From: Aligning Assessment with Mission: A Collaborative Workshop for Department Heads and Others

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From Aligning Assessment with Mission A
Collaborative Workshop for Department Heads (and
Others)

• Dr. Diana Sharp
• Nick Ardinger
• William Rainey Harper Community College
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• Presented at NASPA 2003 Annual Conference

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Questions to consider

• What brought you to this session?
• What does assessment mean to you?
• When do we do assessment?
• Why do we do assessment?

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What assessment commonly means

• Evaluation (implied punishment)

• Data collection

• Quantifiable

• One more task we have to do (on top of everything
  else)

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What assessment really means

• Evaluation (constant improvement)

• Data collection (looking at what we do)

• Reliable (may be quantifiable, but not
  necessarily)

• The one task that makes sure were doing what
  were really supposed to do (committed tonot
  something were supposed to do)

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The Key Example We all do assessment all
the time

• I have lots of keys that look alike
• Im always having to stop and see which key is
  supposed to go to which lock
• Since Im looking to speed up the process,
• I buy little rubber identifiers which
• allow me to go through the door more quickly.

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Our History as the Assessment Committee
Need to include Student Learning Imperative in
our work
Need to define learning came up with Axis of
Development A positive change in behavior,
observable by self or others, along an axis of
development
See examples on next slide (also available as
PDFs on this website)
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Notes about Axis of Development

• These categories are representative, but not
  all-inclusive
• Dont be fooled into perceiving a false
  hierarchy some characteristics of an axis could
  be axes themselves and/or contain other
  characteristics under them

The next step was to create rubrics to show what
those changes looked like (see rubric
examplese.g., citizenship, diversity, etc. on
this website)
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Rubric example
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The Nine Questions

• Were proposing a student learning model of nine
  questions (and their answers)
• What do we want students to know or be able to
  do?
• What does that look like?
• How much of that have we seen prior to this
  point?
• How much of that do we expect to see?
• Why do we want to see more of that?
• How do we get students to show us more of that?
• How do we measure that?
• What can the scores tell us?
• What do we do with that information?

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Philosophy Questions

• What do we want students to know or be able to
  do? (Will differ for each department, and perhaps
  within each departmente.g., various goals)
• What does that look like? (If we can identify
  individuals who we all generally agree have this
  trait, what is it they do to show us that they
  have this trait?)

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Progress Questions

• How much of that have we seen prior to this
  point? (How successful have we been so far? How
  much is happening without this intervention?)
• How much of that do we expect to see? (What do we
  consider reasonable progress toward reaching that
  goal?)

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Activity Questions

• Why do we want to see more of that? (Reality
  Check If we say we want students to know or do
  x, and we think x looks like y, but we
  dont want students to exhibit more y, do we
  really want students to know or do x?)
• How do we get students to show us more of that?
  (How are we teaching them? What effect are we
  having on their development?)

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Assessment Questions

• How do we measure that? (If we know what it looks
  like and how much of it we expect to see, what
  tool are we going to use to help us see ite.g.,
  pre-/post-test, portfolio, interviews,
  observation?)
• What can the scores tell us? (How successful are
  we? How can we be more successful? Who else can
  we work with to accomplish this goal?)
• What do we do with that information?
• REVISE WHAT WE DO

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Appendices

• What follows is a series of diagrams (also in PDF
  format on the website) that help to visually
  depict this process and the type(s) of answers
  these questions engender.
• The first shows an example of answering these
  questions and following one (of several answers)
  through seven steps (the two check steps 3 and
  5 are omitted because they dont lead to the
  types of answers that push us to the next
  question and are therefore hard to represent
  graphicallyand these drawings were made before
  we added those steps).

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Appendix B

• These appendices present variations on a theme
  use whichever helps you to think about the
  process most clearly.
• This next drawing abstracts the previous drawing
  to show how the responses all lead to the next
  question.

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Appendix C

• These appendices present variations on a theme
  use whichever helps you to think about the
  process most clearly.
• This next drawing attempts to show that one can
  follow each answer to reach a myriad of ways to
  improve what one does in the department. It also
  shows that all steps eventually lead to revise
  what we do.

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Appendix D

• These appendices present variations on a theme
  use whichever helps you to think about the
  process most clearly.
• This last drawing combines ideas from Appendix A
  and Appendix C to illustrate another axis of
  development, resolving conflicts. In this
  drawing, we can see that the questions lead to
  multiple answers we also see that those answers
  can serve as answers to questions generated along
  different paths. Hopefully, this makes the
  process less intimidating.

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Supplemental materials for this presentation are
available at http//www.uic.edu/ardinger/assessm
ent.html
Prepared by Nick Ardinger ardinger_at_uic.edu on
behalf of the Research and Assessment Committee