Full Description
This book examines important advances and offers a realistic image of the state of the art in student learning outcomes assessment in higher education—a field close to the core of nearly every higher education institution. Producing sound information on what students know and can do is critical to higher education practitioners and future social prosperity. Spanning international, national and institutional developments, the book presents methodological and empirical insights, highlights research challenges, and showcases the enormous progress made in recent years.
The book will be of interest to researchers in education assessment and neighbouring fields, and stakeholders like institutional leaders, teachers and graduate employers looking for better insight on returns, governments searching for information to assist with funding and regulation, and members of the public wanting more clarity about outcomes and public investment. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education.
Contents
Introduction. Assessing student learning outcomes in higher education: challenges and international perspectives 1. Assessing student learning outcomes internationally: insights and frontiers 2. Assessing critical thinking in higher education: the HEIghten™ approach and preliminary validity evidence 3. On the practices and challenges of measuring higher education value added: the case of Colombia 4. Assessing scientific reasoning: a comprehensive evaluation of item features that affect item difficulty 5. Comparing future teachers' beliefs across countries: approximate measurement invariance with Bayesian elastic constraints for local item dependence and differential item functioning 6. Student motivation in low-stakes assessment contexts: an exploratory analysis in engineering mechanics 7. Developing instruments to assess and compare the quality of engineering education: the case of China and Russia 8. Macroeconomic knowledge of higher education students in Germany and Japan - a multilevel analysis of contextual and personal effects
