lived faculty experience with formalized assessment initiatives: an interpretive phenomenological analysis.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20248508

Institutions of higher education both value and need student assessment data. Faculty, as seen in numerous studies, however, have generally negatively received the formalization and reporting of student assessments to gather this assessment data. If we could better understand faculty experiences and perceptions of student assessment data within institutions of higher education, we might then be better able to serve the students enrolled. Therefore, the purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis was to understand faculty experiences with and perceptions of student assessment data for the betterment of student learning. Using Browns (2004, 2008) Conception of Assessment (CoA) theory, this study sought to answer the following research question: What are the lived experiences of faculty interacting with formalized assessment practices? Interviews with faculty working within higher education found four key beliefs: first, they perceived formalized assessment as accountability in the classroom as ineffective; second, they perceived formalized assessment as accountability to accreditors as positive in theory; third, they positive perceived the potential of formalized assessment to improve the education experience; and fourth, they perceived that formalized assessment must be faculty-driven, purposeful, and scholarly. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.