- Assessment helps students know what is expected of them upon completion of a program, track their progress towards meeting learning outcomes, and identify gaps in their skills or content knowledge. Assessment helps faculty determine what students know and can do as well as identify areas for targeted instruction. Assessment also provides administrators and the entire university with valuable data for academic planning, decision-making, and continuous improvement.
- Assessment is a continuous and ongoing process. Assessment plans and final reports are submitted to the IARP office annually in the fall.
- The Office of Institutional Assessment, Research and Planning coordinates the assessment process, provides ongoing support through workshops and individualized sessions with faculty and staff, and regularly updates university resources.
- Although all personnel/program faculty are responsible for discussing and making decisions based upon assessment, the coordinator works with his/her colleagues to develop and implement the assessment process and is responsible for writing and electronically submitting the assessment plan and final report.
- At the start of each cycle, chairs/deans and directors will inform the assessment/program coordinator of his/her role.
- Prior assessment reports can be found on AEFIS, or by contacting the IARP office. All training material, workshop information, and additional support can be found under academic or AES assessment tabs of this webpage.
- Yes! Our Assessment Specialists are readily available to help you at each stage of the assessment process. Please e-mail karol.batey@tamiu.edu with any questions or concerns.
- Yes! Rubrics are commonly used to assess student work, however, they are not the only tool. There are multiple alternative direct measures of student learning. Please reach out to our assessment team to help brainstorm different ways of assessing student learning.
- Yes! Program faculty can decide which rubric dimensions are applicable to fit the Program Learning Outcome (PLO). However, it is also important to make sure that the chosen competencies align with the assignment students completed.
- That’s okay! However, you cannot merely report about what you plan to do. Your program/office needs to actually do it, and then report how it turned out. It may not just take one cycle to implement a change within the office or academic program.
- • Mismatch between outcome, assessment method, and results (e.g. outcome stated in percentage, but results reported as averages; outcome is about student learning but results reported as actions taken but no indication of student learning e.g. hiring new faculty).
- • Over-reliance on indirect assessment of student learning (8.2.a, 8.2.b) and on tasks for academic and student services (8.2.c).
- • Improvements are vague plans or overuse of “continue to monitor because no improvement is needed.