Using Assessment to Drive Students' Learning and Measure Learning Outcomes

Facilitator: Terry Doyle (FCTL)

PDI: $400


In this Faculty Learning Community, each faculty member will develop a comprehensive assessment plan for a course. The community members will work together to help one another to clarify their courses learning outcomes in detail, explore numerous assessment tools and methods, and, finally, match the two together into a comprehensive plan that can be used in Fall 2008.

This Faculty Learning Community will explore how to design and develop assessment tools that both drive students' learning and show clear evidence to what extent course learning outcomes have been met by each individual student. To develop highly effective assessment tools a teacher must:

  1. Determine, as clearly as possible, what it is they want students to have learned as a result of taking their course where "what's learned" includes knowledge, skills, behaviors, attitudes and thinking strategies.
  2. Become informed about the dozens of established assessment activities, tools, and methods that could be used to measure learning.
  3. Work to match the two together so the data and findings of the assessments used reveal accurate information about what the students have or have not learned.

For more information about any of the above, please contact the facilitator(s) or Laurie Daniels ( or ext. 2440.