Outcomes
Assessment
Reports
a newsletter and Web log
by Frank Vozzo
 
Director of Student Learning Outcomes Assessment
 

 
April 3, 2006

In this report:

Are your students able to self-assess?  What kind of learning roadmaps do you provide for them to keep track of their own progress?

Ambiguity in course goals and objectives can leave the students with high grades feeling anxious—maybe they’ve just been lucky, and their luck will eventually run out.  And the students with low grades may be working very hard at mastering the wrong things, leaving them feeling helpless.

A person who fears the risks associated with traveling might choose to drive long distances rather than fly by commercial jet since, they rationalize, at least when they drive they have control over the vehicle.  A course or program that merely lists what will be delivered is like an airline flight: as a passenger you have no personal responsibility for or control over the flight, and you have to just trust that the pilot knows what he/she is doing.  A course or program with well-articulated goals and objectives, and assignments clearly connected to them, helps the student to feel in control of their own learning; you provide the maps, point out the scenery and the obstacles, and make the student feel responsible for getting to the destination.

Scheduling has been a problem, but I have been able to meet with a few departments this semester to discuss outcomes assessment.  My strategy has been to take between 30 minutes and one hour listening to faculty members describing what they are doing to assess learning outcomes, asking questions of them to get to specifics and pointing out to them what has already been documented.  I have found that this exercise allows department members to learn more relevant things about assessment from each other than they can learn from me.  Please invite me to attend one of your department meetings or retreats in the near future.

Undergraduate programs that are accredited by professional associations must follow externally-imposed rules, for assessment of student learning outcomes, and for use of assessment information to make continuous improvement.  Some of these rules are more descriptive than others, and some depend more on an overall plan at the institution than on an individual department plan.  Here are excerpts of three examples:

Programs in Nutrition Science are accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education (CADE).

The (accredited) program has established outcomes and appropriate measures to assess achievement of goals and program effectiveness, including at least program completion rates, postgraduate performance, such as supervised practice program placement, job placement, or graduate school acceptance rates, and the pass rate of first-time test takers on the registration examination.  If the pass rate is less than 80 percent for first-time test takers, the program implements and monitors a plan of action to improve graduate performance.

Programs in Nursing are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).

In developing the educational standards for determining accreditation of baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs, CCNE has formulated specific premises or goals on which the standards are to be based. These goals include the following:

4. Assessing whether nursing programs consistently fulfill their stated missions, goals, and expected outcomes.

5. Assuring that nursing program outcomes are in accordance with the expectations of the nursing profession to adequately prepare individuals for professional practice, life-long learning, and graduate education.

6. Encouraging nursing programs to pursue academic excellence through improved teaching/learning and assessment practices and in scholarship and public service in accordance with the unique mission of the institution.

Programs in Fine Arts and Design are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

(Some of) the basic goals of accreditation are:

·        To foster excellence in education through the development of criteria, standards, and guide-lines for assessing educational effectiveness;

·        To encourage improvement through continuous self-study and planning;

·        To assure the educational community, the general public, and other agencies or organizations that an institution or program has both clearly defined and appropriate objectives, maintains conditions under which their achievement can reasonably be expected, appears in fact to be accomplishing them substantially, and can be expected to continue to do so...

Some accredited programs are able to follow the rules by merely collecting and organizing the information they provide to their students (course syllabi, manuals, assignments and the like) without demonstrating a closed “feedback loop” for improvement of teaching and student learning.  In other cases, evidence for compliance must include examples of student work and external evaluations of student performance, as well as documentation of how these are fed into the cycle of improvement.  I think it is safe to say that the assessment guidelines of Middle States and the New York State Education Department are more stringent than those in some professional programs’ accreditation.  I’m not suggesting that any professional programs at Sage skimp on assessment because their accrediting bodies do; all programs, whether or not they are monitored by an external professional agency, should be sure they are doing what is necessary in their own judgment to measure and improve student learning.

 

In next week's OARs: celebrate the small victories.

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