A Roadmap for Using Assessment Findings to Increase Equity

Making a Grand Contribution: Professional Development Resources for Leveraging Assessment Data to Advance Equity

“…Assessment, too, has been asked to consider the ways in which traditional student assessment “privileges and validates certain types of learning and evidence of learning over others” (Montenegro and Jankowski 2017, p. 5). As part of the https://sites.google.com/wfu.edu/grandchallengesinassessment/about-us project (Singer‐Freeman and Robinson 2020), we have begun to identify ways to foster more equitable assessment nationally and at individual institutions (Heiser and Milligan 2021). Professional development for faculty, assessment professionals, administrators, and graduate students opens the doors to more equitable work in this area by providing context, concrete resources, applications, and case studies of practice.…”

“…With over 110 webinars, white papers, case studies, journal articles, blog posts, worksheets, podcasts, and free online training opportunities, this list of resources outlines effective procedures supported by assessment organizations and institutions, including https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/, the https://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/, https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/assessment-and-evaluation, https://www.anthology.com/, and https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/assessment-and-evaluation. Our vision is to host an online library for assessment professionals to aid them in “shift[ing] to more equitable practices and understand assessment with an equity lens” (Milligan et al 2021, p.9). This library has been assembled with the goal of becoming searchable by target audience, framework, and phase of assessment.…”

“…Being mindful of the diversity of student needs, experiences, and understandings throughout the assessment process is crucial. “https://www.anthology.com/blog/practicing-equity-centered-assessment” (Lundquist and Heiser 2021) lists specific equity‐centered practices and reflection questions for teaching faculty, administrators, and assessment professionals to consider as they establish an assessment process that centers on equity (e.g., “How are you are attending to intersectionality [in the assessment process]… recognizing the way in which individual students' multiple identities cannot be fully separated from one another for meaning‐making?”). The questions prompt shifts in data collection, data analysis, and the use of assessment results (“Does your institution collect information on student demographic variables and co‐curricular involvement related to race, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation?…”

Defining and Operationalizing Equity-Centered Assessment

“…Discussions on the intersection of equity and assessment continue to expand in higher education, spanning from the use of critical theory to shape assessment work (DeLuca Fernández, 2015;Heiser, Prince, and Levy, 2017) to a continuum of approaches beginning with causing harm and moving towards assessment for social justice and decolonization (Lundquist & Henning, 2020) to embedding equity in assessment practice (Henning et al, 2021;Montenegro & Jankowski, 2020) and using assessment findings to increase equity in higher education Heiser & Milligan, 2021). Assessment processes seek to facilitate continuous improvement and include components of identifying outcomes, providing learning opportunities, selecting and applying methods for measuring outcomes, analyzing data, reporting and sharing results, and using these results to foster change.…”