Assessment in Student Affairs

398 Pages·2016·1.25 MB·English

by  Schuh

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Assessment in
Student Affairs
Second Edition
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Assessment in
Student Affairs
Second Edition
John H. Schuh
J. Patrick Biddix
Laura A. Dean
Jillian Kinzie
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
AbouttheAuthors xvii
1. UnderstandingtheContemporaryAssessment
Environment 1
2. DesigningandPlanninganAssessment Project 27
3. FramingAssessment withtheHighestEthical
Standards 49
4. MeasuringIndividualStudentLearningandGrowth 75
5. ProgramOutcomes andProgramReview 99
6. FacilitatingData CollectionandManagement 123
7. UsingQualitative TechniquesinConducting
Assessments 143
8. UsingQuantitative TechniquesinConducting
Assessments 171
9. DevelopingandSelectingInstruments 195
10. Assessing StudentCampusEnvironments 221
11. AssessingQualitythroughComparisons 247
12. GettingAssessmentProjectsStartedandEnsuring
Sustainability 273
v
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vi CONTENTS
13. ReportingAssessmentResultsandBringingabout
Change 295
14. DevelopingaCulture ofAssessment 317
15. TakingaLookatAssessment intheFuture: ALook
intoOurCrystalBall 341
Appendix: DesigningandImplementing anAssessment
Project 355
Index 359
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PREFACE
Another book on assessment in student affairs? Hasn’t this topic
been covered in its entirety? These are legitimate questions that
anyprospectivereadercouldraiseaboutanotherbookbeingpub-
lished on assessment in student affairs. In fact, we, as authors,
have written numerous pieces on assessment in student affairs
thatinmanyrespectstracethedevelopmentoftheartandscience
ofassessmentinstudentaffairsoverthepast25years.Whileitis
very difficult to identify a contemporary book on student affairs
practice that does not address topics related to assessment, such
hasnotalwaysbeenthecase,aswewillaffirminthisvolume.
Assessmentinstudentaffairshasevolvedoverthepastseveral
decades to the point where we believe that assessment is in the
process of being institutionalized asa part of student affairs prac-
tice. But assessment still is not as common as we think it should
be,andwehopethatoverthenextcoupleofyearsassessmentwill
become a part of routine student affairs practice, similar to staff
selection, for example, in residence life. Moreover, as we point
out in Chapter 1, assessment, evaluation, and research have not
been differentiated clearly in the student affairs literature until
fairlyrecently(seeSuskie,2009),andwhiletheseactivitieshave
clearlydifferentpurposes,theywereusedsynonymouslyforyears,
incorrectly in our opinion. So, this book will try to add to the
clarity of the definition of assessment and provide a myriad of
examplesofassessmentprojects.
Not only has assessment been differentiated from evalua-
tion and research in the past several decades, the purposes of
vii
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viii PREFACE
assessmenthavebecomesharper.WecanthankEwell(2009)for
his elegantly written piece that discusses the tensions related to
the accountability and improvement dimensions of assessment.
Virtually all assessment projects fit into one of these two cate-
gories, and in some cases assessment projects can fit into both of
them. Contemporary thinking about the purposes of assessment
is more streamlined and fits projects neatly into one purpose or
theother,orboth.
The technical side of conducting assessments has evolved
over the past number of years, and while we believe that
predicting where technological improvements will take us in
the future is difficult, we are confident that new technologies
will be developed in the future. Our experience takes us back to,
in effect, distributing questionnaires by hand, collecting them,
copying responses onto coding sheets, transferring the data to
Hollerith cards, having them analyzed by mainframe computers,
andmakingsenseoftheresults,ineffect,byhand.Thisapproach,
while effective in its day, was incredibly time consuming and is
the assessment equivalent of making long distance telephone
calls by dialing “0” and asking the operator to place the call. In
this book we offer what we think are contemporary approaches
to the practice of assessment by using current technology that is
widelyavailable.
In this volume we also look at other aspects of assessment
that are evolving continuously, such as protecting the rights
of participants, developing a culture of assessment in student
affairs, differentiating between individual and group assessment
projects, identifying strategies for getting assessment projects
started, and reporting results. This book is much more than an
update of the first edition. Rather, in identifying the concepts
for this book, we started from scratch and identified those topics
that in our opinion will be of great practical value for our
readers.Inshort,wehaveoverhauledthetopicofassessmentand
developed what we trust our readers will find is a fresh look at