Assessing Global Learning

Higher education needs a new, holistic assessment of global learning. The studies in this edited volume investigate not just student learning, but also faculty experiences, program structures, and pathways that impact global learning. Showcasing recent, multi-institutional research related to global learning, this book expands the context of global learning to show its antecedents and impacts as a part of the larger higher education experience. Chapters look at recent developments such as short-term, off-campus, international study and certificate/medallion programs, as well as blended learning environments and undergraduate research, all in the context of multi-institutional comparisons. Global learning is also situated in a larger university context. Thus, there is a growing need for bridging across disciplinary and administrative silos, silos that are culturally bound within academia. The gaps between these silos matter as students seek to integrate off- and on-campus learning, and it is up to the academy to mind those gaps.

Teachers assist students in order to gain data and to determine whether the instructional objectives have been met. Usually, the assessment process takes place as part of ongoing learning and teaching, periodically and at key transitions. The term "assessment" refers to the wide variety of methods, procedures, and tools used to determine what students know, learn, and how they apply knowledge in concrete situations. Assessment, Testing, and Measurement Strategies in Global Higher Education is a comprehensive synthesis of correlations between assessment, testing, and measurement in the context of global education. It analyzes the impact of educational technology on learning analytics, challenges of rapidly changing learning environments, and computer-based assessment. Featuring an assortment of topics such as educational technologies, risk management, and metacognition, this book is optimal for academicians, higher education faculty, deans, performance evaluators, practitioners, curriculum designers, researchers, administrators, and students.

This volume brings together educational effectiveness research and international large-scale assessments, demonstrating how the two fields can be applied to inspire and improve each other, and providing readers direct links to instruments that cover a broad range of topics and have been shown to work in more than 70 countries. The book’s initial chapters introduce and summarize recent discussions and developments in the conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation of international large-scale context assessments and provide an outlook on possible future developments. Subsequently, three thematic sections – “Student Background”, “Outcomes of Education Beyond Achievement”, and “Learning in Schools” – each present a series of chapters that provide the conceptual background for a wide range of important topics in education research, policy, and practice. Each chapter defines a conceptual framework that relates recent findings in the educational effectiveness research literature to current issues in education policy and practice. These frameworks were used to develop interesting and relevant indicators that may be used for meaningful reporting from international assessments, other cross-cultural research, or national studies. Using the example of one particular survey (the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2015)), this volume links all theoretical considerations to fully developed questionnaire material that was field trailed and evaluated in questionnaires for students and their parents as well as teachers and principals in their schools. The primary purposes of this book are to inform readers about how education effectiveness research and international large-scale assessments are already interacting to inform research and policymaking; to identify areas where a closer collaboration of both fields or input from other areas could further improve this work; to provide sound theoretical frameworks for future work in both fields; and finally to relate these theoretical debates to currently available and evaluated material for future context assessments.

Assessment has provided educational institutions with information about student learning outcomes and the quality of education for many decades. But has it informed practice and been fully incorporated into the learning cycle? Conrad and Openo argue that the potential inherent in many of the new learning environments being explored by educators and students has not been fully realized. In this investigation of a variety of assessment methods and learning approaches, the authors aim to discover the tools that engage learners and authentically evaluate education. They insist that moving to new learning environments, specifically those online and at a distance, afford opportunities for educators to adopt only the best practices of traditional face-to-face assessment while exploring evaluation tools made available by a digital learning environment in the hopes of arriving at methods that capture the widest set of learner skills and attributes.

Written by researchers from eleven different countries, these accounts offer clear guidance on conducting different forms of international comparative research and valuable suggestions for new directions in such research.

Co-published with While there is wide consensus in higher education that global learning is essential for all students’ success, there are few models of how to achieve this goal. The authors of this book, all of whom are from one of the nation’s largest and most diverse research universities, provide such a model and, in doing so, offer readers a broad definition of global learning that both encompasses a wide variety of modes and experiences—in-person, online, and in co-curricular activities at home and abroad—and engages all students on campus. They provide a replicable set of strategies that embed global learning throughout the curriculum and facilitate high quality, high-impact global learning for all students.The approach this book describes is based upon three principles: that global learning is a process to be experienced, not a thing to be produced; that it requires all students’ participation—particularly the underrepresented—and cannot succeed if reserved for a select few; and that global learning involves more than mastery of a particular body of knowledge. The authors conceptualize global learning as the process of diverse people collaboratively analyzing and addressing complex problems that transcend borders of all kinds. They demonstrate how institutions can enable all students to determine relationships among diverse perspectives on problems and develop equitable, sustainable solutions for the world’s interconnected human and natural communities. What’s more, they describe how a leadership process—collective impact—can enable all stakeholders across departments and disciplines to align and integrate universal global learning throughout the institution and achieve the aims of inclusive excellence.Providing examples of practice, this book:• Offers a model to make global learning universal;• Provides a definition of global learning that incorporates diversity, collaboration, and problem solving as essential components; • Describes effective leadership for implementation consistent with the attributes of global learning;• Illustrates integrative, high-impact global learning strategies within the access pipeline, students’ coursework, and co-curricular activities; • Offers practical strategies for global learning professional development, student learning assessment, and program evaluation;• Promotes inclusive excellence through universal global learning.

This report addresses the more contentious aspects of large-scale learning assessments (LSLAs). Drawing on UNESCO's extensive experience in the area from involvement in the direct implementation of assessments and as a knowledge broker and convener of networks this publication presents the Organization's critical take on such initiatives. It aims to balance the debate on LSLAs by reviewing their benefits while raising awareness on their potential risks and pitfalls. The focus of discussions in this publication is on LSLAs conducted in formal and school-based education. It includes an Annex outlining key international studies. [Executive summary, ed]