Other rating methods can also be conceptualized for the AER’s 16 questions, depending on the user’s intent. Any instructor can use the AER to evaluate their own assessments and ensure that they—or new assessments in development—will promote learning and learner-centered teaching. As instructors shift from face-to-face toward virtual or hybrid teaching models, or as they shift online instruction (back) to face-to-face teaching, it creates an ideal opportunity to ensure that assessment is optimizing learning and is valid for instructional decision-making.

Highlights

Assessment is formally defined as “the systematic collection of information about student learning, using the time, knowledge, expertise and resources available, in order to inform decisions that affect student learning” (p. 2, [1]; see p. 4, [2]; pp. 1–13, [3]).Walvoord [1] clarifies that “(t)he goal of assessment is information-based decision making”(p. 4)
As instructors shift from face-to-face toward virtual or hybrid teaching models, or as they shift online instruction to face-to-face teaching, it creates an ideal opportunity to ensure that assessment is optimizing learning and is valid for instructional decision-making
The purpose of this paper is to describe a new tool, the Assessment Evaluation

Summary

Introduction

Assessment is formally defined as “the systematic collection of information about student learning, using the time, knowledge, expertise and resources available, in order to inform decisions that affect student learning” (p. 2, [1]; see p. 4, [2]; pp. 1–13, [3]). When assessment is effectively integrated within and during a course or curriculum, it can be used to make decisions about how best to teach in order to optimize student learning. Learning outcomes are central to all other decisions to be made, including conclusions about the effectiveness of a curriculum (extensively discussed in [6]) This decision-making happens most obviously on the parts of the instructor, in both formative and summative assessments, and the institution (e.g., allow into the major, define satisfactory completion of objectives of the major). The AER, and this paper, serve to synthesize the multitude of authoritative references that most university instructors would never have occasion to read This new four-dimensional rubric can be used by the individual for themselves or by teams/for others, is novel, and is formulated according to longstanding findings about learning and assessment from the cognitive and educational sciences. As instructors consider shifting instruction—and assessment—from in-person to online and/or to hybrid situations, or back, it offers an excellent opportunity to consider the arguments and decisions they want to make about their students’ learning

Assessment Evaluation Rubric

Assessment Construction or Revision Using Tables of Test Specifications

Findings

Discussion