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Determine Performance Indicators

Once the course student learning outcomes/objectives have been articulated, the observable student behaviors that indicate achievement of those outcomes/objectives – the student “performance indicators” - must be identified for each level of achievement on a rubric (e.g., Not Competent, Almost Competent, Competent, Better than Competent). The central question to ask when trying to articulate performance indicators is, “what observable behaviors must a student display to indicate achievement of the stated learning outcome?”

For example, in a writing course a student will be expected to indicate achievement of course objectives by demonstrating competence in such things as proper language use, argument, use of evidence and examples, proper documentation of sources, and so on. These performance indicators are found in written artifacts produced by students as part of their normal coursework.

Often, the most appropriate performance indicators are found in normal student work products and activities associated with a particular course, such as:

• Papers and/or projects
• Presentations, exhibitions, performances
• Some standardized and/or locally-developed content-knowledge tests

As the above list illustrates, appropriate performance indicators are certainly not limited to textual artifacts – the possibilities include any type of work product normally associated with the course: lab work, recordings of live performances, computer programs, and so on. Whatever form the observable student behaviors take, though, some type of lasting artifact needs to be collected for assessment purposes. Electronic portfolios, such as those available in UNO’s myMAPP™ system, makes collecting and storing any artifact that can be saved as an electronic file (text, visual, audio, etc) feasible and efficient.

Using student work products associated with the day-to-day learning activities in a particular course for assessment purposes is referred to as course-embedded assessment. Course-embedded assessment has a couple of distinct advantages:

• Assessment is not “done to” students; rather, the assessment of student learning in a course is planned in such a way that it comprises a learning experience for the student
• Assessment is not an “add on” to the course – it does not require a lot of extra effort for either students or instructors
• Course-embedded assessment of student learning is most often direct, authentic assessment