Sources for Performance Indicator Data
Student Performance Indicators: Identify the student performance to be assessed
Program student learning outcomes are statements of what each program wants students to know and be able to do. However, only actual student performance (behaviors, actions, or artifacts) can be measured.
It is necessary to specify the kind(s) of performance through which students can demonstrate their competence relative to a learning outcome. That is, what will students do that indicates how well they have achieved the learning outcome?
Keep in mind that programs should be able to measure student performance in ways that are valid, reliable and practical. These student actions or behaviors are called Performance Indicators and can take a variety of forms.
Performance Indicators
- Answering questions, written or oral;
- Analyzing data and drawing conclusions
- Summarizing a body of literature and research
- Designing a project, study or experiment
- Creating a product (e. g., musical composition)
- Carrying out a project (e.g., sociological study, building a prototype)
- Defining and defending a position, written or oral
- Demonstrating technical procedures or skills (e.g. in a chemistry laboratory, archeological excavation)
- Demonstrating artistic skills (e.g., dance, theatre)
- Critiquing intellectual, artistic or scientific work of others, written or oral
- Solving problems (e.g., mathematics, engineering, computer science)
These examples of student performance can be designed to reflect different levels of competence and sophistication. Answering questions, for example, can address basic competence by asking students to recall specific information – what Bloom calls the knowledge domain. On the other hand, students may be asked questions that require them to analyze, synthesize and evaluate what they have learned and perhaps to use learned skills to apply their abilities to a specific situation. Analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation are higher-order cognitive skills in Bloom's Learning Taxonomy, and often are required of students to demonstrate competence in a program's learning outcomes.
For each of the learning outcomes you identified, specify one or more performance indicators. The performance indicators (such as the examples listed above) should be a measurable student behavior that helps demonstrate how well the student has achieved the program learning outcome. For each learning outcome, use multiple indicators if possible. Data from two or three sources are much more trustworthy and informative. If the data agree with each other, you can be fairly confident the student performance being measured is accurately represented by the assessment results. If the data don't agree, you can be glad you didn't trust just one source. Begin to investigate what accounts for the discrepancy.
Embedded Performance Indicators
Measurable student behaviors/products can serve multiple purposes. Quite often, student work that is routinely used for assessing performance in a course can also do double duty. In specific courses which are pivotal or that represent a culmination, such as a Capstone, of student progress, samples of student work can be assessed by one or more faculty that do not teach this particular course. It may be possible to apply the same standards used for assigning course grades however, it may also be necessary to establish different standards. In any event, faculty do the assessment need to establish close agreement regarding the standards.
