Assessment in higher education is relatively new compared to other sub-fields. Because of a need, assessment has evolved in many places simultaneously. People throughout higher education simply started doing it and learning along the way. Unlike disciplines such as sociology, biology, or studio art, there isn’t necessarily a scholarship of assessment. There isn’t a common language across disciplines. Each discipline seems to have its own assessment language that may be similar to that in some disciplines and very different than others. I encountered this exact situation with our library staff and as a result added some new terms to my assessment vocabulary, evolving my assessment skills and knowledge.

Last fall I was approached by our library staff to do an assessment workshop with them. We sat down to discuss the details and I asked, “So what would you like to focus on?” A member of the management team said, “Well, our assessment committee is developing an assessment plan and we want to make sure everyone knows how to write outcomes and know the difference between inputs, outputs, and outcomes.”

I hesitated briefly. An outcome development workshop I could do. I had done many in the past. But, help them discriminate between inputs, outputs, and outcomes? Now, that was going to be a little more difficult since those weren’t terms in my assessment vocabulary. I could make some assumptions as to the differences, but I needed to do some research in preparation.

So, I went to the library and talked with a reference librarian.

Joshua, who I call my “smart library friend,” is a reference librarian who leads the assessment team. He gave me a copy of the Association of College Research Libraries’ Standards and Assessment for Academic Libraries Workbook by Nelson and Fernekes. These were the standards that the assessment committee was using to develop its assessment plan. So I read the standards and came to realize that the assessment terminology used by librarians was very helpful in understanding different elements of assessment. I began adopting some of their terms to describe assessment.

Here is how I visualize the language of assessment.

The foundation for all assessment is the mission. According to Bryson in Strategic Planning for Public and Non-Profit Organization, a mission clarifies an organization’s purpose or why it should be doing what it does (2004, p. 102). In this pyramid the mission denotes the institutional mission, divisional mission, and the departmental mission. I didn’t include each of them to make the model manageable. Each mission should be aligned witheach other so it is transparent how the departmental mission supports the divisional mission and how the divisional mission supports the institutional mission. As you move up the hierarchy, the components get more specific and more numerous. You have one institutional mission, but multiple departmental missions. Each departmental mission will have multiple goals. Each goal will have multiple outcomes. 

After the mission come the goals. Goals are an end result written in broad terms. An example of a goal is: “as a result of participating in the Emerging Leaders Program, students will increase their leadership skills.” This is a goal since the specific type of leadership skills is not described. It is important that goals are aligned with the departmental mission. If not, senior administrators may wonder why a department is working towards a goal that isn’t consistent with their mission, which may jeopardize resources.

Next in line in the model are inputs. This was a new assessment term I learned from my library colleagues. Inputs are the raw materials that are used to develop a program or intervention which can include staff, budget, facilities, etc.(Nelson and Fernekes, 2002, p. 3). Inputs for an Emerging Leaders Program may include $1500 and two staff members. You may ask why documenting inputs is important in the assessment process. It is helpful to know what you are beginning with. If you find out that a program was ineffective, one reason could be insufficient resources.

After inputs come outputs.  Outputs are what I used to consider program outcomes. According to Nelson and Fernekes (2002),outputs serve to document work done (p. 3) or as I conceptualize it, progression towards an outcome or goal. An output for an Emerging Leaders Program would include the number of sessions in the program, the average number of students participating in a given semester, or the number of students completing the program. The outputs in and of themselves don’t tell us a lot. However, they provide context for understanding the outcome.

Next are outcomes. For Nelson and Fernekes (2002), outcomes are ways in which library users are changed as a result of their contact with the library’s resources and programs, (p. 3). I conceptualize an outcome as the desired effect of aprogram, service, or intervention but it is more specific than a goal. It is important to note that it is participant focused – not facilitator focused. An outcome for an Emerging Leader Program could be “as a result of participating in the Emerging Leaders Program, students will develop and hone meeting facilitation skills.” You may ask why is the distinction that an outcome is participant focused important. It helps us focus on our ultimate target. In the past, assessment would have goals and then we would assess those depending on what the facilitator offered. A facilitator focused assessment for an Emerging Leaders Program might include questions such as “were the instructors knowledgeable?” “were the instructors engaging?” “did the instructors get to know you as a person?” Now, these are important since doing these things will help students learn skills. However, the focus is on the facilitator and not on the student, which is where we want it to be. Outcomes that are participant centered help us place the focus on what the students are able to know, do or value as a result of the program or interaction.

This is why I like to use the terms outputs and outcomes because these terms are more discernible than learning outcomes and program outcomes. In my experience these latter terms are abbreviated to “outcomes” and then in conversation we don’t know which ones we are talking about.

Here is an analogy that I have found in understanding the difference between input, output, and outcome to folks I work with.

Inputs are like electricity. You need electricity before you can have light. But electricity that is not connected to a light is an idle resource.

Light is an output. It is helpful. You can measure it by watts or volts like you would attendance at a program or number of students served by a department. It helps you know how bright a room can be, but in and of itself, doesn’t mean much. You can light a room, but if no one is in it, you are wasting electricity (inputs/resources) just like you can have a program, but no one learns anything.

Outcomes add the value to the output. They are your ultimate target. Your intent isn’t to get a certain number of students to a program. Your intent is to have the students who attend learn something. Sometimes the attendance is important because it may impact resource allocation, but it isn’t your target. In this case, the light can help a student study. The student wouldn’t be able to study in a dark room without a light that was connected to electricity. All three are important, but are important when they are interrelated to each other.

Now you need the components to foster the outcomes. The first of these components, and next in the assessment language hierarchy are strategies. A strategy is a means to achieving an outcome or goal. A strategy for an outcome where students develop meeting facilitation skills may be students identifying and describing three best practices in meeting facilitation. There would likely be other strategies included to help foster this outcome. This wouldn’t be the only one.

The highest point of the hierarchy is the action step. These are the “to do” list items for strategies. An action step is a way to implement a strategy to achieve an outcome or goal.

If the strategy is to have students identify and describe three best practices in meeting facilitation, action steps might include identifying meetings to attend, developing an opportunity for reflection, developing a framework for that reflection, evaluating the experience, etc.

Strategies and action steps are important to document for two reasons. First, if you do not achieve your goal you are going to want to know why. Reasons could include misaligned strategies or incomplete action steps among other possibilities. Or, if you did reach your goal, wouldn’t it be useful to know if three of your strategies are just as effective as or more effective than seven others? Documenting and assessing the action steps help you understand how effective individual strategies are.

This is the language of assessment I have learned and it has been helpful with the folks Iwork with so that we are on the same page. You may prefer to use different terms than I do. That is okay. However, it is important to always clarify with colleagues what you or they mean by the assessment language used. They may be using the same definition that you are. Or, they may not. We all need to be speaking the same language to assess effectively.

I am glad I worked with our library staff. It provided me the opportunity to learn some new terms and add them to my assessment vocabulary so I could further develop my assessment knowledge.

References

Bryson, J.M. (2004). Strategic planning for public and non-profit organizations (3^rdEd.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Nelson, W.N, & Fernekes, R. W. (2002). Standards and assessment for academic libraries: A workbook. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.