Discipline, Program Assessment
Discipline and/or Program assessments are critical to institutional success, but not all faculty share the same views about this issue. Once when presenting at a national educational association conference these view became very clear. During the open discussion at the end of our presentation one faculty said "...assessment is an added duty, with no remuneration, that violates academic freedom." The next faculty to speak said "... assessment is our professional responsibility, to document our value, and as a foundation for our academic freedom to influence students."
These are active debates, but the reality is that more and more governing institutions, administrations, and professional associations are making it clear that assessment is core to teaching-learning success.With program and discipline assessment the process moves out of a single faculty member's actions into shared actions. The assessment process is based on open communication of expectations, standards, and results.
The openness can be both a powerful growth process and a frightening prospect. As a faculty member I saw both of these influences first hand. The following example of an assessment developed by seven faculty teaching sociology. Once it was applied several faculty who taught in other disciplines applied a similar approach in religious studies, philosophy, and history.
Abstract of the assessment
The approach asks students to write a response to some
stimulus. The stimulus is most often a recent newspaper article or
sometimes a brief video clip. The assessment is designed to fit into a
50-minute class session, so the stimulus needs to be limited. Student respond to four brief questions.
These student responses are then evaluated by a team of faculty on a rubric of four dimensions.
Individual faculty may decide if they want the assessment to also be given
credit in a course grade. I have on occasion used the essay as one part of
a final exam.
| Setting and challenges | Response and results |
| While we offered several different sociology courses, the curriculum as organized without pre-requests and so entering students could be in any of the courses. As a community college we did not offer a major. |
The response
form was designed to identify the number of sociology course completed,
and so entering student could be distinguished from ones with several
courses.
The rubric was designed to fit any sociology course since it focused on general use of vocabulary, theory and a sociological imagination. |
| Individual faculty had a long history of conflicts both around the subject area and within institutional politics. | While we disagreed on what theories and paradigms we emphasized and taught, we agreed that we all used theory and that we could recognize when a student was using theory (as contrasted with generalities or antidotes) even if we did not agree with the theory and would prefer a different one. |
| Individual faculty were concerned that administrators would use the assessments to judge teaching, and support criticism of individuals | We agreed that the assessment was about us as a discipline. The completed student responses were submitted to one faculty member who shuffled them together and drew a random sample. All reporting was completed for the aggregated sample. |
| Discussing, designing, and then processing the feedback was a process that took us almost two years. |
When the first round was completed, most
faculty (including adjunct) had contributed student responses. Using the findings we then talked about how we approached teaching students to consider and use theory. We agreed that though the development of the rubric and considering the feedback we grew as teachers. We would not encourage direct use of our instrument, we would encourage other teachers to use the outline of reader-response to develop their own agreed upon rubrics and other assessment tools. |
|
Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and
Assessment, by Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson
Anderson published by Jossey-Bass Pub. San Francisco is a fabulous tool for
any faculty trying to link course outcomes into assessment and grading.
While some individuals have argued that assessment and student evaluation should be separated, Walvoord and Anderson point to a strong method for integration of articulated learning outcomes with both grading, and assessment. |
| Major Field Tests are end-of-major examinations in 14 disciplines to be used by undergraduate institutions for outcomes assessment. Scores, sub-scores, and assessment indicators are provided to each department administering the tests. The tests are based on the GRE Subject Tests and are jointly sponsored by ETS and the GRE Board. |
