Making the Assessment Personal

“Assessing Attitudes, Values, Dispositions, and Habits of Mind” – Suskie

Assessing someone’s values seemed very easy to do until reading this article. I hadn’t realized how subjective the evaluator is potentially being when asking certain questions. This subjectivity also assumes that the participants all have some common understanding of what is being asked.

I also really appreciated Suskie pointing out the rise of reflection and the benefits of doing it. Sometimes allowing participants to use reflection as their outlet for assessment gives more answers than were expected. When I was an intern for my undergrad’s orientation program, we asked 10 of the 117 OLs to journal their experience from the time of being hired until the contracted ended, a six month commitment. Half of the journalists were newly hired OLs and the other half were returners. Their submissions were sent to my supervisor throughout the summer; their reflections provided our office with much more information on the feelings towards training, staff dynamics, and the takeaways that staff members were getting from this experience. We used their entries more than our formalized assessment when it came to making changed for the next summer.

I think it’s interesting that there was a bullet point to highlight that evaluators should put the option of “I don’t know” or “I can’t answer”. Originally, I saw that as an opt out for participants to finish the survey quickly and not pay attention to the questions; however, now I realize that it is a way for participants to highlights the areas that they are sure of which will give more accurate data in the long run.