Palomar College Statement of Principles on Assessment

Why do Assessment?

Palomar’s Vision Statement projects a future in which "Palomar College judges its work and its programs and formulates its policies primarily on the basis of learning outcomes and has a comprehensive program for assessing those outcomes and responding to its findings." We adopted this strategic goal even before our accrediting body revised its accreditation standards to "focus on outcomes and accomplishments, embracing a model of accreditation which requires assessment of resources, processes, and outcomes at the institutional level." Thus our own commitment to assess student learning at the institutional level precedes, but complements, the mandates of accreditation. To carry out that commitment, Palomar will develop and continuously refine and improve an institutional framework for assessing student learning and using the information gained from such assessment to serve our students better.

We mean by "assessment" "the systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and use of information to understand and improve teaching and learning" (Tom Angelo).

At Palomar, we will use assessment primarily to understand, and thereby improve, student learning.

More specifically, assessment can serve the following roles in the institution:

• To provide improved feedback, guidance, and mentoring to students so as to help them better plan and execute their educational programs.
• To provide improved feedback about student learning to support faculty in their work.
• To help us design and modify programs to better promote learning and student success.
• To develop common definitions and benchmarks for important student abilities that will enable us to act more coherently and effectively to promote student learning.
• To help us understand how different groups of students experience the college differently so as to adapt our courses and programs to the needs and capacities of all students.
• To help us understand how our different courses and programs affect students over time so that we can better coordinate and sequence the student’s experience to produce more and deeper learning.

Different institutions may, of course, use the tools of learning assessment differently. It will help to clarify the nature of Palomar’s commitment to learning assessment to specify some of the possible purposes of assessment that we will exclude from our approach.

• We will not use assessment as an end in itself. Assessment that does not help us to promote student learning is a waste of time.
• We will not use assessment of student learning punitively or as a means of determining faculty or staff salaries or rewards. The purpose of assessment is to evaluate student learning, not to reward or punish faculty or staff.
• We will not use any single mode of assessment to answer all questions or strictly determine program decisions.
• We will not use assessment in a way that will impinge upon the academic freedom or professional rights of faculty. Individual faculty members must continue to exercise their best professional judgment in matters of grading and discipline.
• We will not assume that assessment can answer all questions about all students. We need not directly assess all students in order to learn about the effectiveness of our programs and policies.
• We will not assume that assessment is quantitative. While numerical scales or rubrics (such as the four-point grading scale) can be useful, their accuracy always depends on the clear understanding of the concepts behind the numbers. Often the best indicator of student learning can be expressed better as a narrative or a performance than as a number.
• We will not use assessment only to evaluate the end of the student’s experience or merely to be accountable to outside parties. Assessment must be ongoing observation of what we believe is important.
• We will not assume that assessment is only grading.

Palomar's faculty, in consultation with the entire college community, will shape and design institutional assessment activities and will identify the core knowledge and skills that our students need to master. The faculty will likewise develop benchmarks by which student progress can be evaluated. These will be ongoing processes, open to modification and improvement. Not all assessment need be done in individual classes, and not every faculty member need assess all of the core learning.

The following guidelines will govern the methodology and approach we will employ at Palomar to institutional assessment:

• We will always seek multiple judgements of student learning rather than a single standard.
• We will assess those skills and knowledge that our faculty, in consultation with the entire college community, judges to be important and valuable.
• We will assess the ongoing progress of students throughout their experience at the college. (top of page)