Setting Target Goals

As part of a curricular map or assessment plan, target goals for achievement help guide reflection and analysis of student perform and key performance indicators.

Why Set Goals?

When considering student learning, simply giving an assessment does not provide the full picture of how well students are achieving the learning objective. We want to set goals for what is considered a demonstration of mastery, the desired or expected level of
performance.

When considering key performance indicators, while the defined key performance indicator focuses efforts on what is important to the program, the goal provides opportunity to reflect on progress towards achieving that key performance indicator and to develop strategies to achieve it.

Common approaches to goal setting

  • Use previous performance on an assessment to determine a goal
  • Collaborate with colleagues to determine what you consider appropriate
  • Set all goals at 100%

Tips for setting goals

  • Do set reasonable but rigorous targets.
  • Do set a goal for achievement that includes what success looks like and how many students achieved this
  • Example: 75% of students will achieve a minimum of 8 out of 10 on the rubric for the capstone project
  • Example: 75% of students will achieve a minimum of 80% on the final project
  • Do consider adjusting goals higher once they are met
  • Do use rubrics for grading to reduce subjectivity and to evaluate on the intended learning objective(s)
  • Do set goals for individual criteria on a rubric if only a portion of the rubric applies to that learning objective
  • Example: 80% of students will achieve a minimum of 3 out of 4 on the clarity of writing criterion on the rubric for the final paper
  • Do include only questions from an exam that pertain to that learning objective in the goal
  • Example: 75% of students will achieve a minimum of 80% on the 5 questions pertaining to the structure of the cell
  • Do not use overall course grade as a measure since multiple assessments are typically used in a course and therefore multiple learning objectives (program and/or course-level) impacted the course grade
  • Do not use average grade on an assessment to measure achievement unless the assessment only measured that one learning objective
  • Do not use average overall score on a rubric unless all criteria on the rubric relate to the specific learning objective