Links to Student Learning Assessment Resources
- Dialogue Series
Western's Dialogue series was designed to stimulate conversation, provide information, and foster university-wide collaboration to improve teaching, learning, and assessment at Western Washington University.
- Program Assessment Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Program Improvement
Western's guide for faculty and staff on writing program assessment plans.
- Course Assessment Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Course Improvement
Western's guide for faculty and staff on writing course assessment plans.
The Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment provides another explanation of outcome assessment to some of the web’s most frequently used assessment examples and explanations. Follow link here.
Western friend and Seattle University professor John Bean describes how to successfully conduct departmental program assessment with 1 department meeting a year. Dr. Bean describes how to create a departmental assessment plan on the same link.
- Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology
This Web site is a resource for faculty seeking direction in appropriate ways to use Web-based technologies to accomplish key learning strategies. The guiding principle of this project is to go beyond technical skill towards a full examination of the teaching/learning issues in technology-enabled instruction. The site consists of two modules; Module 1 provides information about the selection and use of various Web-based media; Module 2 focuses on delivery.
- Visible Knowledge Project
The Visible Knowledge Project (VKP) is a five-year project aimed at improving the quality of college and university teaching through a focus on both student learning and faculty development in technology-enhanced environments. The Project involves over 70 faculty from 21 campuses nationwide.
- Policy Center on the First Year of College
This interesting listserv is designed to help gather and share information on best practices and procedures for assessing the first college year; the website also features invited remarks by several experienced researchers.
- The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group
The TLT Group mission is to provide materials and services that motivate and enable institutions to improve teaching and learning with technology, while helping them cope with continual change. See also the Flashlight Program, dedicated to evaluating the role of technology in assessment and learning.
- Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
"Bloom's taxonomy," developed nearly fifty years ago, is still a useful guide for thinking about teaching and learning. This site, and others linked to it, includes lists of suggested verbs for describing practically any learning objectives. See especially "How to Write Learning Outcomes", with detailed suggestions for faculty from the context of of the NCGIA GIS core curriculum from UCSB. The table of verbs at the bottom of the page is particularly valuable for crafting course learning objectives.
- 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning
The nine principles form the basis for distinguising good assessment practices from the not-so-good.
- "What Do We Know About Students' Learning and How Do We Know It?" by Patricia Cross.
If we are to take learning seriously, we need to know what to look for (through research), to observe ourselves in the act of lifelong learning (self-reflection), and to be much more sensitively aware of the learning of the students that we see before us everyday.
- "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever"
A discussion of the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education in the context of communication and information technologies, by Steve Ehrmann and Arthur Chickering.
- Organizing for Learning : A Point of Entry" by Peter Ewell
A condensed summary of what is known about learning, promoting learning, and institutional change.
- "The New Conversations About Learning: Insights From Neuroscience and Anthropology, Cognitive Science and Work-Place Studies"
The Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes at Western Washington University: Plan, Progress, Organizational Developments, and Future Activities April, 2000
WADMS - Western Assessment Data Management System (WADMS)