Assessing Student Performance
Assessing the Impact of Service-Learning on Communities and Organizations
Resources and Links
Assessing Student Performance
While most service-learning partnerships are designed so the teacher assesses the student's learning, occasionally the community-based organization will be asked to assess student learning. The following information will be helpful to organizations which have internships and other substantial service-learning programs.
Community-based organizations may question their role in assessing student performance
in an academic program. Site supervisors may feel uncomfortable giving input that
will affect grades. Certainly academic work should be graded by those who are
qualified. While it is the instructor's responsibility to relate service site
feedback to educational objectives, often no one is better qualified to assess
the quality of student work than the site supervisor.
With group projects, a teacher can help students think about how their individual contributions may have helped the group effort.
Why Assess Student Service?
Timely feedback can help students to improve the quality of their service, particularly
if given along the way as well as at the end of a project or placement. Students
also work harder and learn more when they see the direct value of their service.
Feedback provides a chance to explain the impact a student is making. Feedback
sessions also offer a chance to recruit students to volunteer after their class
assignment ends.
Cumulative assessments of individual student performance should help shape overall program evaluation and efforts to improve. Schools, colleges, and universities are increasingly requiring "authentic" assessment of student learning. That is, students must apply academic knowledge and skills on problems that are as close as possible to the complex real world. To accomplish this, educators need the help of professionals in the community.
Why Assess Formally?
Most service site supervisors already give students informal verbal feedback. Yet formal feedback has several advantages:
- Students perform better when they know in advance what they are expected to do. They take written feedback more seriously. Written feedback also reduces chances for confusion or misinterpretation.
- Written feedback can be shared with students, instructors, and in some cases with parents or other stakeholders.
- Students can also review feedback later to see where they have grown over time.
- Feedback that occurs during service can adjust and improve student performance.
- Obviously, the drawback of formal feedback is that it takes time. Organizations may rightly insist that they will only give formal feedback to those students who contribute a significant number of hours. In any case, feedback is more valid for students who have been around long enough for site supervisors to really get to know them.
Where Do We Begin?
- Assessment should include feedback both on the quality of student work and on student learning. What is important for students to learn?
- Assessment plans must be worked out between the service site supervisor and the instructor. When possible, students too should be involved.
Assessing the Impact of Service-Learning on Communities and Organizations
What should we look for? As always, that depends upon your goals for
taking on service-learning.
- Were you seeking to extend contacts?
- Educate the public about an issue?
- Find an academic partner to help shape your strategic plan?
- Address an unmet need of your clients?
- Increase the diversity of your volunteer pool?
What you need to know also depends upon who wants to know, and what they're going to do with the information.
- Are you participating in a grant or other program which requires you to collect evaluation data?
- Are there board members, funders, or other stakeholders with specific questions about student involvement
- Or are you simply trying to make the case for investing time and resources in service-learning?
Measuring Community Impact
Here are a few methods for collecting information about the impact of service.
- Count Hours: This common measure can be valuable if students are
answering phones or some other task normally organized by time.
- Count People Served: Can be valuable with activities such as public
outreach where the number of contacts is important. It may be difficult to
quantify results when a project serves a whole community.
- Count the Products: Effective when students work with things: planting
trees, bagging food, stuffing a mailing, etc. You must define levels of quality.
(Are trees seedlings or ten feet tall?)
- Pre-/Post-Test Clients: Is especially valuable in an institutional
setting such as a tutoring program. Tests can be time-consuming.
- Survey Clients/Users: Again, ask those served. May be useful especially
if a large number is involved. (Such as conference participants.)
- Group Feedback Sessions: Can give rich, detailed information. Sessions
need to be structured, but may be informal. People often speak at greater
depth in the give and take of a group than they do in individual interviews.
- Interview Clients: How satisfied are the people served? This method
is very effective, but takes much time.
Resources and Links
You can find a variety of resources on assessment and evaluation. On Line Resources: http://www.projectstar.org
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