Valuing Learning
Vol. 3 No. 1 |
The Missouri State University-West Plains Assessment Committee |
December 2005 |
Portfolio Project Begins
Missouri State University-West Plains has begun its portfolio project with this semester’s first-year students. Students who begin classes during or after the Fall 2005 semester will be required to keep a portfolio of their work and submit it in the capstone course for their degree program. The portfolio is one of the pieces of Missouri State University-West Plains’ assessment of student learning program.
To prepare students, this semester’s IDS 110 students had a presentation on the system and its requirements. There are different guidelines for the various degree programs, and students will work with their advisors to make sure they meet the correct requirements. Each of the guidelines will be published in the IDS 110 textbook beginning next year.
The next step in this project is to complete development of the rubrics with which the portfolios will be evaluated. The various degree programs have begun the process and will work during the spring semester to finalize them. The rubrics will be developed using the goals and objectives for general education assessment on our campus.
General Education Assessment of Portfolios
Many of Missouri’s colleges and universities are using portfolios to assess student learning in general education. Each year, the Missouri Colloquium on Writing Assessment meets to review assessment efforts within the state and to provide a forum for sharing strategies. This year’s joint meeting with the Mid-America Writing Program Administrators (MAWPA) was held at Saint Louis University October 27-28. At the meeting, many sessions focused on using portfolios to assess general education. Two major sessions featured these efforts.
Dr. Nancy Blattner, Vice President and Dean for Academic Affairs at Fontbonne University presented the system used by her campus. Dr. Blattner’s institution, like ours, received a focused site-visit mandate for assessment from the HLC. In the interim, they created a portfolio method for assessing general education and have successfully satisfied HLC’s concerns regarding assessment. Using the four areas for general education from the state (communication, higher-order thinking, managing information, valuing) and one area unique to their campus, they identified 4-5 units within the university who would control the artifacts collected and determine how they would be evaluated. The university sampled these artifacts, and teams rated them using rubrics tied to the state goals. The institutional research office on their campus collated the rankings and reported them. Dr. Blattner shared some of the rubrics and data with attendees.
A group of instructors and staff from the Metropolitan Community Colleges of Kansas City also presented portfolio assessment methods from their campuses. Led by Mary McMullen-Light, WAC coordinator at Longview Community College, their presentation demonstrated how Metropolitan uses Blackboard for electronic portfolio submission and evaluation. The system-wide distance learning coordinator creates portfolio sites which are drop boxes for students to submit work. They are randomly sampled, printed, and distributed to groups of faculty to evaluate using their rubric.
The group shared rubrics and their student booklet which presents and explains the program to their students with those at the conference.
During the discussion period for each presentation, various groups discussed ongoing efforts at their institutions and specifics about how their assessment is conducted. Many school use separate rubrics for each area to be assessed, and most leave assessment of communications to either the English Department or a combination of English and Communications faculty.
This is not required, but common. The team approach, selecting groups of faculty to review artifacts for a specific general education goal seems efficient and allows focus on that goal.
As we move toward developing our own system, we should be mindful that other institutions are working toward the same things and that materials related to our efforts are available from our fellow educators, both in this state and in other states.
– Leigh Adams
Linking Mission, Objectives, and Learning Outcomes
Dr. Jay Dee Martin
We are making progress toward our goal of meeting the guidance of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). You will recall that in their response to our Self-Study the HLC called for “the linking of the assessment process to the Long-range Plan and Budgeting process.” While we on the faculty have no control of the budget process, we can make sure that we link our learning objectives to the goals of the long-range-plan and; thus to the University Mission.
Establishing the linkage is the first goal of the Assessment Committee:
“Goal 1: Encourage the development of a strategic assessment plan that
1.1 Reviews the General Education Goals and Competencies, degree program goals, discipline objectives, and course objectives;
1.2 Provides linkage between the institutional goals, the General Education Goals and Competencies, degree program goals, discipline objectives, and course assessment objectives; and
1.3 Generates feedback for modifications to improve learning.”
To demonstrate those linkages the Faculty Assessment Coordinator (FAC) has asked all disciplines and programs to develop or refine their objectives. Those objectives will be both discipline and program specific and some will link to the general education goals that have been established by the faculty.
To link those general education learning objectives, the FAC has developed a General Education Course Audit and asked that faculty fill out this form for each of their courses. By designating a “D” on this form, the faculty member is making a commitment to have that learning outcome as a significant component of his or her course and to assess that learning outcome in his or her Course Assessment Plan. If the faculty member designates an “R” it is an indication that that course will reinforce this learning outcome, but it will not be assessed in this course.
The next instrument which will be used to reveal the linkages throughout our curriculum is the General Education Linkage Matrix. This table is the primary tool to demonstrate the assessment linkages from Mission to goals, to the university wide general education learning outcomes, to program learning outcomes, to discipline learning outcomes and finally to course learning outcomes. This tool demonstrates these important linkages that assure the overall integrity of the assessment of student learning and connection of university goals to student learning objectives at every level.
The General Education Course Audit and the General Education Linkage Matrix will not need to be repeated each semester. Their purpose is not assessment as such but the demonstration of how our goals and learning outcomes link up and how we are assessing whether we are meeting our goals and objectives.
Once these linkages are established, the Assessment Committee will work with faculty to develop a schedule for assessing the general education, program and discipline objectives which are in the matrix. The actual assessment of the objectives will be reported on a modified table similar to the Course Assessment Plan table. These assessment reports will need to be filed with the FAC and the Assessment Committee following at the time established on the schedule.