2019 IUPUI Assessment Institute – Assessment Trends

On Oct. 14-15, 2019, I attended the Assessment Institute at IUPUI in Indianapolis.  I wrote about the keynotes addresses and about the importance of equity in assessment in a previous post.  In this post, I’m going to describe a few assessment trends I noticed at the conference.

“Grand Challenges Facing Assessment Practitioners”

The lofty title of this session was based on an assessment survey of the same name.  I didn’t take many notes during the session, but here are the Top 10 “Grand Challenges.”

1. Use assessment data to increase equity.
2. Use assessment data to create immediate pedagogical improvements.
3. Produce visionable and actionable assessment findings that drive innovation.
4. Examine changes in institutional effectiveness.
5. Dis-aggregate data to include student characteristics.
6. Include students in authentic self-evaluation.
7. Communicate relevant, timely, and contextualized information about student learning.
8. Use assessment findings to inform budgetary initiatives.
9. Leverage technology to analyze massive data sets.
10. Use ePortfolios to capture student learning for the entire span of a student’s education.

New Book:  Trends in Assessment

In this session, Susan Kahn and Stephen Hundley of IUPUI described emerging trends in assessment they wrote about in their new book Trends in Assessment.  In a future post, I will review the book more formally, but here are some of the top trends they highlighted during the presentation:

• Assessment, done well, can make important contributions to understanding and improving student learning.
• There remains a tension between accountability and improvement.
• Assessment requires leadership and broad engagement through distributed leadership.
• Assessment practices are becoming more inclusive.
• Assessment outcomes are broadening to include academic, personal, and professional development.
• Assessment is beginning to reflect on process and not only on the outcomes.

Evidence-Based Storytelling

In another session on assessment trends, Natasha Jankowski described her new NILOA “Occasional Paper” about Evidence-Based Storytelling (click on the link to read the full article).  In the presentation, Jankowski described the different types of assessment language that is used:  discipline-specific faculty terminology, change-management and strategic planning administrative language, and accreditation standards by accrediting agencies.  These different terms may conflict, and the different stakeholders (faculty, administrator, accreditors) are often focusing on assessment data for different purposes.  To help assessment writers bridge the gap, the NILOA article provides activities that can be used to explain assessment information in different ways (stories) to different groups.

Feedback

What do you see as assessment trends?  Post a comment below or email Lirim.

Lirim Neziroski, Ph.D., MBA is an academic leader at a liberal arts university in the Chicago area.  He is an expert at curriculum development, assessment, academic technology, and strategic planning.  Contact Lirim for additional resources and for speaking, consulting, and writing opportunities.