Assessment in Action

Understanding Student Learning

Collecting, Collaborating, and Celebrating: Assessing Student Learning

This review session recap includes a brief overview of how we look at student work related to public affairs, how the experience impacted our reviewers, and what is happening with public affairs assessment right now.

by

Public Affairs at the University

As part of the Higher Learning Commission Quality Initiative Project, the Office of Assessment collected student work related to public affairs with the goal of understanding students level of knowledge related to public affairs. A group of faculty and staff reviewers met in May 2013 and on October 26. Faculty, staff, and students reviewed student work using a rubric or a collaborative assessment protocol. We were thrilled to welcome Kelsie Young and Brett McKnight (both students of the Student Affairs in Higher Education graduate program) as our first student reviewers!  The reviewers did an incredible job scoring over 260 pieces of work in less than two hours. Reviewers were able to participate in interdisciplinary conversations about public affairs. Brett McKnight commented on the impact of his participation.

Blog_Brett_McKnight

 

“Participating as a reviewer allowed me to see how truly committed the University is to integrating the public affairs mission into all areas of our community.  The experience also allowed me to not only to see how the core curriculum seeks to reflect the mission through a unique variety of assignments, it helped me to identify ‘best practices’ for instructors and supervisors to generally engage their students in a holistic understanding of the public affairs mission.”

The first review session results are already available online, and the second review session will be available online soon.

What are we doing now that the review session is over?

  • We are currently analyzing and creating a report for the Fall 2013 Quality Initiative Project review session. It will be available on our website soon!

  • We are collecting student work year round to be included in these sessions. Do you have a public affairs assignment or experience to share with the Quality Initiative Project? Faculty and staff can sign up to participate online by filling out the Intent to Participate Form.

  •  We are seeking recommendations of faculty, staff, student who would be interested in reviewing student work at the Spring review session? Students, is there an assignment or experience that impacted your public affairs perception? Tell us about it by commenting on this blog or by emailing us at Assessment.MissouriState.edu.

The video below is a discussion about the Public Affairs Assessment:  Quality Initiative Project during the FCTL 2013 Showcase; it is led by a panel of reviewers from the Fall 2013 review session and facilitated by Kelly Cara.