When faculty argue that they have always done assessment and made changes to improve learning, they
are absolutely correct. The 2018
self-study report completed by the Department of Physics calls this “assessment
by rumination,” asserting that it “happens all the time among faculty” and was
happening “long before ‘rubrics’ and ‘operational goals’ . . . barged their way into the lexicon of
assessment.”
What faculty are referring to when they make these claims is
course-level assessment. Course-level
assessment has been happening for centuries.
However, the type of assessment that will inspire public confidence in
higher education is not course-level, but program-level or institution-level. These
are the assessments that provide the evidence we need to tell our stories to
external stakeholders, including prospective students, parents, donors, accreditors,
and grant-funding agencies.
Imagine you are promoting your academic program to a group
of parents and prospective students. You
want to attract the best and the brightest students in the audience, and, while
you aren’t crass enough to say it, you want each family to spend over $100,000
and probably amass significant debt.
You can tell them what faculty colleagues at every other
college they visit will tell them: we
have a great faculty dedicated to excellence in teaching; our curriculum is
current, relevant, and exciting; we offer students opportunities for research,
internships, and community-engagement; in our program, you are a person, not a
number.
But how might you tell a story that distinguishes your
program and offers evidence supporting your claims?
Findings from course-level assessments won’t help you
here. No parent or prospective student
will care that last spring semester, 83% of the students in XXX-course met or
exceeded expectations on a quiz. They
might, however, be interested to learn that in UC’s physics program, students
in introductory and intermediate-level courses often exceed the national
average on a standardized pre/post assessment.
Likewise, they would probably be interested to know that internship
supervisors evaluate how well criminal justice students apply what they learned
in their program to a real-world setting.
Program-level assessment is not more important than
course-level. It’s just different—and it
serves a different purpose. It might be
tempting to think that a handful of course-level assessments will add up to
program assessment, but they do not. Program assessment considers the bigger picture—program-level goals—and
is typically outcomes based.
Assessment guru Linda Suskie recommends that “Program-level
outcomes are often best assessed with a significant assignment or project
completed shortly before students graduate.”
As departments plan for the 2019-2020 assessment cycle,
consider how you might use your assessments to tell your program’s story. You might even find that your assessment efforts
become more simplified, more organic, and less burdensome than they have been.
