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INTERNET RESOURCES
Assessing student learning: Available resources
C&RL News, May 2004
Vol. 65, No. 5
by Amy E. Mark
The national attention on assessment in education is here to stay. Teaching librarians are focusing on assessing student learning both to justify library instruction to stakeholders and to improve student learning by working toward graduating entire classes of information literate students from colleges and universities. Librarians have become increasingly involved in assessment culture while searching for methods to assess information literacy. This column of Internet resources on student learning assessment differs from a list of information literacy assessment Web sites by embracing the paradigm shift away from evaluation and moving toward the assessment of student learning. Librarians are transitioning from skill-based measurements of evaluations to outcomes-based assessment. By reviewing the resources below librarians also open themselves up to research outside of librarianship, cognizant that other disciplines have expertise with measurement and instruments from which we can borrow.
Meta sites
• The Educator’s Reference Desk. The new ERIC Web site. Click on the “Evaluation” link for many assessment and student learning resources. Access: http://www.eduref.org.
• The Evaluation Center. Out of Western Michigan University, the center’s mission is to advance the theory, practice, and use of evaluation; the site includes a searchable database of instruments. Access: http://www.wmich.edu/evalctr/.
• Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment. One of the best meta-sites examined, this page has informative annotations and is organized by listing an overall site link followed by links to helpful pages within sites. Highlights include links to conference sites, assessment handbooks, accrediting bodies, and a large section of individual institutions’ assessment-related pages. Access: http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm.
• Outcomes Assessment Resources on the Web. This site focuses primarily on links related to assessment in higher education, including university assessment pages, links to agencies, institutes and organizations involved in assessment, instruments, commercial resources, and statistical software. Access: http://www.tamu.edu/marshome/assess/oabooks.html.
• Policy Center for the First Year of College. The place to go to find the right survey.  “Instruments and tools” provides a list of assessment instruments plus a comprehensive collection of resources and guidelines to assist institutions in local data source compilation, data assembly, and data analysis procedures. Access: http://www.brevard.edu/fyc.
Organizations/Associations with Assessment Resources
• AAHE Assessment Forum. Home base for higher education practitioners working  in assessment, the authors can honestly state that the site is the “primary national network connecting and supporting higher education stakeholders involved in assessment.” All links to original content. Access: http://www.aahe.org/initiatives/assessment.htm.
• American Evaluation Association (AEA). Devoted to the application and exploration of evaluation in all its forms, AEA believes that evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products, and organizations to improve their effectiveness. Access: http://www.eval.org.
• Code of Professional Responsibilities in Educational Measurement. A site focusing on the ethics of measurement; prepared by the National Council on Measurement in Education. Access: http://www.natd.org/Code_of_Professional_Responsibilities.html.
• Savvy Assessment and Evaluation Skills. This page from Diversity Web, an interactive resource hub for higher education, is maintained by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Access: http://www.diversityweb.org/research_and_trends/research_evaluation_impact/campus_climate_evaluation_tools/savvy_assessment.cfm.
Student learning outcomes and assessment
• Nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning and Developing an Assessment Plan to Learn About Student Learning. Two initiatives from AAHE. Access: http://www.aahe.org/assessment/principl.htm and http://www.aahe.org/assessment/assessmentplan.htm.
• FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing. Principles and indicators for student assessment systems from the National Forum on Assessment. Access: http://fairtest.org/princind.htm.
• Guidelines for Rubric Development. An important skill set in assessing student learning, this site gives examples of rubric design. Access: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/july/rubrics/Rubric_Guidelines.html.
• Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. An article discussing the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education in the context of communication and information technologies, by Steve Ehrmann and Arthur Chickering. Access: http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html.
• Learning Skills Program Bloom’s Taxonomy. One of the many interpretations of Bloom’s taxonomy used to categorize the level of abstraction of questions that commonly occur in educational settings. Access: http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html.
• TLT. The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group’s (TLT) goal is to “improve teaching and learning by making more appropriate and cost-effective use of information technology without sacrificing what matters most.” TLT features assessment tools from the award-winning Flashlight Program. Access: http://www.tltgroup.org/.
• Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology. A resource for faculty seeking direction in appropriate ways to use Web-based technologies to accomplish key learning strategies of the teaching/learning issues in technology-enabled instruction. The site consists of two modules; Module 1 provides information about the selection and use of various Web-based media; Module 2 focuses on delivery. Access: http://www.umuc.edu/virtualteaching/.
Library-oriented sources
• ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards Toolkit. A set of tools, Web pages, and other resources to help you use the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Includes performance indicators for each standard and outcomes. Access: www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/infolitstandards/standardstoolkit.html.
• Assessing Community College: Information Literacy Competencies and Other Library Services and Resources. Includes a variety of links related to assessment and original content by Gratch Lindauer. Access: http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~bgratch/assess.html.
• Assessment of Information and Technology Literacy. A statewide attempt to assess the information/technological literacy of baccalaureate degree recipients of the public four-year institutions of Washington State. Access: http://depts.washington.edu/infolitr/.
• Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy that Illustrate Best Practices: A Guideline. An initiative by the Institute for Information Literacy and approved by the ACRL Board in June 2003, these guidelines attempt to “articulate elements of exemplary information literacy programs for undergraduate students at four-year and two-year institutions.” Access: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/characteristics.htm.
• Hutchins Library Bibliographic Instruction Program Evaluation. Detailed pretest and posttest analysis of student learning and perceptions of library instruction by Susan Henthorn. Access: http://www.berea.edu/library/BIEVAL/Pre-test-Post-test.html.
• Internet Education Project. A site from the ACRL Instruction Section for sharing peer reviewed instructional materials created by librarians to teach people about discovering, accessing, and evaluating information in networked environments. Access: http://cooley.colgate.edu/etech/iep/default.html.
• LOEX Clearinghouse for Library Instruction. LOEX provides resources “on all aspects of instruction to libraries and librarians who are institutional members,” including one-page point-of-use handouts, bibliographies and subject guides, pathfinders; instructional video; and Internet sites. Access: http://www.emich.edu/public/loex/loex.html.
 • Project SAILS: Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills. A project to “develop an instrument for programmatic level assessment of information literacy skills that is valid and thus credible to university administrators and other academic personnel.” Access: http://sails.lms.kent.edu/index.php.
Electronic lists on assessment
• ASSESS. An electronic list from the University of Kentucky-Lexington (listserv@lsv.uky.edu) that is devoted to assessment in higher education and has a searchable archive and instructions for using the list. Access: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/assess.html.
Journals on assessment
• Education Policy Analysis Archives. Articles dealing with education policy. Access: http://epaa.asu.edu.
• Educational Researcher. Publishes scholarly articles of “general significance to the educational research community from a wide range of disciplines.” Access: http://www.aera.net/pubs/er.
• JEM: The Journal of Educational Measurement. Publishes original measurement research, reports on new measurement instruments, and serves as a vehicle for improving educational measurement applications in a variety of settings. Access: http://ncme.org/pubs/jem.ace.
 • NCA-CIHE Assessment Resources. Provides links to original full text articles from the Higher Learning Commission on assessment. Access: http://www.ncacihe.org/resources/assessment/index.html.
• Review of Higher Education. Peer reviewed articles about critical higher education issues, including assessment. Access: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/review_of_higher_education/.
Corporate and pay assessment solutions
• The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric (HCTSR). Products for “multi-modal assessment” with four levels of descriptors are used to categorize the critical thinking evident in projects, portfolios, presentations, and essays. Access: http://www.insightassessment.com/HCTSR.html.
 • InterEd. A business that offers outcome assessment products for colleges and universities. Access: http://www.intered.com/college/collegehome.htm.
• National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS). A nonprofit organization with the mis+sion of assisting colleges and universities as they improve their management capability; many assessment resources for sale. Access: http://www.nchems.org.
About the Author
Amy E. Mark is head of library instruction at the University of Mississippi Libraries, e-mail: aemark@olemiss.edu
© 2004 Amy E. Mark
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