Tag: Value Added

Peer-Reviewed Paper Published: Determining if the Students Learned what We Expected – Assessing Outcomes

September 14, 2025December 26, 2025 Graham Glynn

The article emphasizes the importance of evaluating student learning to enhance success rates in educational institutions. It outlines strategies for defining learning terms, assessing achievement levels, analyzing course impact, and setting success standards. It encourages using assessment data to inform progress at various institutional levels and improve learning outcomes.

Chief Academic Affairs Office Staff, Dean’s Office Staff (Deans, Executive Deans, Associate/Assistant Deans, etc.), Department Chair Office Staff (Chairs, Assistant Chairs, Program Directors, etc.), Office Director’s Staff (Director, Assoc./Assist. Director, Coordinator, etc.), Recurrent

Determining if the Students Learned what We Expected – Assessing Outcomes

To ensure that we are adding value in learning, and acting as a learning centric institution, we must be willing to determine if students are achieving our learning goals and outcomes – adjusting to improve success rates where possible. To accomplish this, we must convert our intuitive sense of accomplishment to explicit definitions and measures of learning. By studying this article and its linked resources, and by using the associated shared files, you will be able to:
• Define common terms used in the assessment of student learning.
• Define a useful scale to determine the student’s level of achievement of a learning outcome.
• Analyze and disaggregate tests, projects, papers, etc., and correlate their components with course learning outcomes.
• Evaluate the impact of course changes on learning outcome achievements.
• Explain the relationships between program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and course structure and progression.
• Calculate program learning outcome achievements from course learning outcome achievements or by using key assessments at points within the curriculum.
• Describe how learning outcomes can be assessed for programs such as General / Liberal Education, Honors, and for extracurricular learning.
• Compare and evaluate external tools for assessing general education learning outcomes.
• Formulate standards of success for a program, evaluate its status, and set goals.
• Describe the relationship between goals and outcomes, and how outcome assessment data could be used to analyze progress toward goal achievement at the department, college/school, and institutional levels.