On the practices and challenges of measuring higher education value added: the case of Colombia

Changes in the nature of higher education are leading towards increased interest in the assessment of student learning. This study considers an attempt to apply value-added models for the purposes of comparing student learning across institutions, taking care to discuss special considerations inhere...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAssessment and evaluation in higher education Vol. 41; no. 5; pp. 695 - 720
Main Authors Shavelson, Richard J., Domingue, Benjamin W., Mariño, Julián P., Molina Mantilla, Adriana, Morales Forero, Andrés, Wiley, Edward E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2016
Taylor & Francis, Ltd
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Ability
Case Studies
College Entrance Examinations
College Outcomes Assessment
College Students
Colombia
Comparative Analysis
Context Effect
Elementary education
Exit Examinations
Foreign Countries
High School Graduates
Higher Education
Learning
Outcomes of Education
Secondary schools
student outcomes
Value added
Value Added Models
Colombia
United States > US
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Summary:Changes in the nature of higher education are leading towards increased interest in the assessment of student learning. This study considers an attempt to apply value-added models for the purposes of comparing student learning across institutions, taking care to discuss special considerations inherent to the application of these models to higher education. Using standardised outcome data from Colombia on 64,000 students, this study focuses on the amount of ability sorting that exists and the effect of model specification and choice of outcome on the subsequent results. The level of student ability clustering into colleges was shown to be comparable to both primary/secondary schools and higher education institutions in the United States. As in other studies, models that controlled for contextual effects tended to result in very different rankings of institutions as compared to models without contextual effects. Rankings were approximately as sensitive to the choice of outcome (subject specific vs. generic) as the choice of model, although the subject-specific models did explain more of the overall varation.
ISSN:0260-2938
1469-297X
DOI:10.1080/02602938.2016.1168772