Assessment and Outcomes
Measurement, Evaluation, and Reporting
The whole point of assessment to establish an ongoing, systematic
mechanism for assessing, reviewing, and improving programs. Therefore
each program assessment plan must include explicit procedures for determining
which outcomes will be measured; when they will be measured; who will
measure them; who will analyze them; what results will be reported, to
whom; and how results have been implemented.
This is the step in the assessment cycle that makes assessment relevant,
and it is the step which is likely to be most scrutinized by outside agencies.
The "accountability" aspect of assessment is the requirement
to document how assessment findings have been used to guide program improvement.
Currently Western is using an annual survey of academic departments to
gather information on program assessment plans. This procedure is likely
to be modified in the future into a uniform reporting format that includes
program mission, goals, objectives, outcomes, and procedures, along with
a cumulative listing of program improvements that have been made as a
result of assessment findings.
Therefore, this section of each plan must show not only how results have
been applied to program improvement in each annual cycle, but also must
analyze what results say about program effectiveness and about the impact
of assessment-induced changes on program effectiveness over time.
Reporting
At present Western has no common assessment activity reporting requirement
or format for academic units. In the past, assessment information has
been gathered from units via an online survey, and data from the survey
has been collated and used to construct assessment reports for accreditation
and for the State.
In the future it is quite likely that Western will adopt some common
reporting format for academic units, which will generally follow the structure
described in this section and shown in the figure below:
- Program mission statement
- Program goals consistent with mission statement
- Multiple learning objectives (intended learning outcomes) for each
goal
- Measurement of multiple outcomes for each learning objective
- Assessment criteria for each learning objective
- A framework for data analysis and program improvement
- Documentation of how assessment results have improved both programs
andassessment criteria and procedures
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