Why are course grades not an effective measure of student learning?
This is perhaps the most often asked question about assessment. Course grades do not give us a clear measure on how to improve student learning since many other factors go into why the student may or may not be learning. Faculty often include different criteria when determining course grades. Discussion grades, attendance, and extra credit often skew the final grade. Even the organization of tests will make a difference. For example, an instructor may set as a theme of the course one of the goals for the majors. The same instructor might construct exams whereby students choose which essays to answer. If the student chooses not to answer the question related to the goal, then the test grade does not reflect whether or not the student learned that particular goal. Having said this, please remember that some course grades are very effective measures of student learning, especially capstone courses and internships. That is, when an entire course is designed to determine how much a graduate
