Collecting Evidence
After developing the assessment plan, an important next step is to begin collecting evidence on how well the curriculum is working. Note that for program assessment, the focus is evidence at the program level. This might include evidence gathered at the program level (senior project evaluation, or a dissertation committee) or evidence gathered at the course level (lab reports, homework, course exams) but aggregated at the program level. Program assessment seeks to understand the curriculum as a whole but doing so might involve looking at the individual parts.
Methods of Assessment and Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Curriculum
Evidence for a typical assessment usually includes at least one “direct” measurement and at least two “indirect” measurements.
Direct measurements occur when faculty directly evaluate student performance, either in the classroom (exams, homework, projects) or at the end of a program (think dissertation oral defense, final musical performance). Direct measurements are largely the responsibility of the department, coordinated among the several instructors associated with the program.
- case study
- debate performance
- exhibition of work
- exam or a defined set of questions from an exam)
- group work
- homework
- lab report
- oral presentation or exam
- performance
- project (course, senior, capstone,)
- problem sets
- quiz
- written work (essay, dissertation prospective, etc.)
Stony Brook contracts with Digication to provide the ePortfolio tool for faculty and students. ePortfolio provides a repository for students to curate their academic work for individual courses and for entire degree programs, and for faculty and departments to evaluate those portfolios. ePortfolios align easily with senior projects, graduate research projects, writing and art projects, and more. Departments can utilize ePortfolio in collecting and grading assignments and for supporting the academic program assessment process.
Indirect measurements occur when asking others about their perspective or perceptions. Examples of indirect measurements include:
- Course evaluations or other student surveys (administered by CELT and VPSA)
- Alumni surveys (new centralized alumni survey to be administered in March 2020)
- Employer questionnaires (some are coordinated by the career center)
- Student /alumni / faculty focus groups
- Faculty or student surveys
- Published research
Resources:
https://academicprograms.calpoly.edu/content/assessment-approaches
Falchikov, N. (2013). Improving assessment through student involvement: Practical solutions for aiding learning in higher and further education. Routledge.
George D. Kuh, Stanley O. Ikenberry, Natasha Jankowski, Timothy Reese Cain, Peter T. Ewell, Pat Hutchings, and Jillian Kinzie, Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2015