2. Tasks Needed
Educate, provide guidance
Offer feedback on assessment process
Conduct campus audit
Collect and analyze data
Report findings
Ass assessment process
Set policy
Develop institutional assessment plan
Make recommendations
3. Organizational Structure
Institutional
Effectiveness
Committee
Academic Support
Units
Units
Institutional
Research &
Planning
4. Organizational Structure
Institutional Academic Units
Effectiveness Committee Review assessment
artifacts
Sets policy
Creates rubrics
Decides what to assess and
with what priority Examines academic
program plans and reports
Assess institution-wide
learning goals Oversees General
Education
Develops institutional
assessment plan
Makes recommendations
5. Organizational Structure
Support Units Institutional Research &
Planning
Formulates and reviews
unit plans and reports Provide expertise in
relevant to student methodology and
development goals or unit instruments
service goals Assesses the assessment
Rates and provides process
feedback Conducts surveys / focus
Establishes policies and groups
procedures to support this Reviews academic and
process non-academic unit plans,
offering feedback and
recommendations
7. Places Where Assessment Occurs
Degree Support
Programs Unit
Educational General
Programs Education
8. Assessment Planning
Many institutions craft a written institutional
assessment plan
However, it is more important to develop a workable
design for assessment than to produce a written plan
9. Assessment Plan Items
Foundations
Link to your mission and strategic plan
Commitment statement
Rationale and purposes for assessment
Glossary of terms
Overview of assessment processes
Organizational structure for assessment, including budget
Responsibilities of administrators, faculty, students, committees
Assessment cycles, flowcharts and timelines
Use of results and incorporation into decision-making
Dissemination of results and preparation of reports
How the process itself will be evaluated
10. Assessment Plan Items
Identification of assessment levels
Institutional: These are outcomes that transcend individual program
Often, these are vaguely stated and need to be rephrased and narrowed so that
indicators can be developed
Academic division, program, or major: Undergraduate, graduate, certificate,
noncredit, general education curriculum
Although courses are a good place to collect data, decisions need to be made above that
level
Academic support and student affairs, student life and first-year experience
programs
For each level
Statement of goals and objectives
Assessment methods- qualitative and quantitative methods
Timeframe
Responsible persons
Ideally, a representative steering committee or task force will develop the
Institutional Assessment Plan
11. Assessment Plan: Beginnings
Conduct an audit or inventory of existing assessment
practices on campus
Knowledge of current assessment practices provides an
invaluable foundation for moving forward
Process itself of doing an inventory builds understanding and
good will
Reassures faculty that assessment is not a brand-new
initiative that will require more busywork
Administration of this type of instrument usually works best
in an interview format, where department chairs or faculty
can talk through what kinds of direct and indirect measures
might work, as well as explore how well the approaches that
they are using are working
12. Assessment Plan: Beginnings
From the inventories …
Devise a matrix of methods to show the status of assessment,
point to where institution-wide initiatives might be needed,
and spot opportunities to inform the campus community
more widely on the availability of centralized sources
The matrix can be used to track progress after the first year,
third year, etc. of implementation
Conduct an assessment climate survey to determine how
well faculty and administrators understand and value
assessment, know their roles and need for support, etc.
A survey done by The National Center for Postsecondary
Improvement in 2000 may give you ideas about survey items:
http://www.umich.edu/~ncpi/52/ICSA.pdf
13. Assessment PR
General communication and roll-out strategy
Communicate timelines, activities, progress and role
expectations
Decide who needs to be informed, what they need to know,
how the communication should be phased over what
timeframe, through what media/communication channels,
and identify the communication milestones and checkpoints
Work with offices on campus that have professional expertise
in the roll-out and continuing communication of initiatives
Plan assessment as a development campaign
Publish an academic calendar that can be accessed by campus
community and includes due dates for various reports having
to do with assessment or institutional effectiveness
