Causation of outcomes
Outcome assessment, however, does not by itself produce enough evidence to permit thorough understanding of the behavior of an educational system. Outcome assessment indicates what results have been produced and how much of them. Clarifying causation – determining why the results were achieved – is the task of process assessment. Improving the quality of results depends upon improving the quality of processes. Thus, outcome assessment is not enough. In the case of learning and student development, a detailed understanding of the functioning of orientation, curriculum, instruction, academic advising, and other key educational processes is necessary for maximal improvement of institutional results. In other words, the results of both outcome and process assessment are needed to improve the quality of outcomes. The findings of process assessment research are interpreted in the light of empirically based higher-education theory to determine whether the processes being used can be expected to produce the outcomes desired with any particular set of students.
Input assessment is also necessary. It helps us understand our students. For example, input assessment can describe the characteristics of entering students: their various abilities as judged by placement testing and, among other important variables, the approaches they take to learning, their capacity for abstract reasoning and critical thinking, and their levels of epistemological and moral judgment development. This information gives faculty members, administrators, and others crucial information for designing programs appropriate to the developmental needs of specific kinds of students and of individual students.