Instruments available at St. Olaf for evaluating projects
intended to improve student learning
Many externally-funded projects are intended to have an impact on student learning at St. Olaf. Some of the instruments currently being used to assess student learning at St. Olaf may be useful components of a grant evaluation plan. If one of these instruments is administered to students affected by a grant project, the investigator can compare the results for participating students to results campus-wide, and sometimes to results for students at other institutions. Some of these instruments involve a cost, which should be built into the grant budget, but others are available at no charge. Below is a list of currently-available instruments:
- National
Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) -- An instrument intended
to describe how students spend their time in college and the extent
to which they engage in an array of behaviors associated with
the desired outcomes of higher education
- Intercultural
Development Inventory (IDI) -- A questionnaire intended
to measure changes in students' understanding of and attitudes
toward cultural difference, based on a developmental model of
intercultural competence
- Student Learning Item Catalog -- A list of items related to student learning in national surveys regularly administered at St. Olaf, classified according to the behaviors, knowledge, skills, and attitudes they are intended to measure. Items may be adapted for use in course evaluations, program reviews, grant program evaluations, scholarship of teaching and learning projects, and other inquiry projects in support of student learning, and results may be compared to college-wide results and results at other institutions
