Direct Assessment

involves looking at student performance by examining samples of student work. This assessment may examine student outcomes from a given course, from a degree program or from the overall University (as in achieving University General Education Goals). Examples of the work to be assessed are: targeted objectives exhibited on final exams questions; student papers or presentations assessed for achievement of course or program goals; student portfolios assessed for achievement of course, program, or University goals; or licensure exams for professional programs.

Indirect Assessment

is gathering information about student learning by looking at indicators of learning other than student work output. This assessment approach is intended to find out about the quality of the learning process by getting feedback from the student or other persons who may provide relevant information. It may use surveys of employers, exit interviews of graduates, focus groups, or any number of Classroom Assessment Techniques (e.g. minute papers, muddiest point papers or one sentence summaries).

Both of these assessment approaches provide useful information in improving student learning. Indirect assessment can gives us immediate feedback which can be employed in a course to bring direct improvement to student learning. For example, a minute paper can reveal that students are confused on a particular idea and can lead to direct follow-up with additional instruction and review. Unfortunately indirect assessment does not provide reliable evidence that learning objectives have been achieved. The use of surveys and focus groups may lead to improvements in a program but do not directly provide evidence of student learning.

For example, Students in exit surveys may believe that they have improved their abilities in critical thinking, but that is not proof that they have achieved that objective. The survey is an indirect assessment measure, it does not provide evidence that our students have achieved the standards of critical thinking skill that we expect of our graduates. If students responded that they did not believe they had learned critical thinking skills we would certainly be concerned with that perception, but the belief that they had learned such skills is not evidence of goal achievement.

To produce evidence that we have achieved our General Education goals in the area of Critical Thinking (Higher Order Thinking) we would have to employ Direct Assessment measures. We could employ standardized exit exams or evaluate student critical thinking by the analysis of Student Portfolios employing shared rubrics to judge the performance in the area of critical thinking.

Indirect assessments gave indications of learning success, but no evidence. We may improve learning by following the information provided by indirect assessment but it does not prove that learning has achieved our expected standards. We can learn from indirect assessment but we must also use direct assessment (actual student work product) to provide real evidence that learning has been achieved.

Concepts adapted from:

Direct vs. Indirect Assessment Methods - Assessment Handbook. (n.d.) Department of Assessment, Skidmore College. http://www.skidmore.edu/administration/assessment/Direct_vs._Indirect.htm