GENERAL SLO RESOURCES

While this page is divided into "outcomes" and "assessments," these to ideas go together: SLOs must include an assessment component and assessments are based on SLOs. Therefore most of these websites include information on both.

Most institutions have an assessment department that deals with helping faculty develop student learning outcomes and the corresponding assessment techniques. Thus many of the links correspond to useful sites of these departments.

These ideas have been therefore separated into two lists merely based on emphasis, rather than on exclusivity.

• Ask the following questions:
  • What must students know and understand to meet this standard?
  • What patterns of reasoning must students master, if any, to meet it?
  • What performance skills must students master, in any, to be able to demonstrate proficiency?
  • What products must students be able to create, if any, to meet the standard?


• How to assess these understanding, reasoning, performance and product skills? Four categories of assessment:
  
  • Selected Response Assessment. This is the classic objectively scored paper and pencil test. The student is asked a series of questions, which: (a) are either accompanied by a range of alternative responses as in multiple-choice and matching items; or (b) require very brief answers that are counted right or wrong, as in true-false items or short answer fill-in items.
  
  
  • Essay Assessments. The student is provided with an exercise (or set of exercises) that calls for preparation of an extended written answer. He or she might be asked to answer a question or provide an explanation of a solution to a complex problem. Open-ended math problems, where students are asked to show all work, also fall into this category.
  
  
  • Performance Assessments and Products. Assessments in which the student actually carries out a specified activity under the watchful eye of an evaluator, who observes the performance and makes judgments as to the quality of the achievement demonstrated, fall into this category. Performance assessments can be based either on observation of the process while skills are being demonstration, or on an evaluation of the product created.
  
  
  • Personal Communication. One of the most common ways teachers gather information about student achievement, personal communication includes questions posed and answered during instruction, interviews, conferences, conversations, and listening during class discussions. The teacher typically listens to responses and either tallies them right or wrong if correctness if the criterion, or evaluates them according to some quality criterion.
  
  

How do these categories of assessment fit into the types of skills?




	Selected Response	Essay Assessments	Performance Assessments and Products	Personal Communication
Knowledge and Understanding	Multiple-choice, true/false, matching, and fill-in questions can sample mastery of elements of knowledge.	Exercises can tap understanding of relationships among elements of knowledge	This is not a good choice for this achievement target.	Can ask students questions, evaluate answers, and infer mastery. This is a time-consuming option for assessing students' knowledge and understanding.
Reasoning	Can assess students' application of some patterns of reasoning.	Written descriptions of complex problems solutions can provide a window into students' reasoning.	Can watch student solve problems or examine some products and infer about reasoning proficiency.	Can ask student to "think aloud" or can ask follow-up questions to probe reasoning.
Performance SKills	Can assess mastery of understandings prerequisite to skillful performance, but cannot rely on these to tap the skill itself.	Can assess mastery of understandings prerequisite to skillful performance, but cannot rely on these to tap the skill itself.	Can observe and evaluate skills as they are being performed.	A Strong match when skill is oral communication proficiency; also can assess mastery of knowledge prerequisite to skillful performance.
Products	Can only assess mastery of the understandings prerequisite to the ability to create quality products.	Can assess mastery of knowledge prerequisite to product development; brief essays can provide evidence of writing proficiency.	Can assess proficiency in carrying out steps in product development, and the attributes of the product itself.	Can probe procedural knowledge and knowledge of attributes of quality products, but not product quality.

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