Using a Social Ecological Perspective to Explore Perceptions of Student Learning Assessment

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 36
  In Roundtable Session: Alternative Approaches to Higher Education Assessment

Abstract

Despite decades of increasingly urgent calls for integrated and meaningful assessment in higher education, many educators continue to struggle to embed assessment into their work and use it to make decisions. In this study, various individual and environmental factors that have been identified as barriers to effective assessment practice in a range of co-curricular areas were integrated into a comprehensive framework that encompasses the multiple levels of the social ecological model (McLeroy, Steckler, Bibeau, & Glanz, 1988). This investigation is expected to inform the literature on the application of social ecological perspectives to the scholarship of assessment and to help bridge the critical disconnection between the espoused value of assessment and the actual integration of assessment into practice.

Authors

• Erika Beseler Thompson, North Dakota State University

• Chris M. Ray, North Dakota State University