RE: Assessment - Vol. 3: Number 1

RE: Assessment

The College of DuPage Student Outcomes Assessment Newsletter

Volume 3 Number 1 Fall Quarter, 1999
Outcomes Assessment General Index

Index of past issues of RE: Assessment

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The Newsletter is Back!

RE:Assessment was launched in September, 1996, and for two academic years it was regularly distributed to all full and part-time faculty. For a number of reasons, including the establishment of our assessment web site, the newsletter was not published in 1998-1999, but now, by popular demand, it is back. The purpose of this newsletter is to keep you abreast of the latest developments in the College’s assessment endeavors, to answer your questions, to share the assessment techniques your colleagues have tried, and to be a forum for any

concerns or comments you’d like to make. Your questions or comments can be directed to any member of the Student Outcomes Assessment Committee or to Jim Belz, editor of the newsletter.

If you would like to view or review any of the previous editions of RE:Assessment, they are all available on the assessment web site:

<www.cod.edu/outcomes>

Student Outcomes Assessment Organized Into New SIP

As a result of the 1998-1999 Strategic Planning sessions, the Student Outcomes Assessment Committee has been merged with the 1998 Education Plan to become the Educational Priorities and Assessment Supporting Institutional Plan. This new SIP supports the College’s educational goals in three ways:

The educational priorities will set the direction for all the other Supporting Institutional Plans: Enrollment Management; Facilities; Financial; Human Resources; and Information Technology.
The educational priorities provide direction to all college units as they develop MIIF’s to fund special projects.
Outcomes Assessment becomes an integral part of all COD planning by ensuring that measures to assess outcomes are included in the goal setting and budgeting processes.

The Outcomes Assessment Committee will continue to focus on various aspects of assessment, but being a part of this new, expanded SIP is a reflection of how important assessment is to the College.

To Reiterate. . . Why Assessment?

The North Central Association, our accrediting agency, has shifted paradigms. Rather than focusing on the instructional inputs (quantity of instruction offered), they have turned their attention to the output, how well have our students learned. In the previous model, colleges existed to provide instruction; in the newer model, colleges exist to produce learning. In actuality, much of what NCA is focusing on are things we have been doing all along. All we really need to do is document these efforts better.

However, as important as accreditation is, the real value of student outcomes assessment is that it improves the learning environment of the College and enhances the quality of the education our students receive.

As an institution, we have decided on a four-pronged approach to assessment:

The encouragement of individual instructors to use Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT’s) to enhance the learning process in their courses.
The encouragement of disciplines to perform programmatic assessment. This is often done by examining multi-section courses to see how learning can be improved.
The assessment of General Education via the CAAP tests to examine how well students progress in six skills that are developed across a number of courses: critical thinking, essay writing, mathematics skills, reading, science reasoning, and writing skills.
The assessment of institutional effectiveness by tracking our students to other colleges and universities or to the workplace to see how well they perform compared to non-COD students or co-workers.

By having everyone aware and involved in assessment, by sharing our successes and addressing our shortcomings, we can create a learning environment that is far better for our students and far more rewarding for ourselves.

F A Q
(Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Why do I need to bother with Classroom Assessment Tech-niques (CAT’s)? I give my students quizzes over their reading assignments and three major exams. Isn’t that sufficient assessment?

A. Quizzes and exams measure how well a particular student is performing in relation to other students in the class, but they are not really assessment in the sense we are talking about. Classroom assessment has to do with examining the learning environment to determine what you can do to improve learning for all of your students. If you were to do an item analysis of those quizzes and exams, and you recognized that certain concepts were not really clear to a significant number of students, and you consequently modified your teaching to better emphasize those concepts, then you would be engaged in classroom assessment.

Q. At the end each quarter, I ask all my students to evaluate my courses and give me suggestions for improvement for the next time I teach the course. Is this classroom assessment?

A. This is a form of classroom assessment, but the shortcomings are best noted by an anecdote from a highly-respected, much-beloved Speech professor who taught for nearly thirty years at a nearby institution and who has since passed on to that great campus in the sky. He, too, dutifully administered a similar evaluation at the end of each term, but he was stopped short by the response of one student to the question, "What suggestions would you make so that I can improve this course the next time I teach it?" The student wrote, "Why didn’t you ask this question much sooner so that you could have improved the course for me?"

True classroom assessment monitors student learning on a continuous basis and allows for and encourages mid-stream adjustments to improve the learning environment.

Assessment In Action

A Sharing of Ideas

Program Assessment of Speech 100: A Model for Success

Program assessment is an important component of any assessment endeavor, and it often focuses on examining student learning in multi-section courses. Our Speech Faculty developed an extremely interesting five-step process that was implemented from Spring, 1997, to Winter, 1998, to Fall, 1998. They (1) gathered assessment data; (2) identified an area of concern based on that data; (3) strategized a re-sponse to that concern; (4) implemented the strategy; and (5) gathered data again to measure the impact of their effort.

Gathering Data: Rather than a pre-test, post-test strategy that is often used for multi-section assessment, the Speech Faculty developed an assessment grid that they could use to quickly evaluate communication skills. Students were evaluated on four different skill areas: Communication Codes; Human Interaction Skills; Critical Listening Skills; and Speaking Skills, with two subheadings under each of the four areas. The scale was 2=acceptable; 1=inconsistent; and 0=unacceptable. In Spring, 1997, 415 students were evaluated; in Winter, 1998, 420 were evaluated; and in Fall, 1998, 719 were evaluated in this fashion.

Identifying a Concern: In analyzing the data from the first round of assessment, the Speech Faculty realized that nearly one quarter of the students had scored a 0 or 1 in the area of Speech Skills, and more specifically, they identified it as a problem some students have in developing a suitable thesis.

Strategizing a Response: Each full-time faculty member submitted activity/activities that focused on teaching the concept of thesis, and these were compiled into a booklet that was distributed to all Speech Faculty during Spring, 1998.

Implementing the Strategy: In addition to creating the booklet of activities and encouraging full-time faculty to emphasize thesis development in their classes, four assessment workshops were offered early in the Fall, 1998 quarter for the benefit of the part-time faculty, and they, too, were strongly encouraged to emphasize thesis formulation in their classes.

Gathering Data to Measure Impact: Using the same grid as in earlier data gathering, 719 students were evaluated in Fall, 1998. On the issue of "Develops and expresses ideas clearly and concisely" students receiving a 0 or 1 fell to 16% compared to a high of 23.6% in an earlier round of assessment. On the issue of " Organizes messages so that others can understand them" students receiving a 0 or 1 fell to 14%, compared to a high of 22.9% in an earlier round of assess-ment.

Results: The bottom-line of any assessment endeavor is the improvement of learning. The Speech Faculty has provided us with an excellent example of how this can work.

New in the Library

The Library has just started to receive Assessment Update: Progress, Trends, and Practices in Higher Education, a bimonthly periodical published by Josey-Bass, one of the leading publishers of assessment materials. The editorial staff includes some of the leading lights of the assessment movement; Trudy Banta is the editor, and the list of consulting editors includes Tom Angelo, Peter Ewell, Maria Mentkowski, and Jeff Seybert.

Each issue is about sixteen pages long, but there is a wealth of useful information included. For example, in our initial issue, Trudy Banta notes a number of new trends in assessment, including the creation of web-based electronic portfolios both for students and institutions.

The next time you are in the Library, take a look. It will be well worth your time.