Definitions
Accountability - Education is a very complex, interactive process involving content, student capacity and motivation, and instructional skill. Accountability implies the assessment of performance, the public communication of information about performance, and the potential for sanctions or rewards (National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education, 2004)
Acculturation - A student’s particular set of background experiences and opportunities to learn in both formal and informal educational settings.
Action Research - School and classroom-based studies initiated and conducted by teachers and other school staff. Action research teams of school personnel are researchers who systematically reflect on their teaching or other work and collect data that will answer their questions. It offers staff an opportunity to explore issues of interest to them in an effort to improve classroom instruction and educational effectiveness. (Source: Bennett, C.K. "Promoting teacher reflection through action research: What do teachers think?" Journal of Staff Development, 1994, 15, 34-38.)
Assessment - The Latin root assidere means to sit beside. In an educational context, the process of observing learning; describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about a student's or one's own learning. At it’s most useful, assessment is an episode in the learning process; part of reflection and autobiographical understanding of progress. Traditionally, student assessments are used to determine placement, promotion, graduation, or retention. In the context of institutional accountability, assessments are undertaken to determine the institution's performance in terms of effectiveness. In the context of school reform, assessment is an essential tool for evaluating the effectiveness of changes in the teaching-learning process.
A. Qualitative Assessment- Assessment methods that result in verbal descriptions of a student characteristic or behavior.
B. Quantitative Assessment- Assessment methods that yield numerical scores that serve as estimates of a student characteristic or behavior compared to other similar students or a pre-specified criterion of performance.
C. Alternative Assessments- Any assessment not considered to be traditional (e.g., paper-pencil test).
D. Authentic Assessments- Assessment methods that involve the real application of a skill beyond its instructional context; facts and concepts are applied in an attempt to solve real-life problems.
Assessment of Student Outcomes - Measurement/documentation of the degree to which students are attaining specific learning outcomes defined and valued by faculty and the college community.
Content Standards - Statements of the specific content or skills that students are expected to have mastered at a specific point in time.
Evaluation - process is broader than assessment and involves examining information about many components of the thing being evaluated and making judgments about its worth and effectiveness.
A. Formative Evaluation- Ongoing frequent evaluation as the thing being evaluated is occurring for the purpose of making adjustments.
B. Summative Evaluation- Assessments that occur after instruction to determine achievement of objectives.
Learner Objectives -Statements that describe what students are expected to know and be able to do after completing a unit of study.
Measurement - Process of quantifying any human attribute pertinent to education without necessarily making judgments or interpretations.
Outcome - An operationally defined educational goal, usually a culminating activity, product, or performance that can be measured.
Performance: results of the efforts put forth by an institution or program such as graduation, transfer, achievement of other educational goals or entry to graduate school (Council for Higher Education Accreditation).
Performance Criteria -Specific measurable statements identifying the performances required to meet the outcomes, confirmable through evidence.
Performance Standard - 1. A statement or description of a set of operational tasks exemplifying a level of performance associated with a more general content standard; the statement may be used to guide judgments about the location of a cut score on a score scale; the term often implies a desired level of performance. 2. Explicit definitions of what students must do to demonstrate proficiency at a specific level on the content standards.
Rubric - A scoring guide consisting of specified pre-established performance criteria used to evaluate performance.
Standards - The broadest of a family of terms referring to statements of expectations for student learning, including content standards, performance standards, and benchmarks.
Student Learning Outcomes: knowledge, skills, and abilities that a student attains as a result of engagement in a particular set of higher education experiences (Council for Higher Education Accreditation, 2003)