Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE)—Plus: Rising to the Challenge

Sponsors:

American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U), American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)

Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE)

Terrel Rhodes, Vice President, AAC&U; John Hammang, Director of Special Projects and Development, AASCU; David Shulenberger, Vice President, Academic Affairs, APLU

The project's goal is to examine the multiple purposes of learning assessment and to test the validity, comparability, and appropriate uses of a variety of assessment approaches. It builds on the existing learning outcomes framework provided by AAC&U's Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative, the AASCU/NASULGC Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) project, and AASCU's American Democracy Project.

APLU will coordinate efforts by educational researchers and leaders from the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Council for Aid to Education (CAE), and the American College Testing Program (ACT) to examine the extent to which disparate measurement tools recommended as part of the VSA can be used interchangeably, whether these tools are measuring similar or dissimilar outcomes or levels of achievement, and the role test format (e.g., multiple choice vs. open-ended/constructed response measures) plays in the correlation among measures.

AAC&U lead the development of a set of national meta-rubrics for essential learning broader than those measured by the tests included in VSA. The rubrics were developed by faculty in an e-portfolio framework for assessing student learning at progressively more sophisticated levels as students move through their educational pathways. Titled VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education), this research and development effort collected and synthesized best practices in faculty-developed rubrics to highlight commonalities of outcomes and expectations of achievement levels across institutions. AAC&U also will develop models and templates through which e-portfolios can be used to demonstrate, share, and assess student accomplishment of advanced and integrative learning outcomes. AAC&U's VALUE project was first launched with support from the State Farm Companies Foundation.

AASCU will lead a third part of the initiative to develop a validated survey instrument to measure changes in student growth, especially related to the development of competence in skills effective in the workplace and those related to civic engagement. The goal is to make this survey an attractive instrument for use by the VSA to report learning outcomes that are not tied to specific disciplines or coursework, but that are part and parcel of an undergraduate education.

APLU is in the final states of a construct validity study for the three tests currently used in the VSA (the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency from ACT, Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress from ETS, and Collegiate Learning Assessment from CAE); They have completed testing of more than 1,200 students at 13 universities and are now analyzing the results. This study will help determine to what extent these three assessments measure similar outcomes and levels of achievement.

AAC&U has collected rubrics from institutions and has synthesized them into meta-rubrics for each of 15 essential learning outcomes. These national meta-rubrics were tested with a group of 100 colleges and universities. In April 2009, AAC&U also released a survey of its members on learning outcomes and assessment linked to the need for a broad range of student learning.

AASCU brought together teams of subject matter experts and survey instrument designers who worked for a year and a half to develop and validate its new survey. Following this process, the survey was subjected to an extensive field test that conducted complete survey administrations at 13 public and private universities. Those field tests are complete and the survey can be viewed at www.aascu.org/accountability/survey/?u=1.

The final report of the construct validity study will be made available on the Voluntary System of Accountability web site in September 2009.

In January 2010, Assessing Outcomes and Improving Achievement: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics was published. In April 2010, Electronic Portfolios and Student Success will be available through AAC&U.

In fall 2009, AASCU will issue a request for proposals to find a permanent home for the survey that will further develop the instrument and make it generally available to the higher education community.

www.aacu.org/Rising_Challenge/index.cfm

03/30/2010