Assessment and Curriculum Change

1. Assessment and Curriculum Change March 9, 2010 Lake Point Conference Center

2. Defining Assessment • Assessment is the process of determining what your students should learn, how well they learn it, and what needs to be done if they do not meet your expectations.

3. Assessment is NOT: • A clerical task • Using the correct terminology • Something that is peripheral to the normal activity of your department or resource allocation

4. Where does assessment make a difference? • With individual faculty when we change the way we teach our courses (new content, new methods, new books, new assignments, etc.) • With departments when program curricula are changed or new programs are created • (Sometimes things stay the same)

5. Determining what your students should learn involves: • Faculty Participation • Analyzing the current state of your discipline or profession • Identifying key learning goals • Accreditation guidelines • Advisory Councils • Survey of employment markets • (Potential new ADHE program reviews)

6. Determining what students should learn can result in: • Evidence of gaps in your curriculum • Need for new program advancement • Hiring new faculty or adding faculty positions • New sources of data for both curricular change and program assessment • Disciplinary or professional publications • Potential employment information • Comparisons with similar institutions

7. Determining how well your students learn includes: • Course-specific measures of student learning • Standardized exams or major field tests • Internships • Exit interviews with graduating seniors or alumni surveys • Data gleaned from programmatic assessment should always be included in curricular change proposals

8. Determining how well your students learn includes: • Student data from outside your department • Student Services • NSSI • SSI • Bridge to Excellence (CSI) • TECH 1001 • General Education data • Sharing information across campus

9. Determining what needs to be done includes: • Course Additions • Curricular Changes • New Program Creation • Course or Program Deletion

10. Determining what needs to be done does not include: • Cosmetic changes • Catalogue description changes • Minor course title changes • Eliminating redundancy • Meeting new ADHE guidelines • Correcting or modifying course coding

11. Curriculum Change • “Describe the evidence derived from your program assessment that justifies this change. Assessment evidence may come from direct and indirect measures of student learning as well as analysis of the current state of the discipline.”

12. Curriculum Change • Always be mindful of the results of your assessment efforts • Not every identified weakness should result in a curricular change • But, every curricular change should be grounded in programmatic assessment

13. Curriculum Change • Disciplinary or professional publications • Potential employment information • Comparisons with similar institutions • Course-specific measures of student learning • Standardized exams or major field tests • Internships • Exit interviews with graduating seniors or alumni surveys • Student data from outside your department

14. Curricular Change and Assessment • Purpose of curricular change is to create a process where faculty can adequately and speedily assure that students are learning what our evidence indicates they should learn.