Definition:

Course-embedded Assessment involves the assessment of the actual work produced by students in our courses. The assessment may select course papers or elements of final exams and use these student artifacts to assess the achievement of specific course learning objectives. In some cases the assessment instrument may be separate from graded work in the course or it may be graded work. It is important that the purpose of this assessment is to assess the learning outcome of the course and not the grade of the student. Course-embedded assessments may also be indirect assessment techniques (classroom assessment techniques) employed continuously throughout the course to improve the quality of the learning process. The faculty member who teaches the course will evaluate the student by assigning a grade, but in addition the student work will be evaluated for the purpose of assessing the learning objectives of the course. It is an important principle of good practice that the course assessment results should not be used to evaluate the faculty member for purposes of retention, promotion or tenure.

Advantages:

• Students do not have to do anything outside the normal requirements of the course and may or may not know that their work is being used for assessment of learning outcomes. They should have only the normal motivation to achieve for purposes of course grade.
• Course-embedded assessments may be formative as well as summative. They can be used to evaluate the development of student skills and provide feedback (formative) and they can be summative as well (evaluating final student product).
• The assessment process is part of the normal activities in a typical course. Faculty and students go about the business of the course as usual. The only difference is that assessment is being integrated into the process.
• Designing an assessment process causes faculty to examine course objectives and rethink such course elements as learning expectations, sequencing of course content, and the relative importance of different course objectives.
• Rethinking our courses and objectives will result in a better linkage between what is taught and what is assessed.
• Course-embedded assessment gives us feedback on the effectiveness of our course assignments. It provides feedback that allows us to redesign our assignments and give clearer direction to our students about what we are expecting.
• Classroom Assessment Reports can be completed without excessive time commitment on the part of faculty members because they can often be performed along with the grading process. This work load will be reduced as faculty members become more knowledgeable on the assessment process.
• Classroom Assessment Reports can be compiled by department/division chairs to evaluate the learning achievement in the department/division. The results can also be reviewed by the Assessment Committee for incorporation into overall assessment analysis.
• Course learning expectations and faculty evaluation criterion can be shared with students to better inform them of what we expect of them and what we will be using to evaluate their work in our courses.

Disadvantages:

• If the objective is to assess University level learning outcomes, through the use of research papers and projects, it may be necessary to bring in groups of faculty and the use of University wide rubrics. This process will require more faculty effort and more coordination.
• There is a tendency for faculty to want to employ test scores to show achievement of course objectives, this presents a problem since overall test results do not provide satisfactory data on specific course objectives.
• If there are several faculty members in a discipline who teach a given course each faculty member in the discipline should agree to include the assessments that the discipline, as a group, decide upon.

Varieties of Course-Embedded Assessments:

Examinations:

The preferred approach is to select specific questions or to insert specific questions into an exam (often the Final Exam) to be used to assess specific course learning objectives. It is not ideal to use the entire examination for assessment purposes. Individual faulty members may use overall exam outcomes if the exam is focused toward specific course objectives and they believe that this is the best approach to assessing student learning. The faculty who design the assessment plan will need to determine the criteria for rating the student performance and the standard of performance to indicate the achievement of course learning objectives.

Research Papers and Projects:

These major projects should be assessed by using a rubric (see, rubrics in that section of the Assessment Handbook). Faculty should establish the expectations of student performance to be used in the assessment tool before the administration of the assignment. It is thought to be a good practice to share evaluation rubrics with students before the assignment is made. This sharing of information improves the linkage between faculty expectation and student performance.

Field Experiences, Lab Reports and Internships:

Student reports which are produced in field experiences, laboratory experiments or reflective evaluations of internship experiences can be used to assess their learning in such course activities.

Creating and Designing Course-Embedded Assessments:

• Select the course objectives to be assessed;
• Evaluate and review course assignments which could be used for assessment;
• Decide which course elements would best serve as assessment tools and which elements will need to be modified to be modified to meet the needs of assessing course objectives;
• Integrate the embedded assessments elements into the course;
• Collect the results of the assessment tools and report the results to Division Chairs and the Assessment Committee through the Course Assessment Plan;
• Determine the level of student achievement as a result of the assessment tools and evaluate the achievement of course learning objectives;
• Make appropriate changes to the course content or curriculum if this is indicated by the assessment results.

Concepts adapted from:

Embedded Assessments - Assessment Handbook. (n.d.) Department of Assessment, Skidmore College. http://www.skidmore.edu/administration/assessment/H_embedded_assessment.htm