A User-Friendly Approach to Streamlining the Collection

and Analysis of SLO Evidence

Dave Karp&

Tom Vitzelio

Embedded Assessments

What is Embedded Assessment?

Take place in a class or a group of classes 

Determines whether students are learning pre-established learning outcomes

Take advantage of pre-existing student motivation to perform well

Assess what is actually taught

Types of Course-Embedded Assessment Exams Research Papers and Projects Performances Field Experiences, Lab Reports and

Internships Pre/Post Comparisons Student Portfolios Capstone Evaluations

Advantages of Embedded Assessment

Student motivation is high because the assessment activity is part of a course activity

Costs are reduced because incentives are unnecessary

It usually does not require additional student time as it is part of the curriculum

It is faculty-driven and thus, more likely, to be used for improvement

Because it’s linked to the curriculum, it’s more likely to identify specific curricular needs/deficiencies

Feedback to faculty is usually quick

Disadvantages of Embedded Assessment

Faculty commitment is absolutely essential, but can be hard to get

Faculty resistance to the process may be substantial

Achieving agreement among faculty on an assessment approach across courses is a challenge

Usually there are no comparable data

SLOs Assessment vs. Grades

Identified Learning Outcomes

Student 1 Student 2 Student 3 Student 4 Student 5 LearningOutcomeAverage

Spelling 3 4 1 2 3 2.6

Grammar 2 5 3 2 5 3.4

Punctuation 4 5 2 3 4 3.6

Structure 4 3 4 5 3 3.8

TOTAL 13 17 10 12 15  

Individual Student Grade: C A D C B  

An “All-Purpose” Rubric Form to Streamline SLO Assessments

Workshop Focus Our focus is on a tool that makes it

easy to Grade a regular assignment, and Assess students’ performance on a

course level SLO The tool is an “all purpose rubric”

form developed by Chaffey’s Business department

Benefits of the Rubric Automates the grading process Provides a checklist Easily adjustable Can be distributed to students

before and/or after collecting the assignment

May be as simple or complex as the faculty member desires

Quickly and easily enables the SLO assessment

Excel Terminology Worksheet

An individual spreadsheet Workbook

A collection of worksheets combined in a file

Cell The intersection between a row and a

column in a worksheet

May be Simple or Complex

Examples

Preparing Your Rubric Open the All Purpose file Save it with a new name

“Assignment 2 Grading and Assessment” Fill in line items Assign weighted values for each item Fill in the total points possible on the

assignment

Preparing Your Rubric Make copies of the worksheet to fill

in for each student in the class Type each student’s name in the

worksheet tab The student’s name automatically

appears on the worksheet Evaluate the students’

performances

The Assessment Once the grading (evaluation) is

complete, the workbook contains all the data needed to conduct an assessment

All you do is make a copy of the same rubric you used to grade the assignment

The trick is Excel’s 3D Reference function

The Assessment Examples

How to Do a 3D Reference Make another copy of the blank

worksheet Type “Assessment” into the

Worksheet tab click in cell O4, which is the cell

containing the score on the first item

Type =AVERAGE(

How to Do a 3D Reference click on the tab for Student 1's

worksheet – Then click in cell O4 Press down on the “Shift” key and

while still holding it down, click on the tab for the last student worksheet

How to Do a 3D Reference Without going to a different sheet, click

in the formula bar (the one labeled “fx” near the top of the page)

You will notice that there is a formula there that reads something like this: =AVERAGE('Student 1:Student 5'!O4

Type a “)” at the end of the formula Click on the green check to the left of

the formula bar (or press the “Enter” key)

How to Do a 3D Reference Go back to the Assessment worksheet Cell O4 contains the average of all the

students’ scores for that line item! Copy the formula in cell O4 and paste

it into all of the other cells in column O that correspond to one of the rubric’s line items

How to Do a 3D Reference Once done, you have a worksheet

that shows: The class performance on each line

item, and The overall average score on the

assignment

The Assessment This worksheet now contains the

class assessment on this project The only extra work required on top

of the grading for the assignment was to spend a few minutes creating the Assessment worksheet

Now, all you have to do is talk about the results with your colleagues!

A User-Friendly Approach to Streamlining the Collection

and Analysis of SLO Evidence

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