OECD Education Working Papers
This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies drawing on the work of the OECD Directorate for Education. Authorship is usually collective, but principal writers are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language (English or French) with a short summary available in the other.
- ISSN: 19939019 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/19939019
Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education
a comparative review of selected practices
Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability
data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. But existing ratings and rankings of
HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and
research outputs, such as resources used, classes taught, and articles published. Such indicators provide no
indication of the degree to which HEIs actually develop the knowledge and skills of their students. In most
countries, hardly any comparable information is available on the educational quality of different
programmes and institutions.
In some countries, approaches to assess higher education learning outcomes have been developed, but
little cross-country information is available on the characteristics of the instruments used. This paper
provides an overview of experience gained in this domain across OECD and partner countries. Based on
illustrative evidence collected for 18 assessment instruments, it examines conceptual, organizational and
methodological aspects of existing assessments. It proposes a typology of higher education learning
outcomes and reviews the ways in which these have been assessed across countries. Examples are drawn
from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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