Why aren’t course grades adequate indicators for program assessment?
Course letter grades are insufficient for program assessment because: • Grades alone do not indicate exactly what students have and have not learned (Suskie, 2009). Course grades reflect what students have achieved in a single course. • Grades are a composite of a student’s achievement of course outcomes and do not differentiate achievement by learning objective. • Grades reflect the evaluation practices, policies, and criteria of individual instructors. • Faculty teaching the same course may teach different material. • Faculty teaching the same course may emphasize different course objectives. Although the composite course grades are insufficient for program assessment, students’ grades that reflect a specific learning objective can be used for program assessment. For example, instructors can link an item in an exam or an assignment to a specific learning objective. Then the corresponding scores can be used to represent students’ learning achievement on the objective, which can serve
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- Why aren’t course grades adequate indicators for program assessment?
