The first thing I’ll tell you is that the title of this post is a little misleading, in the same way that Joan Bolker’s title Writing your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day is misleading. The title is meant to get you started. Reading this post won’t make it so you can sit down and whip out an assessment plan for your major in half an hour or so. But don’t give up on me yet! I hope that reading this post will get you started on the conversations and considerations that will lead, eventually, with work, to a sound, practical assessment plan. In this post, I’m reflecting on the process of teaching people to write assessment plans. Why? Because when I talk to faculty from fields such as biological and mathematical sciences or the humanities, I frequently realize that our sets of terminology are different, and my background in higher education and social science is more useful with a little translation.
Last night I was working on a FAQ sheet for faculty who are writing assessment plans for their majors as part of the requirements for WASC reaccreditation. I had open in front of me The Art and Science of Assessing General Education Outcomes: A Practical Guide, by Andrea Leskes and Barbara Wright, published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. (It’s a very useful publication, short, easy to read, practical in application, and available for borrowing from my office if you come in and see me.) Under the question “How do we write assessment plans?” I summarized the steps from Leskes and Wright, thus:
“Writing assessment plans is similar to designing a study. Very simply, the main steps include these: 1) Understand the mission, traditions, and values of your department. 2) Define key learning goals for your students (see our handout on Student Learning Outcomes for more information on this and the following step). 3) Turn your broad learning goals into assessable outcomes; specify the level of accomplishment desired. 4) Select methods for gathering evidence of learning that are appropriate to your desired goals and outcomes. 5) Determine the crucial points at which you need to gather evidence. 6) Close the improvement loop by ensuring that you interpret and use the evidence collected.”
I agree with everything that Leskes and Wright said here, and of course they have much more to say about it in their publication. The challenge is doing it, not understanding how to do it. Here’s where we can leverage a strength of the faculty at UC Davis: we are familiar with the cycle of conducting research, and so the apparent gap between daily work in varied disciplines and a higher education policy requirement at the institutional level does not need to be so wide. Treated as a systematic approach to understand a research problem and recommend a solution, an assessment plan can become part of the collaborative, collegial work of a departmental faculty.
A caveat: Even if it is no longer a foreign idea, creating an assessment plan can still take a lot of work and time. If you are planning to work on this over the summer or during a certain quarter, it will help to start earlier than you think you will need to. Please feel free to email, call, or stop by the CETL to consult about the process, and stay tuned for more posts here and on our Resources page!
How does the parallel between assessment plans and the research cycle show up in your field? What strengths or weaknesses in the comparison do you see? How might you apply this at broader or narrower levels, such as a class or assignment instead of a major or general education curriculum?