Advocate Online

The Dialogue Question:
Does outcome-based assessment significantly improve the student learning experience?

Yes, outcome-based assessment significantly improves the student learning experience.
Frank Adams *

A student learning experience is significantly improved when instructor and learner know what is expected of each. The learner is successful when outcome and criteria for assessing student performance are known; the instructor is successful when outcomes and criteria are stated clearly. All of this occurs in Outcome-Based Education (OBE).

Outcome-Based Assessment, a component of OBE, compares student performance against the course objectives. The emphasis is on the end behavior rather than on the process. The student is assessed using criteria indicated for a specific objective; it is the attainment of those criteria that becomes the reinforcer to the learner rather than a grade that stresses only memory. In OBE, the educational outcomes are clearly and unambiguously specified; the outcome emphasizes relevance to the curriculum and is held accountable to both student and instructor.

The critical element in outcome-based assessment is the instructor—the instructor’s ability to design, to write, and to reflect upon outcomes which are specific, measurable, and relate directly to the skill being assessed. The instructor views teaching as a purposeful act to aid the learner in achieving clear objectives. OBE focuses on what students can actually do after they are taught.

Outcome-based assessment is a process of rating the product—a student’s performance—against known criteria. It encourages the instructor and the student to share responsibility for learning, and encourages student self-assessment. A grade signifies how well a learner has performed on an individual assignment. But a grade alone does not address the level of competence a learner has achieved.

* Frank Adams, a professor of education at Wayne State College (Nebraska), has been a member of NEA for almost 30 years. He has served as local and district unit president and on many local, state, and national committees. Currently, he serves as treasurer for the local NEA unit.

No, outcome-based assessment presupposes that there are universal outcome standards.
Frank Edler *

I don’t believe outcome-based assessment will significantly improve the student learning experience, at least not until every liberal arts and humanities course has been stripped of its imagination and reduced to universal outcome standards. Let’s face it. This is the age of the “bean-counter,” when management dictates to education rather than serves it. The audacity to imagine, the impulse to create, and the inclination to challenge must be eviscerated from every course that does not fit the mold of precise, measurable, universal standards.

How dare these professors think they can teach their own views! Who do they think they are? Haven’t they heard about systems thinking? As Steven Crow, director of the Higher Learning Commission, has stated, the search for truth is no longer a viable option for higher education.

How dare these professors challenge the new order of education, and how dare they think they have some sense of autonomy in the classroom! Universal assessment standards will finally get rid of that pesky problem of diversity. We want uniformity so that courses and programs can be measured across all colleges and universities. I have been a service provider for my customers in philosophy for almost 30 years, and nothing pleases me more than being able to redefine my outcomes according to some committee of bobbling heads so that those outcomes can be measured more easily and, more importantly, so that I can satisfy my customers.

Now I can raise the benchmark to the lowest common denominator! In addition, I can finally give up trying to measure that most vacuous of outcomes known as the search for truth.

* Frank Edler, a philosophy professor at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska, has written on Heidegger, Jung, Willa Cather, Wright Morris, and other topics. He is past president of the college’s education association and is currently chair of the Academic Council at MCC.