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  • Designing Effective Assessment: Principles and Profiles of Good Practice
  • Megan Moore Gardner
Trudy W. Banta, Elizabeth A. Jones, and Karen E. Black. Designing Effective Assessment: Principles and Profiles of Good Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009. 352 pp. Paper: $45.00. ISBN-13: 978-0470393345.

Assessment of learning in the form of juried reviews, oral recitation, and scholarly disputes set the standards for excellence in the early days of higher learning and were joined by standardized tests in recent times (Bresciani, 2006; Rudolph, 1990). Such tools, however, failed to accurately demonstrate learning and did little to enhance curriculums and to demonstrate accountability. Moreover, few current assessments yield results that are clear and understandable to their intended audiences.

In an effort to remedy both of these issues, Trudy Banta, Elizabeth Jones, and Karen Black offer a practical guide to assessment, highlighting principles and profiles of effective practice. Building on Banta, Lund, Black, and Oblander’s (1996) book, Assessment in Practice, the authors provide in-depth examples of effective assessment processes that may be used at different institutions.

The book is organized in two parts. The first introduces general principles of good practice, and the second part provides specific examples of the assessment process via 49 detailed institutional profiles. Although the discussion includes a handful of student affairs profiles and examples, this book focuses primarily on assessment in academic affairs and may be of particular interest for professionals in such settings.

Part 1 reviews principles for good practice in assessment. These principles are drawn from several sources but pull heavily from the characteristics of effective outcomes assessment presented in Building a Scholarship of Assessment (Banta & Associates, 2002). The principles are divided into three groups based on the three primary phases of assessment: (a) planning, (b) implementing, and (c) improving and sustaining initiatives.

In Chapter 1, the authors highlight five principles that work together to develop meaningful planning and contribute to a more effective overall assessment process. The first principle emphasizes the significance of stakeholders and encourages readers to include those who may not routinely be asked for input (e.g., students or trustees) along with those who are commonly involved (e.g., faculty). The second emphasizes the value of connecting assessment processes to organizational goals and processes (e.g., strategic planning) as those organizational components determine the focus of capital and human resources. The third and fourth principles are more logistical in nature, focusing on creating coherent written plans and setting realistic timelines. The chapter concludes with a call to create organizational cultures that emphasize evidenced-based decision making.

Chapter 2 reviews implementation and highlights a number of factors often discussed in the assessment literature including the need for committed leadership, empowered faculty and staff, and sufficient resources. Particularly helpful was the notion of assessing the student learning process in addition to assessing the outcomes of the process. The authors argue, “If the processes that lead to the outcomes of student learning are not examined, one cannot truly improve those outcomes” (p. 16). This point is significant because professionals are often trained to examine the merit of the end result, forgoing the very process that created the outcome. This chapter concludes with a focus on communicating the results of assessment in understandable and useable ways to multiple audiences (e.g., students, trustees, community members, etc.).

Chapter 3 reviews improving and sustaining effective assessment programs and delves deeper into providing credible evidence of learning. Drawing from Maki (2004), the authors stress the need for multiple assessment methods and argue that a combination of direct and indirect methods provides the most meaningful information. They further emphasize the significance of valid and reliable measures and the need to consider how to engage students in the assessment process.

Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion about reviewing assessment reports, ensuring the use of assessment results, and evaluating the overall assessment process. Each of the steps in the final phase of the assessment process may be forgotten in the push to finish this often arduous process; however, as the chapter emphasizes, “finishing strong” and completing this final phase is important in an institution’s assessment practice.

The chapters in Part 1 provide a brief overview of...

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