Module 1: When and Where: Assessment placements

Overview

There are a variety of components to think about when planning an assessment. For example, when will you conduct the assessment, where, and with whom? The following assessment definitions show a few important characteristics of an assessment to think about when building an assessment.

Formative -

Formative assessment occurs as a program or activity is happening. Students might give student affairs practitioners’ feedback on how the front end of a program is meeting their needs and encouraging their growth. If there are areas that can be changed and improved in a relatively efficient manner, this assessment information can serve to make the outcome of the program better catered to the student population it is serving in real time.

Example: Say a student affairs professional is giving a seminar for first-year students, an example of a formative assessment might be that the student affairs professional stops midway through the seminar to solicit feedback from the attendees to gauge whether the seminar is answering their most relevant questions. If the students suggest focusing on other material that is more relevant to their immediate needs, the practitioner can shift the seminar toward those topics in order to make the seminar more effective.
Pro: These assessments allow us to understand how the program is meeting the goal outcomes as the program is developing, which allows practitioners to change programming in an effective manner to cater to the needs of the current student population.
Con: Many programs cannot be easily changed in a short period of time, so these assessments may not be as relevant to large-scale projects that would take a long time to change.

Summative –

Summative assessment occurs after a program or activity has concluded. Many student affairs assessment projects are summative assessments. In this manner, students experience the entirety of a program and then give their feedback or demonstrate their learning in order to inform future practice.

Example: Say an office of student engagement wants to know how many events students went to on campus in the past semester. If this office surveys all students to ask them how many events they attended, since this survey occurs after the students would have attended the events, it is a summative assessment.
Pro: Summative assessments allow practitioners to think through the feedback from the assessment and take time to implement changes for the next program occurrence.
Con: Summative assessments give us feedback for a specific program with a specific set of students. Because student populations change, this kind of feedback may not be as relevant for the students who attend the program the following year, so it might not have as big of a difference as it could as a formative assessment.

Change over time –

Many student affairs offices like to see how their practice is developing and changing over time. While there are certain methodological issues that accompany tracking change over time, this information can be useful to assess whether a unit’s practice is improving in important ways. Generally speaking, to accurately assess improvement over time, the assessment tool (e.g., survey, interview protocol) should stay identical in order to hold constant as many variables as possible.

Example: Say a school’s orientation program asks students who attend orientation for feedback every year. After three years, this office compares the assessment results for all three years to see if student opinions and experiences changed over time.
Pro: These assessments can give an office an idea of whether they are improving over time.
Con: Because these assessments are typically not done with the exact same students every year, comparisons over time are not the most reliable data.

Internal or External –

Assessment can be conducted during an event (internal) or before or after the event has started or concluded (external). There are benefits to both types of assessment.

Internal assessments can give an office an idea of students’ thoughts and reactions in the moment that may be more accurate to how the student experienced the event as opposed to inaccuracies that might arise when students are reflecting back on their past experience. These assessments will inevitably get higher response rates because they are done with the participants in the event.
External assessments do not require time during the event to conduct an assessment, which takes the pressure off of practitioners conducting an event to get the assessment correct on the spot. Problems with the assessment can be fixed while an office has full attention on the assessment as opposed to offices trying to balance the competing demands of the event and an assessment at the same time.