Assessment Awards

In 2017-2018, the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications (ATEC) went through a curriculum redesign, piloted calibration of grades in one course, and began developing structures for a program electronic portfolio. Moving away from course assignments toward program ePortfolios as evidence of student learning is a shift in conversation about assessment in this School. In addition, each pathway in the School now has distinct learning outcomes, created through broad based faculty involvement. In fall of 2018, ATEC will continue their promotion of assessment as they expand their conversations on ePortfolios and alignment of curriculum to all pathways.

At that time, in 2016-2017 Literary Studies (then named) faculty recognized that it was not clear to students how to progress through the program. A subcommittee of Sean Cotter, Charles Hatfield, Jessica C. Murphy, and Pat Michaelson met spring 2016. They looked at old reports, past proposed curriculum changes, external evaluation, and survey data, along with external examples and research, before proposing a new curriculum proposal that makes their curriculum more transparent and coherent. The subcommittee created a mapping of courses toward three program goals that has shifted the conversation on assessment from course level to track level. This is a significant shift. Their proposal for a revised degree plan has been followed by revisions of other Humanities curricula and generated a pilot project of calibration scoring between faculty. The new curriculum is being implemented in fall of 2018. We look forward to the results and impact on student learning.

In 2016, we had joint award winners for the Award for Assessment Innovator. Drs. Stillman and Holub had a collaborative process that has resulted in meaningful changes at the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Dr. Bob Stillman designed a clear, easy-to-understand chart that links student learning outcomes to course changes and improvements. He created this chart after hearing about all that faculty were already doing in "closing the loop" or using collected data to make changes, but the assessment reports were simply not capturing this information. He shared this chart with all the programs in his school to help them think about assessment. His hope was that this chart would act as a trigger for individuals to think about assessment and improvement.

Dr. Shayla Holub has been intentionally thinking about assessment in her program for some time. In 2014, her program redesigned its curriculum and learning outcomes. 2014 was also the first year our current Office of Assessment gave feedback about learning outcomes. Dr. Holub was eager to learn about assessment processes and best practices from other institutions and programs. We named Dr. Holub our 2016 Assessment Innovator because she took the map Dr. Stillman designed and made it a meaningful tool for her programs. She has tracked and summarized course improvements and changes through this chart. In addition, she was her school's representative in a meeting about assessment and accreditation where she summarized the processes for the entire school and emphasized the importance of continuous improvement through using assessment. It is clear that due to her leadership, assessment is meaningful and useful for her programs.

The Doctor of Audiology program has consistently produced high quality assessment reports documenting what students know and can do. The faculty and instructors of the program are intentional in reviewing measures, learning outcomes, and making changes based on the data collected from various outcome measures (competency, surveys of our graduates and other stakeholders, etc). The data collected are reviewed as a faculty during faculty meetings and retreats. During the pandemic, the program quickly pivoted to make sure students were still able to achieve all outcomes as well as integrate issues of justice and equity into the curriculum.

The faculty in the Department of Bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science has been intentional with their curriculum alignment and development since the beginning of the program in 2010. Student learning assessment is built into the fabric of how the program functions. Each instructor submits his or her assessment data after each semester. After the information is collected, the department meets together two times a year to discuss the results and make intentional changes to help student learning. Changes in the past include adding a prerequisite assessment to determine which students were struggling with mathematical concepts to help the department improve student learning by creating new interventions. This is only one example of how the department has collected, analyzed, and used their assessment data. Whenever there is a curriculum change from this program it is based on collected data on student learning. In addition, recognizing the importance of assessment, all TAs in the department take part in assessment training through informative emails and orientation.

For the Bursar Office, based on their 2016-2017 report and interim report submitted in 2018, collecting and using data are well-incorporated into their operations. They have analyzed data across multiple years and used patterns to make decisions. They have examined information sources when detecting and solving problems, and have used data analysis to examine the effect of solutions. The leadership shows consistent dedication to student success, carefully considers how the Bursar Office can support students, and uses assessment to examine the impact of their work.