ABSTRACT
Real-time student assessment shifts from a delayed use of assessment results, often extended well beyond when student work is collected, scored, and analyzed, to an immediate synchronous use of assessment results to address continuously the range of obstacles or persistent challenges that students face as they progress toward a degree. Programs such as music, theater, and art and professional preparatory programs such as teacher education and nursing, for example, have long integrated this continuous assessment approach into their curricula. The foundation of competency-based programs and degrees also rests on chronologically assessing students’ performance toward mastery-level achievement. Understanding that the purpose of assessment is to improve student learning, many institutions earnestly work and have worked to achieve that aim, directing programs to establish and follow a multiyear assessment plan that explicitly plots when and how each of its learning outcomes will be assessed.
