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

 
March 13, 2006

In this report:

Outcomes assessment has taken root and become part of the faculty culture at many colleges and universities. After initial intense efforts to introduce it at others (including Sage), it has lost momentum or become dormant. Faculty members who are willing to listen eventually come to realize the importance of assessment, and how it differs from the usual testing and grading. Blame for the lack of assessment "sustainability" lies not with the individual faculty member, but with the fact that the traditional classroom setting makes assessment quite a challenge. Assessors need constant encouragement.

In the traditional classroom setting, college professors try to convey an understanding of their discipline in ways that certainly work well with an individual, one-on-one: through conversation. Although professors spend considerable time outside of class with highly motivated or needy students, for most of their time they are not working with one individual student; they are working simultaneously with many individuals possessing a variety of backgrounds, levels of motivation, and learning styles. It is easy when working with an individual in the absence of time limits to assess student learning: you make eye contact; put that person at ease so that they are able to articulate their questions, and tailor the next step according to what you see and hear. It is much harder to "read" what is happening with a group. Traditional testing and grading doesn't always assess learning, because students find ways (including cheating) to "get by" with minimum effort and without really learning the material-- they "cram" and then quickly forget. Traditional testing also assigns one grade to an individual student's final product, and can't readily demonstrate what might be going wrong with any one part of the learning process in the classroom.

The solution to the problem of sustainability is to minimize the amount of extra work involved in outcomes assessment. A professor can slightly alter assignments so as to collect assessment information along with graded work. A department can change the evaluation process for student capstone projects to include reflection about how the program's courses build or don't build on one another to produce a desired outcome.

You don't have to "re-invent the wheel". Learn about and take advantage of the variety of methods developed and proven by your peers within your own discipline. Make decisions on assessment methods as a group. Talk regularly with others about what works and what doesn't. Assessment is not a fad or a threat; it is something all good teachers do.

Part of my job as Director of Student Learning Outcomes Assessment is to help build outcomes assessment into the Liberal and Interdisciplinary Foundation for Excellence (LIFE) General Education program at Sage College of Albany. I have spent a lot of time researching and learning about the program, and getting to know the people involved with its delivery. I have already learned that the program has tremendous promise but faces some significant obstacles. It will be difficult to review and build assessment into a General Education program that essentially has not yet "gotten off the ground".

I approached the Sage College of Albany Curriculum Committee with an offer that was recently accepted: I will convene the work group of SCA-CC that will both review the current general education program and explore how it is to be assessed. In the coming weeks, I will be asking for volunteers to serve on the work group. It is my intention that faculty members on both campuses will come to see themselves as responsible for the SCA General Education program's success, and commit their time and energy to make it work well--through teaching its courses as well as through serving on the work group.

A crucial tenet of the assessment movement is that assessment information will not be used to punish faculty members. That does not mean, however, that faculty evaluation processes ignore assessment. We have always been expected to do whatever we can to continuously update and improve our teaching; there is simply a new name for it, and a greater expectation that these efforts be documented.

Consider the Individual Faculty Record (IFR), available for download at CampusCruiser/Campus Life/Committees/TSC Faculty Staff and Administrators/Shared Files/IFR. Items 2 and 3 on the second page ask for information on your contributions to curriculum development and on your innovative teaching methods. These are good places to indicate outcomes assessment activities.

For Program Coordinators and Department Chairs, there are annual performance self-evaluations, available for download at CampusCruiser/Campus Life/Committees/TSC Faculty Staff and Administrators/Shared Files/Human Resources/PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS/Performance Eval-SELF-ADMINISTRATOR[1].doc. Item 4 on the third page asks for self-evaluation of "Quality/Quantity/Productivity" including "continuously strives to improve the quality of the programs/services of the unit." This is the obvious place to report your assessment of your own assessment efforts.

We are not in a competition, where each year those with the most experience in assessment and the best assessment methods are declared the "winners".  Rather, we all are winners when we try to do our jobs a little better each year.

 

In next week's OARs: assessing on-line learning.

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