Artifact: the specific object created by students used to gauge learning outcomes
Assessment cycle: a calendar for assessing the various levels of institution, school, and program from the mission statements to embedded assessments
Assessment plan: the organized and systematic approach for measuring student learning outcomes
Assessment: the process of measuring and analyzing a performance, offering, or program for the purposes of improvement and tracking
Benchmarking: “continuous systematic process for evaluating products, services, and work processes of organizations that are recognized as representing best practices for the purposes of organizational improvement” (M. J. Spendolini, 1992).
Closed questions: questions on a survey where the facilitators provide responses
Course-embedded assessment: an assessment used in all of the course sections for that term
Curriculum map: a visualization of the student learning experience by providing a matrix where programmatic learning outcomes intersect with the specific courses in which they are represented in a significant way
Evidence: a collection of qualitative and quantitate data
Institutional learning outcomes (ILO): the knowledge, skills, behaviors, attitudes, and abilities that students develop as a result of their educational experience.
Instrument: the tool used to obtain the evidence / assessment data
Norm: to align individual scoring techniques with that of the group to ensure consistency
Open-ended questions: questions on a survey that allow participants to provide their own response
Outcomes: the skill and knowledge students gain at the end of a learning experience
Programmatic assessment: a cyclical process where various levels of the program are constantly being reviewed and if necessary, revised
Response rate: the number of people who participate in the survey vis-à-vis the number of people within the population to be statistically significant and depends on the population, the margin of error y, and how confidence in this margin of error
Rubrics: scoring tools that specifies the areas and the quality required for a student artifact
Summative assessments or high-stakes assignment aimed at measuring a student’s engagement with a variety of skills or ideas from across multiple units of the course and used to measure and benchmark student learning
Survey: a tool for gathering information about beliefs, values, or attitudes towards a particular topic