V.6 ACADEMIC ASSESSMENT

Outcomes Assessment - Definitions and Principles

"Outcomes assessment"--or, as it it often called, "assessment of student learning" or simply, "assessment"--refers to various strategies for documenting student learning and behavior relative to goals and expectations articulated for academic or other programs by faculty and staff who oversee those programs (see note #1). Assessment is undertaken not to measure the performance of individual students (e.g., grades), of individual faculty or instructors (e.g. teaching evaluations), or of individual courses (e.g. course evaluations); rather, the measure is taken of the academic program as a whole, by stepping back for a broad view of the performance of groups of students enrolled in a particular course of study (e.g., a certificate program, a major, a course sequence). An assessment program will, in general, identify core content or essential skills in an area of study, identify places in the curriculum where that information is conveyed to students, and measure how well students meet program-level expectations regarding mastery of that body of knowledge.

Of course, the faculty and staff of the College of Letters and Science are constantly engaged in evaluative activities related to and including the assessment of student learning. This chapter and related documents are intended to provide departments and programs with resources as they consider the best possible means to systematize these evaluative efforts in order to examine and report on the health of programs as a whole.

Responsibility for ensuring that departments and programs have well-defined learning goals falls to the people who design program curricula and the courses that enliven them. Efforts to determine that students have met those goals not only provide faculty and administrators with assurance that students have successfully mastered the tasks and acquired the knowledge required of them, but also assure our students, their parents, future employers and others that UW-Madison graduates are ready to assume places among an educated citizenry, whether they enter the workforce or pursue further professional or scholarly studies.  Given the key role UW-Madison faculty play in curricular decisions, faculty leadership and departmental autonomy are essential facets of the assessment of student learning at this university. It is worth noting that no single set of learning goals has been imposed on all departments; rather, learning objectives and their relationship to the curricula flow from decisions faculty members make about what students need to learn; the departments in which academic programs reside must develop and make assessment plans work within their resources in service to the learning goals defined by the faculty.

This principle has been endorsed by the College for years, and has been summarized as follows:

"Properly developed and implemented assessment of student learning in all majors can be a beneficial tool for academic programming. However, only through widespread faculty and departmental involvement can an institution as complex as ours devise effective and efficient program-based assessment processes. . . . [Academic] departments are best able to determine the educational objectives and assessment instrumentation necessary to assure continued improvements of the programs leading to undergraduate and graduate majors" (1995-96 Assessment Report). 

The UW-Madison Assessment Council provides campus-level leadership in the area of assessment of student learning. Academic Planner Elaine Klein(kleine@ls.admin.wisc.edu) represents the College on the Assessment Council and helps coordinate assessment efforts across the College.  

Why assess student learning?

Systematic assessment of student learning produces information that can be put to many uses:

• to guide department-level curricular planning, from managing course offerings to ensuring that programs reflect the best academic pathway through courses in a given field of study;
• to help departments evaluate, understand, and improve the overall effectiveness of the academic pathways they have developed to engage and inform students;
• to provide departments with data to support arguments crafted to achieve various goals, such as revising program requirements, proposing new academic programs, or revising existing programs;
• to provide consistent types of information gathered over time for a variety of reporting purposes, from the regular review of academic programs, to preparation of alumni newsletters, to conducting self study for program accreditation or certification; and, finally,
• to meet institutional accreditation requirements.

Although the last of these is often cited - or faulted - as the driving force behind initiatives to assess student learning, the assessment of student learning outcomes has contributed in important ways to essential processes in departments and in the college.

• As departments better understand of their students' achievements, they are able to reframe curricula and program requirements to ensure that students have access to courses that convey knowledge and skills essential to their field of study. An example of this use can be found in an instance where faculty teaching upper level courses proposed that their students would benefit from being introduced to a particular set of skills at an earlier stage of their careers.
• New courses can be developed to meet emerging needs identified by assessment projects. An important example of this use may be found in the fact that new courses are being solicited to meet the needs defined in the course of the campus-wide assessment of the Ethnic Studies Requirement.
• Problem areas can be identified and addressed in a timely fashion; more importantly, perhaps, issues identified from year to year can be systematically recorded so fluctuations can be understood and evaluated in a broader, less anecdotal context.
• Connections between academic programs (e.g., prerequisite courses) can be adjusted as needs are more clearly identified and refined, as when one department's investigation into enrollment pressures on an introductory two-course sequence revealed that students who enrolled to meet pre-requisites for other programs really needed only one semester of instruction in this area.
• Approaches that don't work can be revised, and new approaches can be tested against existing models. One example of this can be found in the Deparment of Chemistry's comparison of two methods of instruction for Chemistry 110 (see Wright et al., "A Novel Strategy for Assessing the Effects of Curriculum Reform on Student Competence," J Chem Education 75:8 986-992).

Documentation of learning questions raised and patterns observed helps future generations of faculty and curriculum planners understand and resolve issues that arise, providing a secure foundation for decision-making and, when required, action.

Department/Program Assessment Plans

Since December 1996, all departments in the College have been required to have assessment plans of their undergraduate majors and graduate programs. These documents are on file in the Dean's office and are maintained in the Academic Planning office (contact Elaine Klein - kleine@ls.admin.wisc.edu - to obtain a copy of your department's plan). 

In the 2002-2003 academic year, the Provost charged the University Assessment Council with the task of updating the UW-Madison Assessment plan. That plan, in turn, calls for each school and college to update their plans, which include the assessment plans for their departments and programs. In September 2003, the L&S Academic Planning Council reviewed a document outlining the framework for assessment undertaken in the College; this document includes a call to ask all degree-offering programs to review and, if necessary, revise their assessment plans. In 2004-2005, the dean asked departments to update or report on their assessment plans. Information related to that project and its outcome are available at www.ls.wisc.edu/assess.

As noted above, there is no single set of learning goals, nor is there a universal assessment plan or strategy that makes sense for the breadth of fields represented in the college. There is, however, a model assessment plan that has been and can be used as a template for program assessment plans; we present here the original assessment plan for the Department of Jurassic Studies used in 1995, and the revised assessment plan. (The revisions in the latter document reflect some of the issues that have come to light as we have learned more about creating conditions for successful assessment.) It is our expectation that each departmental plan will uniquely suit its subject, faculty, staff, students, and resources - and that every plan will seek to answer questions important to the people who implement them. Successful plans are those that are used; unsuccessful plans - if active at all - produce data but no reports, or reports and no action.

Regular Reporting on Assessment of Student Learning

Each year, the dean is required to submit a report to the Provost on assessment activities in the college. (Copies of our most recent reports are available online, at http://www.ls.wisc.edu/assess/Reports/default.htm.) To facilitate development of this report, the dean asks departments to submit reports to the L&S Office of Academic Planning, Program Review, and Assessment (307 E South Hall).

In 2007-2008, this process will be adjusted from an annual schedule requiring all departments to submit reports each year to a more episodic schedule, in which reports will be sought on a three-year schedule. Each department that submitted materials in 2006 will be asked to submit a report by May 2008, 2009, or 2010. Requests will be issued in September; reports will be due in May. To the extent possible, reporting will be synchronized with related activities, such as program or accreditation review. Departments and programs may seek adjustments to the schedule by conferring with their associate deans and with Assistant Dean Elaine Klein, who facilitates assessment processes in the college.

Resources

Assistant Dean Elaine Klein (5-8484 or kleine@ls.admin.wisc.edu) is available to work with departments to help them reflect upon and revise assessment plans. She can also refer departments and programs to campus assessment resources.  One key resource is found online, courtesy of the Office of the Provost.  This website (http://www.provost.wisc.edu/assessment/) provides guidance for department chairs and others on the UW-Madison campus who engage in assessment activities. Resources include:

• the UW-Madison Assessment Plan provides a framework for assessment activities across campus;
• UW-Madison Assessment Council membership;
• the UW-Madison Assessment Manual includes a discussion of how to develop an assessment plan, an overview of assessment tools, and a (dated, but useful) outline noting where these tools are used in each of the university's schools and colleges;
• an annual call for proposals to fund assessment-related projects, with links to examples of successful proposals;
• school/college reports on assessment activities; and
• links to campus resources and units that can advise or participate in departmental efforts to assess student learning (for information on the services these units provide, please refer to the online assessment manual).

The site also provides links to campus resources and service units that can advise or participate in departmental efforts to assess student learning. For more information on the services these units provide, please refer to the online assessment manual.

Revised August 2007 by emk

Note:

(1) Although this document refers primarily to the assessment as it relates to academic programs, assessment strategies can also be used to great effect in evaluating and improving non-academic programs (e.g., such as student service areas, enrichment programs, residential life). At this time, however, the University requires only that all academic programs have assessment plans, we therefore focus our attention to that end.