*Needless to say, the second “S” stands for Smarty.
Like many of our students here at MSU, we (faculty and staff) sometimes make assessment more complicated than it has to be. I can guarantee that you’re performing assessment already, even if you don’t think you are.
Do you align your course assignments to General Education Goals or Specific Learning Outcomes (SLOs)? I thought so.
Here is one approach to make this easier:
- Get together with your fellow faculty members, choose an assignment that aligns with one or two General Goals, and collect samples of that assignment over a semester (or a year).
- Faculty can sort the assignments as “Low,” “Medium,” or “High.”
- Have a 1–2-hour meeting to look at and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the sampled assignments.
- Here is a sample meeting agenda
During the meeting you should answer the following questions:
- What did students do well with this assignment?
- Did we consistently see the same issues with “Low” and “High” assignments?
- What are our next steps/what changes will we make?
Keep a record of your meeting with minutes, and you should have all of the information you need to report to your Program Coordinator, your Dean, or the Provost. Each year, you can simply choose to evaluate student work which aligns with a different General Goal or SLO.
If ever you need support to generate an assessment plan, we’re here. Email us at Assessment@MissouriState.edu to set up a meeting.