“Engaging Students as Partners in Assessment” was the title of the session Madison Taber presented at the Alternative Assessment Institute 2022. Taber is a Director of Assessment at the Our Lade of the Lake University in Texas. Taber is also a Ph.D. student interested in identity and equity in education. Taber self described as a practitioner and scholar. Taber explained that assessment has an “over-reliance on meritocracy.” They cited several examples including standardized measures and theories that come from studies focusing on “white students in mostly white institutions,” emphasizing accreditation, “students as customers.” Using the definition by Montenegro and Jankowski, Taber defined equitable assessment and the need to include students. Students as Partners “SaP” was defined by Taber using the Cook-Sather, Felten, and Bovill definition as a co-creation process. Taber’s theoretical framework is based on students as partners and true partnerships in the co-creation of curriculum and improvement of existing processes or programs. Taber is using this emerging framework and doing a literature review to challenge hierarchical structures, for SaP to provide a solution to neoliberalism in higher education, and SaP as student engagement and belonging strategy. Taber shared struggling with assessment of general education outcomes and wanting to co-create with students rubrics and resources. Taber and colleagues have eight student learning outcomes for general education. They want to complete the assessment co-creation project with student partnerships. Taber hopes to collect data and begin coding. During the question and answer session, a participant spoke about engaging students in a partnership to create and improve assessments. They had not considered the connection to student belonging and community. Another participant spoke about SENCER and community engaged student-driven projects. Taber explained too that their QEP is centered on student e-portfolios with civic engagement components. This was a great session, as I had not thought about institutional level assessment initiatives centering students.
