Assessing the College Classroom with Unobtrusive Measures

Abstract

This paper suggests ways to expand opportunities for evaluating the college course. While exams and papers are useful, an over-dependence on them is problematic because their overt nature allows for factors other than learning (cheating, test taking strategies, attitudes) to impact assessment results. As such, we recommend the addition of unobtrusive measures to assessing what happens in the college classroom because they provide balance to the results derived from more traditional measures. The discussion includes examples of physical trace, archival, and observation sources of unobtrusive measures of student learning outcomes.

Keywords:

• unobtrusive measures
• nonreactive measures
• student learning
• impact of teaching