Collaborative Assessment: Using Self-assessment and Reflection for Student Learning and Program Development

Abstract

As program-level assessment increasingly becomes an integral part of the higher-education landscape, so does the debate regarding the efficacy of current assessment methods. Traditionally, students do not participate in assessment—neither of their own learning nor of institutional or program efficacy. Our assessment process presents an alternative to traditional program-level assessment and is meant to improve student learning in two ways: (1) by asking students to reflect on their achievement of learning outcomes using evidence-based methods; (2) by providing assessment practitioners with authentic, contextualized data on which to make claims about curricula. This collaborative assessment process was designed to address the complex needs of a cross-curricular rhetoric program but responds to many general concerns about traditional assessment methods.