HLC Assessment April 2, 2008
Strategies
1. Address mission statement
2. As a theme or organizing tool for college-wide discussion, use one of the 5 HLC questions each year for a focus.
3. Take inventory of what we do have
4. Use a common language on assessment
a. Fit to purpose
b. Revitalize the language of assessment - create fresh, local, relevant terms
5. Re-do assessment plan, primarily to broaden it and make it more flexible (the plan is good, as far as it goes)
a. Release from two-year cycle, cycle appropriate to learning
b. Broaden and deepen the plan
c. Increase awareness
d. Establish a different conversation, start with learning?
e. Keep it simple, cause and effect
f. Can assessment lead to a subversive culture?
g. A spirit of flexibility.
6. Use multi-tasking assessment tools. Explore what that might look like
7. Immediate meeting with new president
8. Transfusion room for assessment (chat room for dialogue) and for TRANSvision
9. Select a gen ed outcome to evaluate across the college
10. Successful grass roots from start to finish, org. tool was to bring rubrics to start
11. Affirming what we do well
We do well
Faculty generated outcomes
Rubric
Assessment
Dialogue Day
website
We don't do well
Adjustment plans - areas for improvement
Evaluate adjustments - close the loop
Program continuity
Committee life and revitalization
Committee fatigue and team phobia
Re-establish trust
12. Brings us back to informing college, stakeholders
13. More peer conversation, less formal, more congenial faculty evaluation
14. What does the faculty need in time, etc. What one thing would help you to achieve better student learning? What is the greatest obstacle to attaining it?
15. Assessment organizational structure should be tied as closely as possible to the institutional structure. Which of your course outcomes best supports the mission of the college and how?
Good Ideas
Choose one outcome you don't like, pilot an assessment, bring it back for evaluation
Learning Impact Report
Assessment linked to strategic plan, Assessment committee reports where?
Program review the best place for administration and faculty to have a conversation
Brown bags
Chat rooms
Teaching journals
Forums
Retreats - real ones
Survey - in what way do you demonstrate support for student learning?
Show how assessment leads to change to other departments
Syllabi day
Peer review
Faculty portfolio
Resource envelopes
Have students evaluate their learning at the end of the course re: particular course outcomes
Move orientation of adjuncts to a discussion of assessment and specific outcomes
Faculty development tied to assessment of student learning
Investigate open source electronic portfolios
Build better high school connections; obtain syllabi
Build better connections with institutions of higher learning; obtain syllabi from AZ universities
Publish (on web) ATF reports
Questions
Is it really a good idea to link program review and assessment?
How do WE share results?
Integrate across academic year and across campuses?
What works and what doesn't
What is functioning and what isn't?
When do Mission and Motto morph?
How can we maintain momentum without dogma?
What do students like most about your class? About NPC?
What kinds of community does NPC offer its students?
How do we pick our students for assessment? What population is being studied?
Resources
Colorado Mountain College
Great Basin College
UOP
Valencia community college (gen ed outcomes and buy-in)
Mid-south community college (gen ed)
Miami and Ohio self-studies
CASTLE for how to link learning and teaching
HLC first-year policy center
Speakers
Jeff Seibert - Jefferson County Community College - buy in, systems, strategies
Linda Heiland - summative and formative
Morraine Valley assessment coordinator on course-level assessment
Gary Wheeler - CE, tribal colleges .... *
Famous (or not so) quotes
MORE THINGS ARE ASSESSMENT THAN MEET THE EYE
INTEGRITY IS EXPENSIVE, LACK OF IT MORE SO
KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING
MAKE ROOM FOR PARENTHETICAL LEARNING
ASSESSMENT-SUCCESS-MENT
LEARNING IS MORE A STATE OF MIND THAN THE STATE OF THE MIND
"ACADEMIC RIGOR IS IMPERATIVE WITH A FLUCTUATING POPULATION" Diane Nyhammer
Possible gen ed outcomes
Critical thinking
Research skills (information literacy)
Analytical skills
Obligation as an authentic thinker, we cultivate self-expression - it is not an option
Gen Ed is formative, cumulative and generalized and therefore assessment must be flexible
Closing team session
COURSE LEVEL ASSESSMENT
Start with gateway programs
Pulls together a course assessment for all sections, delivery modes
Outcomes do not have to be identical, specifics matched to pedagogy
Stay away from individual course discussion, stay with learning for next course
CLOSING THE LOOP
Start small and course level
Finding time to look at data and discussion
Lay out schedule for data analysis and dialogue
Give specific timelines
Don't miss opportunities to use data for course, program, gen ed at the same time
Find the time to discuss and review data and processes
FACULTY BUY-IN
Keep it out of workload and time, focus it on framing questions on student learning - how does this affect student learning and how do we know?
Tell the success stories
Must be real and meaningful to faculty
Baby steps
If it isn't working, stop
If some are heavily involved in course assessment, choose others to do gen ed
Review what is most redeemable about previous all-college experiences and add to new college conversation
Point of View/Jigsaw Experience
PARADIGM SHAKERS
Failure is under-rated. Failure is an invaluable learning tool
When thinking assessment, think haiku - "simplify, simplify, simplify"
Learning is irrepressible; it will happen in all contexts. The quality of learning is what we live with.
New learning habits are easier to make than converting old ones.
Institutions learn, behave, and change just like individuals. Institutions need compassion too.