The Provost Reflects on Assessment at UC

With respect to academic assessment, the last several years at Utica College, especially 2016-2017, have been busy, somewhat painful, and incredibly fruitful in terms of developing a meaningful, coherent, and useful system.  I say that with a touch of irony, since I know that Utica College’s faculty members have always assessed their students’ learning and their own success in teaching them, and the College has been a pioneer in some practices, like systematic and regular program reviews, that have become standards in our profession. 

Nonetheless, we have realized for some time that we have not kept pace sufficiently with our colleagues at other institutions in terms of the emerging best professional practices for generating, reporting, and acting on academic assessment data.  So…the last few years have been a heavy lift, getting back up to speed and recapturing our former leadership position.  It would be idle not to admit that one of the spurs to action has been the prospect of our reaccreditation review by Middle States.  But, of course, that is one of the purposes of reaccreditation – to spur institutions on in a process of self-examination and recognition of areas to improve. 

More important, I think, has been the increasing recognition by all of us that, while the national “assessment movement” has been associated with more than its share of hyperbolic rhetoric, it has behind it some very important, and highly academic, values.   As academics, we value evidence.  As academics we value action that is impelled by careful scrutiny of evidence and rational planning based on it.  We value processes that are systematic rather than haphazard and idiosyncratic.  We value progress rather than stagnation, and challenge rather than complacency.   Most importantly, I have never seen a faculty more engaged with and committed to its students than UC’s faculty.  We value being able to bring out the best of ourselves on their behalf. 

My sense is that this is a faculty that may have taken its time shaping a highly formed academic assessment agenda and culture, yet is now rapidly developing a high level of skill in, and sense of the importance of, assessment in achieving our long-standing educational goals.  As assessment processes become more and more embedded in our individual professional lives and in our institutional fabric, we realize increasingly how imperative it is that we engage in effective assessment in order to identify specific areas of weakness and strength.   This positions us to address the current challenges we face and to improve the student experience.   We expect this increasingly of ourselves and of each other, which will not change after the Middle States team leaves.  Very quickly we have become dependent on assessment, a dependency that is both healthy and empowering, and constitutes a resource that we will use increasingly as we pursue our aspirations for our students and ourselves.

Designing a Student-Centered Learning Experience

By Herbert Rau, Associate Professor of MKT

Many post-secondary courses seem to be designed to deliver course content in a predominant manner, whether it is lecture format or student discussion and debate.  The problem of course-content delivery is compounded by the constraints that are inherent in an online course.

Mass-customization, a concept familiar to the commercial sector, envisions a blending of the ideals of mass production integrated into a customer preference for “one-off” products and services.  The efficiency and effectiveness that are the hallmarks of mass production must be cost-effectively combined with the elegance and individuality of custom delivered products and services. 

The capstone course for the MBA in Economic Crime and Fraud Management was redesigned from a traditional structure, where the instructor unilaterally decides all elements of the course, to a structure that is guided by a principle that attempts to utilize the concept of mass-customization.  The course was learner-centered, giving students some choice about what they will learn, how they will learn it, and how they will demonstrate competency.  Specifically, students could select from a variety of pre-selected materials what they wanted to study for one-half of the course’s content.  (The remaining half was determined by the instructor.) 

This course design allowed for a broad and diverse appreciation of different focal areas of strategy, as well as the ability to explore in-depth a topic that might be of the greatest interest to the student.  This design required students to adopt a “Learning Community” perspective where each became an “expert” in the chosen topic and was able to share their learning with their classmates. 

Qualitative evidence gleaned from student posts suggested that allowing students to choose multiple paths and varied interests in this capstone course broadened their perspective and understanding.  The posts further indicate a deeper level of student learning, with respect to Bloom’s Taxonomy, and greater curiosity about the material.  Indirect evidence, gathered from a 28 item survey, likewise suggested that this learner-centered course design achieved the desired learning goals.

The evidence that a modified mass-customized course might improve student learning is preliminary.  The sample size used in this case study was small, and all the students were highly-motivated, adult graduate students.  Students also had the choice to take a “traditional path” in the course, where the instructor determined 100% of the content, and close to half did just that.  This is an area where further investigation is warranted and where good assessment can inform one’s pedagogy.

Update on the Academic Assessment Coordinating Committee: Keeping Faculty Apprised

By Maria DeGiglio

Since August, the Academic Assessment Coordinating Committee (AACC) has been busy reviewing departmental annual goal reports.  We both thank you and commend you for the cumulative efforts that were put into these reports.  Many of them demonstrated clear, comprehensive, and detailed learning goals, assessment methodology, and plans for continuous improvement.

The AACC will report at the close of each semester where our processes are strong and where they might be improved upon.  So far, we observed that a number of departments used multiple assessment methods to measure individual learning goals, and assessments have been conducted at various points throughout the curriculum.  Some departments provided accompanying narratives and supplemental reports that were especially helpful to the committee members in their review.  We were particularly interested in the reports documenting participation in subject-related activities outside the classroom.  These are all strengths in our practice.

Three general areas where the AACC believes additional faculty discussion may be warranted are

• using multiple and valid methods to assess learning
• analyzing and presenting meaningful results
• using, not just reporting, assessment findings.

Moving forward, AACC members want to work directly with departments when they are completing their 2017 - 2018 annual goal reports.  We believe that providing formative feedback would be more helpful than simply offering summative feedback.  

Besides our own reviews, the AACC is interested in learning what you need with respect to assessment.  To this end, we will be sending all faculty a brief survey.  Your responses will be helpful to us because it is our desire not only to simplify our processes, but also to clarify them and make them more actionable, meaningful, and sustainable. Please help us improve our assessment processes by taking a few minutes to respond to this survey when you receive it via email.  Whatever you say will remain confidential and anonymous.

On a final note, the committee will begin the five-year program review assessment in mid-October.