Assessment

When planning for Assessment the instructor needs to think if the assessment used in the course is a measure that brings evidence that responds to three fundamental questions:

· What will students know?

· What will students be able to do?

· What will students value?



These questions are correlated below with the three familiar “domains” of learning—

cognitive, affective and psychomotor-- developed through the work of Bloom (1956),

Krathwohl (1961), Doll (1996), Gagne (1985; 1992), Shulman (2002) and others.



What will students know?

These outcomes are all cognitive, and include content knowledge (e.g., the ability to recall

verbal information) and understanding. Factual knowledge that will be remembered, understood, and that the student will be able to apply and use in responding content related questions and use the factual information in problem solving.



What will students be able to do?

These outcomes can be both cognitive (problem-solving, analysis, evaluation, creative thinking, etc.) and psychomotor (physical). Although many physical skills develop exclusively in the realm of co-curricular activities (e.g., athletics and recreation), the psychomotor domain includes important academic outcomes in the performing arts (theater, dance, music), the fine arts (painting, drawing, sculpture), laboratory skills (dissection, etc.), fieldwork (natural sciences), construction of models in engineering, design and implementation of knowledge, speaking a foreign language, and certain computer skills.



What will students value?

These outcomes are affective, dealing with emotions, attitudes and values.

Experience with the highest order cognitive skills (reflecting on experiences; exercising critical judgment in real world situations with competing goals and incomplete information; designing something within multiple constraints--economic, usability, safety, etc.) reinforces the internalization of values in the affective realm.