Provost| Assessment

What is Assessment?

Assessment is an on-going process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education.

(Definition by The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Bulletin, 48 (2), November 1995, pp. 7-9.)

Reporting Requirements

SLOA: The chair of each department (or equivalent as identified by the Dean or Director) shall prepare a report/summary every two years, summarizing the Educational Effectiveness program for each certificate and degree program offered by that department. Please see Student Learning Outcomes Assessment (SLOA) Instructions and Templates below for completing reports/summaries.

The report/summary shall be presented to the dean or director's office during the month of May and emailed to the Provost's Office. At least some information gathering for this process shall occur annually.

Core: Once an educational effectiveness evaluation program has been implemented for the core, the core review committee of the faculty senate shall prepare a report, at least biannually, summarizing the educational effectiveness of the components of the core curriculum. This report shall be similar in content to the report described above for individual programs but shall provide a summary for the components of the core curriculum. The components of the Core may be summarized in the report on a rotational basis, but at least some information should be gathered annually.