AAHE 9 Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning

1. The assessment of student learning begins with educational values. Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Its effective practice, then, 从我们对学生最重视的学习方式开始，并制定这种学习方式的愿景，并努力帮助他们实现. 教育价值不仅应该决定我们选择评估什么，还应该决定我们如何评估. Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what's easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about.

2. 当评估反映了对学习的多维理解时，它是最有效的, integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. It entails not only what students know but what they can do with what they know; it involves not only knowledge and abilities but values, attitudes, 以及影响学业成功和课堂以外表现的思维习惯. 评估应通过采用各种不同的方法来反映这些理解, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth, and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate picture of learning, 从而为改善我们学生的教育体验打下坚实的基础.

3. 当评估所寻求改进的项目有明确明确的目的时，评估效果最好. Assessment is a goal-oriented process. 它需要将教育表现与教育目的和期望（源于学校使命）进行比较, from faculty intentions in program and course design, and from knowledge of students' own goals. Where program purposes lack specificity or agreement, assessment as a process pushes a campus toward clarity about where to aim and what standards to apply; assessment also prompts attention to where and how program goals will be taught and learned. 明确、共享、可实施的目标是重点突出和有用的评估的基石.

4. 评估需要关注结果，但也同样需要关注导致这些结果的经验. Information about outcomes is of high importance; where students "end up" matters greatly. But to improve outcomes, 我们需要了解学生在这一过程中的经历——了解课程, teaching, and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment can help us understand which students learn best under what conditions; with such knowledge comes the capacity to improve the whole of their learning.

5. Assessment works best when it is ongoing not episodic. Assessment is a process whose power is cumulative. Though isolated, "one-shot" assessment can be better than none, 当评估需要在一段时间内进行一系列相互联系的活动时，最好促进改进. This may mean tracking the process of individual students, or of cohorts of students; it may mean collecting the same examples of student performance or using the same instrument semester after semester. 关键是要以持续改进的精神来监控实现预期目标的进展. Along the way, 评估过程本身应该根据新出现的见解进行评估和改进.

6. 当来自整个教育界的代表参与时，评估促进了更广泛的改进. Student learning is a campus-wide responsibility, and assessment is a way of enacting that responsibility. Thus, while assessment efforts may start small, the aim over time is to involve people from across the educational community. Faculty play an especially important role, 但是，如果没有学生事务教育者的参与，评估的问题就无法得到充分解决, librarians, administrators, and students. Assessment may also involve individuals from beyond the campus (alumni/ae, trustees, 雇主)，他们的经验可以丰富适当的目标和学习标准的意识. Thus understood, assessment is not a task for small groups of experts but a collaborative activity; its aim is wider, 与学生学习的改善有利害关系的各方对学生学习给予更明智的关注.

7. 当评估从使用问题开始，并阐明人们真正关心的问题时，评估就会有所不同. Assessment recognizes the value of information in the process of improvement. 但要想有用，信息必须与人们真正关心的问题或问题联系起来. 这意味着评估方法要产生有关各方认为可信的证据, suggestive, and applicable to decisions that need to be made. 这意味着提前考虑信息将如何被使用，以及被谁使用. The point of assessment is not to gather data and return "results"; it is a process that starts with the questions of decision-makers, that involves them in the gathering and interpreting of data, and that informs and helps guide continuous improvement.

8. 当评估是促进变革的更大条件集的一部分时，它最有可能导致改进. Assessment alone changes little. 它最大的贡献来自于教学质量明显受到重视和重视的校园. On such campuses, the push to improve educational performance is a visible and primary goal of leadership; improving the quality of undergraduate education is central to the institution's planning, budgeting, and personnel decisions. On such campuses, 有关学习成果的信息被视为决策的一个组成部分, and avidly sought.

9. 通过评估，教育者履行了对学生和公众的责任. There is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, 我们有责任向支持或依赖我们的公众提供有关我们的学生达到目标和期望的方式的信息. But that responsibility goes beyond the reporting of such information; our deeper obligation -- to ourselves, our students, and society -- is to improve. 那些对教育者负责的人有相应的义务支持这种改进的尝试.

Authors: Alexander W. Astin; Trudy W. Banta; K. Patricia Cross; Elaine El-Khawas; Peter T. Ewell; Pat Hutchings; Theodore J. Marchese; Kay M. McClenney; Marcia Mentkowski; Margaret A. Miller; E. Thomas Moran; Barbara D. Wright. 本文件是在美国高等教育学会评估论坛的主持下编写的，得到了改善高等教育基金的支持，并得到了埃克森教育基金会对出版和传播的额外支持. Copies may be made without restriction.