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Course Evaluation vs. Course Assessment Figure 3 Assessment Drives Improvement at All Levels
Educators are used to grading — an evaluative process. According to Dan Apple,
And most courses have a course evaluation system that In 20 years of facilitating Learning to Learn
weights assignments or activities by percent or points, all Camps, little has changed with respect to incoming
of which contribute to the final grade, score, or percentage. students in that they tend to evaluate themselves
But the principle of designing a system to ensure effective rather than self-assessing. Self-evaluation makes
and ongoing improvement through assessment applies self-growth virtually impossible. One of the main
just as well to a course as to a program; in fact, there is goals of the camp is to shift their practice to self-
much to be gained in aligning assessment practices at the assessment so they can begin, not only to improve,
program, course, activity, and individual level (see Figure but to truly grow.
3). Few courses have a course assessment system — Step
19 of the Methodology for Course Design (Davis, 2007a) Assessment in Student Curricula
—the goal of which is to improve student learning, faculty Assessment is the key to improvement and Process
facilitation, design and responsiveness of the course, and Education means that learners must have ownership of their
the course's materials and resources. Designing courses own learning, so we have shared with students the practice
that featured integrated assessment became part of the of assessment as differentiable from evaluation in Chapter
professional development focus in the first Curriculum 13 of Foundations of Learning (3rd ed.) (Krumsieg & Baehr,
Design Institute and then the Course Design Institute 2000); upgraded again in Foundation of Learning (4th ed.)
(Apple & Krumsieg, 2003). (Redfield & Hurley Lawrence, 2009); and in Experience
4 of Learning to Learn: Becoming a Self-Grower (Apple,
Self-Evaluation vs. Self-Assessment Morgan & Hintze, 2013). These introduce students to
the processes of assessment and evaluation, providing
Being a self-evaluator is one of the top 20 factors that
put academic success at risk for learners, generally by
fostering low self-esteem or depression (Horton, 2015).
Students who self-evaluate rather than self-assess are
“constantly self-critical, see only their mistakes and
failures, and do not appreciate growth or improvement.”
(For more information about the relationship between the
practice of self-assessment and growth see the sections,
Self-Assessment and Growth Mindset.)
Figure 4
56 International Journal of Process Education (February 2016, Volume 8 Issue 1)
