Loyola University Chicago

Division of Student Development

Language of Assessment

Glossary of Terms


Accreditation: A certification awarded by an external, recognized organization, that the institution or program meets certain requirements overall, or in a particular discipline. 


Affective: Outcomes of education involving feelings more than understanding; likes, pleasures ideals, dislikes annoyances, values. 

Assessment: Is any effort to gather, analyze, and interpret evidence, which describes institutional, departmental, divisional, or agency effectiveness (Upcraft & Schuh, 1996).

Assessment of Student Learning: Measures both direct and indirect, used to evaluate student learning in order to change, improve, and enhance student learning and the college experience. In doing so, the College provides accountability measures to serve the internal need of the College and in meeting requirements of external agencies. 

Backload (--ed, --ing): Amount of effort after the data collection. 

Benchmark: A criterion-referenced objective; "Performance data that are used for comparative purposes. A program can use its own data as a baseline benchmark against which to compare future performance. It can also use data from another program as a benchmark. In the latter case, the other program often is chosen because it is exemplary and its data are used as a target to strive for, rather than as a baseline." (p. xv) Hatry, H., van Houten, T., Plantz, M., & Greenway, M.T. (1996). 

Bias: A situation that occurs in testing when items systematically measure differently for different ethnic, gender, or age groups. Test developers reduce bias by analyzing item data separately for each group, then identifying and discarding items that appear to be biased.

Cohort: A group whose progress is followed by means of measurements at different points in time. 

Competency: Level at which performance is acceptable. 

Core Element(s): Are the basic everyday functions that are essential components of individual departments. In previous years they have been known as critical processes, continuous objectives and basic operations.

Direct Measurements: Standardized or non-standardized objective measures demonstrating competency in specific areas. 

Effectiveness (results of operations): How well an approach, a process, or a measure addresses its intended purpose.

Enhancement: Can be the improvement of a core element (process, service or program that is essential to daily operation, formerly called an enhancement), or the creation of a new program (formerly called an innovation). Any improvement made to your operation is considered an enhancement. 

Evaluation: Any effort to use assessment evidence to improve institutional, departmental, divisional or unit effectiveness. 


Formative Assessment: Intended to assess ongoing program/project activity and provide information to improve the project. Assessment feedback is short term in duration. 

Frontload (--ed, --ing): Amount of effort required in the early stage of assessment method development of data collection. 

Indirect Measurements: Opinion surveys, interviews, and other subjective data combined with enrollment analyses, retention rates, graduation rates, employment data, transfer data, and other measures that provide data that can be analyzed as indicators of student learning. 

Institutional Assessment: Assessment of institutional mission and goal statements including student services, financial stability, business and industry training, adult education, as well as academic programs. 
Institutional Review Board: Charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects involved in research. 

Learning Outcomes: Changes or consequences that occur as a result of enrollment in a particular educational institution and involvement in its courses and programs. What a student is able to know, demonstrate, analyze, and synthesize following course and program instruction. 

Longitudinal Studies: Data collected from the same population at different points in time. 

Norm-reference: Test designed to highlight achievement differences between and among students to produce a dependable rank order of students across a continuum of achievement from high achievers to low achievers. 

Observer Effect: The degree to which the assessment results are affected by the presence of an observer.


Program Assessment (Program Review): The program outcomes are based on how each part is interacting with the rest of the parts, not on how each part is doing individually. The knowledge, skills, and abilities that students achieve at the end of their programs are affected by how well courses and other experiences in the curriculum fit together and build on each other throughout the undergraduate years. 

Program Objectives: Reflects student learning outcomes and achievements related to the academic program as a unit rather than an individual course. 

Reliability: The extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure yields the same result on repeated trials. 

Research: “...investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws” (Miriam-Webster, 2011).

Rubrics: A set of categories that define and describe the important components of the work being completed, critiqued, or assessed. Each category contains a gradation of levels of completion or competence with a score assigned to each level and a clear description of what criteria need to be met to attain the score at each level.


Summative Assessment: An assessment that is done at the conclusion of a course or some larger instructional period (e.g., at the end of the program). The purpose is to determine success or to what extend the program/project/course met its goals. 


Utility: The usefulness of assessment results.

Validity: Refers to the degree to which a study accurately reflects or assesses the specific concept that the researcher is attempting to measure. Validity has three components: relevance (direct measurement), accuracy (how precise are the measurements), and utility (how clear are the implications for improvement).

Variable: Observable characteristics that vary among individual responses.