| Institution: | (1) The RAND Corporation, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, California, 90407-2138, USA.;(2) Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, Bloomington, IN;(3) Council for Aid to Education, New York City, NY;(4) The RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA;(5) Graduate School of Education and Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA |
| Abstract: | Over the past decade, state legislatures have experienced increasing pressure to hold higher education accountable for student learning. This pressure stems from several sources, such as increasing costs and decreasing graduation rates. To explore the feasibility of one approach to measuring student learning that emphasizes program improvement, we administered several open-ended tests to 1365 students from 14 diverse colleges. The strong correspondence between hand and computer assigned scores indicates the tests can be administered and graded cost effectively on a large scale. The scores were highly reliable, especially when the college is the unit of analysis; they were sensitive to years in college; and they correlated highly with college GPAs. We also found evidence of  value added in that scores were significantly higher at some schools than at others after controlling on the school s mean SAT score. Finally, the students said the tasks were interesting and engaging. |
