Assessment
I spent seven hours this past Monday listening to Linda Suskie, Vice President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, expound upon the topic, Assessing Student Learning in Academic Programs. Bloomfield is approaching half-way through the assessment cycle and that means a progress report is due. I don't know what came over me when I agreed to be the assessment point-person for my division, but it happened. I'm certainly I didn't do it for the extra $1500.
Okay, so what did I learn that I can share with you? Three main topics were addressed: - What is assessment?
- Engaging faculty in assessment
- How to perform assessment
Most of the time was devoted to the latter two items. I'm dividing my report into two parts.
Assessment of student learning was described as "deciding what we want our students to learn and making sure they learn it" [Jane Wolfson, Towson University]. The point is to activate the feedback loop in the Teaching/Learning Assessment Cycle: Learning goals are established, multiple opportunities to seek those goals are planned in multiple courses, performance on the opportunity is assessed and the results are used to refine the goals and opportunities.
Major amounts of time were spent on how to engage faculty, who generally find the subject distasteful. I'm one of those. The fact is that college-level faculty are for the most part not trained to do program assessment and would prefer that someone with the appropriate training perform the task. At least that's the input I provided. Other reasons given were that assessement is not valued in tenure and advancement. Additionally, faculty don't believe that they have the time or resources to do a good job of it, and even if they did, don't know what good it would do other than to maintain accreditation.
The problem is that we design courses to fit into programs which were created with lofty-sounding goals at one time, and the courses added often have only a peripheral connection to the goals. Tests assignments and grades often don't have any relationship to the goals of the program. Middle States believes that the key to designing meaningful in-class assessments is to make sure that students will have to think and write. Development of such assessments should be valued and acknowledged by educational institutions as professional and curricular development.
In order to institute assessment properly, Middle States calls on institutions to provide clear guidelines and priorities and necessary support and resources, to minimize paperwork, and provide prompt feedback. In order to facilitate the process, institutions might temporarily suspend some activities, so that time is not taken away from teaching but rather invested in improving teaching, not taken away from service but rather invested in improving services, and not taken away from research, for "assessment research informs teaching practices" [Marilee Bresciani].
According to Middle States, we should recognize that some goals can't be assessed, even imprtant ones. Expectations need to be realistic. Middle States also recognizes that some faculty will oppose assessment efforts from multiple standpoints. One addressed in advance was the question of academic freedom. AAUP's relevant statement about academic freedom is from 1940: Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject. Marilee Bresciani:Excellence in student learning can be demanded without telling a faculty member how to achieve and evaluate it. Such a demand is not a violation of academic freedom.
There was discussion about the role of adjuncts in this process.
Next week: How to do it.
--Robyn Elaine Serven --Bloomfield College, NJ |