Learning Gain: Can It Be Measured?

As the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (‘QAA’) has noted, ‘With an increasing tendency to see higher education as a product with a price tag, there is understandably growing interest in the extent to which academic programmes of study promote students’ employability and earning power.’ (QAA, 2013, para. 1) In this chapter, we address the ‘basics’ underpinning the notion of learning gain including the best means for its measurement and the motivations behind the need to both quantify and attribute the various changes in our students as brought about by their university learning experiences. A larger question remains: if we wish to measure (some) gains in learning, arguably we firstly need to define what it is that we are actually seeking to measure, rather than starting from a position of what might be measurable in the hope that something can be found. This in turn means that the concept of learning gain may become a very different thing according to the instrument of measurement used. This then leads on to a further issue: if we measure learning gain in one particular way, this clearly says something about the type(s) of learning that we most value, and what gain(s) may exist within them.