Faculty

Assessment of Student Learning at UNO

The improvement of student learning begins with asking questions, perhaps most importantly: What do we want students to achieve by the end of this course, program, or major? What are our expectations for students in our courses, majors, programs, college, university? The answers to these basic questions are the basis for our stated student learning outcomes—in other words, the learning objectives we have articulated for the course, department, program, college, and university levels.

Once we have articulated our expectations in the form of specific student learning outcomes, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association recommends that we use the following five fundamental questions to guide our assessment plans and activities:

Five Fundamental Questions

  • How are your stated student learning outcomes appropriate to your mission, programs, and degrees?
  • What evidence do you have that students achieve your stated learning outcomes?
  • In what ways do you analyze and use evidence of student learning?
  • How do you ensure shared responsibility for student learning?
  • How do you evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your efforts to assess and improve student learning?

How to Use this Website

As suggested above, assessment of student learning and institutional effectiveness takes place at several different levels, each of which has its own requirements (note the navigation links on the left):

This website is organized according to these three distinct levels of assessment. Within these three different levels of assessment, however, the basic approach to assessment is consistent, and involves three recursive components:

  • Plan
  • Collect
  • Improve

Thus, within each level of assessment, specific strategies, approaches, materials, resources, and examples that constitute best practice in planning for assessment, collecting and analyzing assessment data, and taking evidence-based action to improve student learning are available.