To date, the majority of scholarship about the assessment of student learning focuses on *how* to assess and implement reporting processes on learning, whether at the classroom, co-curricular, program, general education, or institution level. The literature explores how to engage in continuous improvement and change efforts (Banta & Palomba, 2015; Maki, 2010; Suskie, 2018; Walvoord, 2010); new opportunities for practice such as learning improvement (Fulcher & Prendergast, 2021), design thinking (Allworth, D’Souza, & Henning, 2021), integrating teaching and learning (Driscoll, Graff, Shapiro, & Wood, 2021), aligning efforts throughout an institution (Jankowski & Marshall, 2017), and/or student involvement in assessment processes and practices (Jankowski, Brown-Tess, Baker, & Montenegro, 2020). Yet, what is often not included within the literature or mentioned in implementation recommendations are considerations of the *who* of assessment. Recent efforts to humanize the work of assessment (cf. Driscoll, Graff, Shapiro, & Wood, 2021; Maki, 2023; Polychronopoulos, Gochenouer, & Clucas Leaderman, 2021) invite new perspectives.
This WSCUC Commons sessions examines assessment practitioners' language use through a human-centered lens. In this conversation, we will consider how our language reflects our beliefs and informs our interactions with others engaged in the work of assessment. As a group, we will excavate our beliefs about our work using a heuristic proposed by Hong & Moloney (2020); explore current language about assessment and assessment practitioners using a facilitator-provided body of words & phrases drawn from recent scholarship; interrogate potentially unintended implications of the sampled language of assessment; and imagine new ways of cultivating human-centered assessment conversations that advance equity and inclusion.
The Commons session facilitator, Kara Moloney, specializes in building relationships, cultivating curiosity, and collaborating with campus partners to advance equity-centering and inclusive academic assessment practices in courses and programs. As a member of the assessment team in the UC Davis Center for Educational Effectiveness in the UC Davis Office of Undergraduate Education, Kara grounds her coaching and consultation with faculty and staff in her core values of alignment, curiosity, inclusion, and equity. She is also known for her whimsical, laughter-inducing socks.
The WSCUC Commons are community-driven, collaborative, and interactive sessions that aren’t your typical concurrent. While there is no participant fee for WSCUC Commons sessions, registration is required as space is limited.
