Your Role in Institutional Assessment

1. Capital Seminary & Graduate School Your Role in Institutional Assessment

2. Agenda for today • Assessment: What is it and what does it have to do with me? • Student Learning Outcomes, Learning Activities, and assessment. • Classroom Assessment Techniques • Assessment Annotations www.lbc.edu / About LBC / Institutional Effectiveness / Faculty Resources

4. Educational Assessment Where Who What How When Why

5. What Where Who How When Why

6. What is Educational Assessment? Educational Assessment = an ongoing process designed to monitor and improve student learning Educational Assessment at LBC = To investigate whether LBC is accomplishing its mission, its goals, and its objectives across the institutional . . . • & To maintain an ongoing process that will monitor and improve student learning, thus fulfilling to an even greater degree our mission statement, goals, and objectives.

7. Suskie, Linda. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2004. Assessments Yielding Direct and Indirect Evidence Direct evidence of student learning is tangible, visible, self-explanatory evidence of exactly what students have and haven’t learned. Table 6.1 gives examples of direct evidence of student learning.

8. Suskie, Linda. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2004. Assessments Yielding Direct and Indirect Evidence Indirect evidence, on the other hand, provides signs that students are probably learning, but the evidence of exactly what they are learning is less clear and less convincing. Table 6.2 gives examples of indirect evidence of student learning.

9. Suskie, Linda. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2004. Assessments Yielding Direct and Indirect Evidence Indirect evidence of student learning not only is less persuasive than direct evidence, but may be misleading. Because of this, no assessment effort should consist of indirect evidence alone. Indirect evidence can nonetheless be an important part of an assessment program. For example, course/ instructor evaluations

10. Suskie, Linda. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2004. Course Evaluations as Indirect Evidence Course evaluations allow students to rate the effectiveness of the course and the instructor, but these ratings do not tell us if the student has learned anything. However, we still can glean some valuable insight into the teaching / learning process from these. [Stay tuned for new instructions on administering course evaluations through Moodle.]

11. Assessments Yielding Direct and Indirect Evidence On the other hand, Classroom Assessment Techniques help faculty obtain useful direct evidence on what, how much, and how well their students are learning. Instructors can then use this information to refocus their teaching to help students make their learning more efficient and more effective.

12. Where Who What Why How When

13. Who is responsible for assessment? • I hate to be the one to tell you this, so I’ll let someone else do it . . . • “Assessment is not a one-person enterprise.” [Mary Allen in Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education (2004), p. 158]

14. Who is responsible for assessment? • Mary Allen continues by stating that: “A recurring theme in assessment is collaboration. Faculty work together to develop consensus on learning objectives, curriculum alignment, and assessment, and they collaborate to determine the implications of results” (p. 158).

15. Why Where Who What How When

16. Why do we do assessment? Because Drs. Bredfeldt, Meyer, or Teague say so? • Well, maybe.

17. Why do we do assessment? • Because MSCHE and ABHE require it? • Yes, but that is not the only, nor the best reason to do so.

18. Why do we do assessment? • Because it improves student learning!!! • “Though accountability matters, learning still matters most.” • Tom Angelo, 1999, May, • Doing assessment as if learning matters most. • ww.aahebulletin.com/public/archive/angelomay99.asp So, what is the BEST reason to do assessment?

19. Why do we do assessment? • Assessment is for the • sake of our students. • Our students deserve it!!

20. Who Where What How When Why

21. Where do we assess student learning? • Academic Side • Course • Program • Institutional Student Support Side Academic Support1 Student Services Enrollment Management Institutional Advancement 1 Library, Online Education, RAP, I.S., iLEAD Support Services

22. Where Who When What Why How

23. When does assessment occur? • True or False • Assessment only occurs every ten years when we start the self-study process. • Assessment only occurs during final exam week. • Assessment only occurs when I grade papers or tests. • Assessment occurs every day.

24. When does assessment occur? • But let us not confuse grading with assessment. • Nudge a neighbor and discuss the following statements.

25. When does assessment occur? • Assessment takes place when grades are given. • All grades are assessment but not all assessment is grading. • Grades can be direct measures of assessment (as opposed to indirect measures) but only when they are _______________________.

26. When grades aren’t good enough. • Tests, assignments, and grades often . . . • Don’t match goals. • Tests, assignments, and grades often . . . • Don’t focus on thinking skills. • Tests and assignments often . . . • Are of poor quality. • Grades often . . . • Reflect things other than student learning. • Tests, assignments, and grades are . . . • Seldom used to improve things. • _________ • Linda Suskie, Vice President, Middle States Commission on Higher Education • Getting Started with Assessment in General Education workshop • September, 2007

27. While we are not advocating a totally grade-less educational society, you do need to understand why you need more than grades to measure student learning.

28. How Where Who What Why When

29. How do we or can weassess student learning? In class Out of class

30. How do we or can we assess student learning? In class small group discussion tests quizzes projects online forums research papers Q&A homework assignments class discussion

31. How do we or can we assess student learning? After class internships Field Service practicums office visits emails mentoring Out of class

32. Learning Activities tied to Learning Outcomes • Your syllabus should have a set of measurable student learning outcomes. • Likewise, your syllabus should outline learning activities which can be assessed and tied to a specific SLOs • The results of these learning activities can be assessed through Classroom Assessment Techniques. • The Classroom Assessment Techniques can be documented through our Assessment Annotations.

33. CATs in Class Classroom Assessment Techniques

34. Classroom Assessment Techniques Today’s Goal = Make CAT lovers out of you; not DOG lovers. [Dog lovers = Rest assured we are not talking about all types of dogs here but a special breed called “assessment dogs.”]

35. Classroom Assessment Techniques Assessment CATs = Classroom Assessment Techniques Assessment DOGs = Depend Only on Grades

36. So when it comes to assessment...

37. I know some of you may be like this guy, you have some animosity towards the idea that DOGs are not allowed. Or you may be like this little guy, trying to cover up the fact that assessment DOGs are not allowed. Nevertheless, when it comes to assessment . . .

38. CATS RULE

39. DOGS DROOL

40. What are CATs? Classroom Assessment Techniques are formative evaluation methods that serve two purposes. (1) They help assess the degree to which students understand the course content. (2) They provide information about the effectiveness of teaching methods. Most are designed to be quick and easy to use and each CAT provides different kinds of information. http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/cat.html

41. Formative vs. Summative • We are all familiar with summative evaluations; final exam, term paper, capstone project, thesis or dissertation. • While summative evaluations help assess what knowledge has been gained at the end of the process, we need to be able to assess what knowledge is being formed during the process so adjustments in our teaching can take place before it’s too late.

42. Formative Evaluations CATS are formative evaluations which provide information that can be used to improve course content, methods of teaching, and, ultimately, student learning. Formative evaluations are most effective when they are done frequently and the information is used to effect immediate adjustments in the day-to-day operations of the course. Some faculty incorporate a CAT into every class session. http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/cat.html

43. Adopting a CAT(without going to the Humane Society) • See handout • Activity

44. Assessment Annotation Prezi

45. Assessment: An Ongoing Journey Assessment Resources for the journey www.msche.org Publications Guidelines for Institutional Improvement Student Learning Assessment www.lbc.edu About LBC Institutional Effectiveness Assessment Academic Programs Faculty Resources http://effectiveness.lbc.edu/

46. Assessment: An Ongoing JourneyResources for the Journey Dale L Mort, AVPIE, dmort@lbc.edu • Angelo & Cross’ Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty Suskie, L. Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2004 http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/cat.html

47. Assessment of the Assessor