In 2019, the annual Assessment Workshop will focus on General Goals 10 and 11 (life and physical sciences.) We are looking at doing things a little differently for our workshop this year. Instead of collecting student work throughout the year, we will be administering surveys to students and faculty and our meeting will be focused on having a conversation with each other about student learning. We are looking for 40 participants, including students, per course faculty, and faculty of different ranks. We will be recruiting from faculty who participated in the summer 2018 rubric workshop, assessment council, CGEIP, faculty teaching these courses, and faculty who have participated in previous workshops.

Our data points this year will be the students, a student survey, student work, faculty, and, perhaps, a faculty survey. We will ask faculty to bring assignments and student work that they feel will contribute to the conversation. We are also asking faculty to assist in the recruitment of students to participate in the workshop. We would like students who have taken the courses recently to be involved and feel like we need a minimum of 10 students to attend the workshop.

We think this workshop will be one and a half days instead of three. As we have done in years past, we’ll hold the workshop in May, starting on the Tuesday after grades are due. In terms of finances, what we will save on food, we will use for additional faculty stipends. Stipends for participation in the workshop will be $500, with a stipend of $200 for follow-up. The follow-up will be, “How did this impact what you do?” We will follow-up at three and six months.

We discussed this plan in Assessment Council and received positive feedback from council members. The Council approved the plan to move forward with this workshop format in 2019. We are very excited to see what will come about with this workshop. It is our goal to ensure that the information learned is useful to students and faculty.

If you are interested in participating in the May workshop or have students to recommend, please contact the Office of Assessment.