Program Assessment Update

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Program Assessment Update

• Mohawk Valley Community College
• January 17, 2005

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Program Assessment Update

• Welcome Back!
• New semester
• New challenges
• New opportunities
• Housekeeping item new advisement approach this
  week, in department offices

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Program Assessment Update

• Terry OBannion speaks about the learning
  revolution during 1990s
• Colleges refocused their mission and value
  statements on the learning process
• Transformed their institutional structures into
  learning-centered enterprises

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Program Assessment Update

• One singular purpose
• Learning is the focus of the educational process
• Focus on students and what they need to achieve
  and have achieved

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Program Assessment Update

• This puts students in the center
• Acts to realign all other college support systems
  around the goal of helping students achieve their
  learning outcomes
• OBannion called this approach The Learning
  College

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Program Assessment Update

• Six guiding principles
• Creates substantive change in individual learners
• Engages learners in the learning process as full
  partners who must assume primary responsibility
  for their own choices

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Program Assessment Update

• Creates and offers as many options for learning
  as possible
• Assists learners to form and participate in
  collaborative learning activities

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Program Assessment Update

• Defines the roles of learning facilitators in
  response to the needs of the learners
• Succeeds only when improved and expanded learning
  can be documented for learners

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Program Assessment Update

• Assessment covers an array of opportunities that
  move beyond the familiar entry-exit-certification
  model
• For example
• Tests, exams, and similar tasks to show that
  students have mastered learning outcomes

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Program Assessment Update

• Quizzes and hands-on learning activities to
  provide meaningful feedback formative
  assessment
• Computer and web technologies can deliver
  instruction and assessment in multiple modes

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Program Assessment Update

• Quizzes or opinion polls to gather student
  opinions and understanding of a topic, as
  precursors to interactive discussion and
  collaborative learning activities
• Instructional feedback to ascertain student
  understanding of content and effectiveness of
  delivery one-minute papers

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Program Assessment Update

• Portfolios, performances, production, projects,
  practices, presentations, and the like, to
  document learning
• Wide range of activities available to document
  that learning has occurred, that it is improved
  and expanded

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Program Assessment Update

• Understanding of vocabulary is essential
• Definition of assessment developed by the
  Assessment Forum of the American Association for
  Higher Education, led by Thomas A. Angelo, in
  1995, as follows

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Program Assessment Update

• Assessment is an on-going process aimed at
  understanding and improving student learning.
• It involves
• Making our expectations explicit and public
• Setting appropriate criteria and high standards
  for learning quality

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Program Assessment Update

• Systematically gathering, analyzing, and
  interpreting evidence to determine how well
  student performance matches those expectations
  and standards
• Using resulting information to document, explain,
  and improve student performance

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Program Assessment Update

• When it is embedded effectively within larger
  institutional systems,
• assessment can help us focus our collective
  attention,
• examine our assumptions,
• and create a shared academic culture dedicated to
  assuring and improving the quality of higher
  education.

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Program Assessment Update

• Assessment is used to support data-driven
  decision-making, and to measure knowledge,
  skills, or abilities against defined competencies
  or learning outcomes
• Assessments associated with the learning process
  often are classified in these ways

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Program Assessment Update

• Diagnostic identify needs and determine prior
  knowledge, i.e., placements tests
• Formative provide prescriptive feedback to
  students, i.e., quizzes
• Needs determine knowledge, skills, abilities,
  and attitudes of group to assist with gap
  analysis and course development

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Program Assessment Update

• Reaction occurs after a course or learning
  experience to gather student opinions, i.e.,
  course evaluations
• Summative primary purpose to give a
  quantitative grade and make a judgment about
  participants achievement, i.e., final exams

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Program Assessment Update

• Assessment occurs at multiple, simultaneous
  levels
• Student
• Course
• Program
• Department
• College
• SUNY System

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Program Assessment Update

• One of our focuses since last Spring has been on
  program assessment
• Fine progress being made, beginning with the
  initial formulation of program outcomes, choosing
  2-3 for priority, and then working on assessment
  measures

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Program Assessment Update

• Task now to finalize work, so 2-3 priority goals
  ready to be assessed beginning next Fall
• Focus at least one department meeting this Spring
  on assessment work
• What does this help us to accomplish?
• These two big things

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Program Assessment Update

• By the time we write the Middle States self-study
  report in 2006-07 a full year of assessment
  results for the first set of 2-3 program outcomes
  should be available
• By the time of the Middle States visit in 2007-08
  two full years of assessment experience with
  4-6 program outcomes should be available

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Program Assessment Update

• Assessment is a College-wide issue
• Instruction well underway in Fall 2004
• Student Services just beginning in Fall 2004
• Administrative Services to come in Fall 2005

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Program Assessment Update

• Challenges and issues from last August
• How to implement how to find the time
• Need for more training and more examples
• Will the process and goals change again
• How will the outcomes be quantified and assessed
• What instruments and measures should be used

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Program Assessment Update

• How will the results be shared what will be the
  impact
• Are there benchmarks and best practices
• Why are we doing this are there ties to funding
• Why not have the Department Heads do this work

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Program Assessment Update

• SUNY currently in midst of 3-year cycle of
  assessment of general education
• During 2002-03, we assessed Mathematics, Natural
  Sciences, Other World Civilizations, and Foreign
  Languages
• During 2003-04, we assessed Social Sciences,
  American History, Western Civilization, and
  Humanities

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Program Assessment Update

• For both years, we filed reports with SUNY in
  specified format, reporting the major findings
  and actions taken
• For 2004-05, we are in the final year of the
  cycle, assessing the remaining silos of SUNY
  general educationincluding critical thinking

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Program Assessment Update

• Late last semester, just before the holiday
  break, SUNY received a FOIL request for general
  education assessment results
• After much internal discussion, SUNY requested
  individual campus reports, format unspecified,
  to be submitted the Provosts Office in early
  January

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Program Assessment Update

• These reports were presented first to the
  Academic Standards Committee and then to the SUNY
  Board last week
• Result 64 individual college summary reports,
  presenting what each institution determined was
  best representative of its assessment of general
  education
• Reports released under FOIL request

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Program Assessment Update

• MVCC report available through department heads
• Each if you is welcome to read and understand it,
  and the context in which it was written

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Program Assessment Update

• Questions thus far?

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Program Assessment Update

• Take a minute now
• Reflect about the work you have done thus far
  regarding program assessment
• What now is clear to you?
• What remains for you to understand?

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Program Assessment Update

• Minute Paper brief answers to 2 questions
• With your work on program assessment since last
  Spring, what steps would help you achieve the
  next level?
• List 6 measures that you might use in your
  program assessment outcomes?
• Star those for which you would like
  additional help.