The assessment cycle or loop
is made up of primarily four steps:
- Develop (or refine) a measure
- Assess student artifacts
- Develop and deploy an
improvement intervention
- Reassess student artifacts
These loops are continuous
until the learning goal is considered to have been fully accomplished or it
becomes a lower priority compared to other potential goals. The loops for each
learning goal are independent and are generally at different stages to make the
comprehensive process manageable.
Assessments take place at
specific points in time. Interventions, once implemented, are ongoing and
become part of the standard operating procedure unless they are found to be
ineffective or counterproductive in which case they are aborted. The
effectiveness of an intervention is determined by comparing the results of the
reassessment (posttest) to the initial assessment (pretest). The statement
“closing the loop” refers to the process of assessing if the intervention was
successful or not (reassessing new students’ artifacts).