Response to the December 2017 Report

Peggy Bloom, email: margaret.bloom@marquette.edu, mobile phone (414) 235-0138

HLC Scholar:

Jan Smith, e-mail: jsmith@pittstate.edu

Your Version 5 report documents what I perceived during our interactions (consultation) over lunch at the Assessment Academy meeting that your team continues to work well together.  The team is engaged, able to honestly reflect on what is and isn’t working and you all sincerely care about student learning at MIU! I’ve said this before but will again; having a committed, resilient team is a tremendous strength and provides your base for the project’s meaningful completion.

The team effectively used the time at the Academy Midpoint meeting in Oakbrook to evaluate progress to date, set new goals and restructure teamwork to accomplish the next phase of the project. Breaking the work into specific actions for each level (institutional, program, and course) levels and creating a work plan for who was working on each task should really  help you move forward.

Your intensive work on visiting departments and faculty development workshops is now starting to pay off. Many more faculty members are now engaged and gaining assessment and curriculum development skills. It’s like planting an acorn, it took a season to germinate and begin to grow but two years later you have a strong sapling.  Good work and I’ll be looking for many faculty and unit “branches with leaves”  in the next report. :>)

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

Peggy’s comment about your team being a strength is very much on target. You simply could not have accomplished all you have done so to date without a highly engaged and committed team. In this current posting, I also think your sense of future direction is a strength as you show a good level of insight into what you have accomplished and what needs to be your next steps. It is clear you make good use of the mid-point roundtable and are well-positioned to move forward with the remainder of your project and beyond.

Areas that remain unclear right now center around how the project Team will engage other units on campus as you move to building an consistent institutional structure for assessment.

1. Team members have been thoughtful as you considered using a commercial assessment management software system.  Have you invited several vendors to give you live demonstrations on campus? Have you involved the MIU Information Technology folks yet? They will be critical in helping you evaluate the use of the system on campus with your existing course management and general IT system. Also, how will you include the “users”, the faculty and academic support staff, in the decision to use a particular AMS? Don’t forget the faculty and unit heads will be the “users” and they should have an opportunity to evaluate any prospective system. You already mention in your report needing to listen to the faculty more.

2.  The team report noted initial assessment data was collected on writing, critical thinking and development of consciousness, but I’m not sure if you included data from co-curricular programs such as academic support units, student life, etc.  If not, have you thought further about how co-curricular programs contribute to student achieving the Essential Learning Outcomes and how you will measure it?

3. I’m repeating this question from version 4 about Graduate programs.  Are the ELO’s across the board for your master’s and doctoral programs as well as undergraduate or are the ELO’s just for undergraduates?

4. Have you asked for help with creating your website?  I don’t know your distribution of duties at MIU but for sure there is a unit responsible for developing and maintaining the university webpages, such as marketing, public relations or information technology.  Their staff would have a better eye from the consumer perspective about design and user friendliness and could then build it for you. It is important that you get the planned website up. Not only is it a “place” to store all assessment documents, but also when faculty see their department’s materials and other departments’ posted it is an incentive to do take assessment seriously and put effort in the assessment plan and reports.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

As usual, your posting is very detailed and helpful, so your future direction is very evident. However, Peggy asks some good questions for you to consider if you have not already done so.

1. At the Midpoint Academy meeting the team developed a work plan for the next six months. As identified in this report it will be important that the three subgroups share progress so that the tasks stayed aligned.  There are at least two aspects of alignment, one is not doing something at one level that detracts or confuses the faculty and staff because it is not coordinated with the other two levels. This can be addressed by monthly meeting of all members of the subgroups to discuss progress, work out differences, etc.

The second aspect is working together to layout the overall alignment of the elements of your assessment system. You may have already drafted such a document, but if not the time has come to gain better clarity so that you minimize possible redundancies or misalignments that can derail the project in the final years. Forgive me if you are already clear on this but I’m not sure given your comment in the report “Essential learning outcomes which define what we seek in all our classes.”  The critical task is to conceptualize the curricular learning framework for MIU,  a written and broadly shared framework which describes what learning takes place in each level and if and how student learning assessment data rolls up to the next level in your assessment system. Or said differently, a taxonomy or order of assessment levels is needed so the team isn’t trying to unrealistically require faculty to include every ELO in every course or trying to collect assessment data on every ELO from every course and every major.  Yes, some learning outcomes in courses and programs do contribute directly to one or more of the institutional learning outcomes such as General Education (core) courses which are required of all students often have such a direct relationship. Some institutions have writing or math across the curriculum as a requirement,  all undergraduate courses are required to contribute to  the writing or oral communication institutional outcomes.  Other courses, those required for a major have learning outcomes that contribute directly to the major but may not directly contribute to the ELOs.  Finally some courses, usually the electives, may have such a narrow or special focus and learning outcomes that the course learning does not directly contribute to either the program or institutional learning outcomes.  The MIU learning framework would spell this out for MIU.

Same distinctions are needed at the program level. In the academic program/major students develop more in-depth knowledge and skills specific to a given discipline which may not add directly to the institutional learning and gain particular higher level knowledge and skills of the integrated knowledge directly contributing to specific institutional learning outcomes. It is up to the project team, MIU faculty and academic administrators to consider how the academic program/major interfaces with the ELO’s. A way to expedite this might be for two of you to try laying this out in a draft and then the whole team reviewing, discussing, and reaching consensus. Usually such a document then must be reviewed and approved by the Faculty Senate and senior academic administration.

2. I’m a little concerned about making meaningful progress in having the programs conduct program learning assessment.  Your plan for the next 6 months is to have one department work as a pilot to develop “a curriculum map leading to an assessment plan and a document aligning program learning outcomes to Essential Learning outcomes (see my comments on alignment above).  The way the process works you want all units to be progressing by doing at least some work on assessment.  The HLC standards call for every academic program conducts regular program assessment to improve student learning.  I’m not sure what the total number of academic programs is at MIU but I think you may need to minimally expect something in the next 6 months from every program and for those who are already along encourage more.  Does every program have measurable learning outcomes? If so, then the next step is to identify performance indicators for each learning outcome or ideally a curriculum map. Curriculum maps are most helpful but not necessary in order to plan and conduct meaningful assessments.  If you want to pilot be sure that within each college or division you have at least one program in the pilot. Continuous engagement by the faculty and co-curricular staff helps keep assessment on their radar as regular work!

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

I concur with Peggy’s observations. I am a strong proponent of pilot work, but this needs to be balanced with continuing to move all units further along. I would also highlight Peggy’s comments about software and make sure you know what you need out a system rather than adopt a system and have your assessment processes dictated by your software.

I listed the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment in my response to version 4. They now have a feature which features an exemplary university assessment website and have an archive of previous university assessment websites that have been awarded. I am proud to mention that the site we designed for Marquette was one of the first they recognized. Take a look not only for website design and features, but also if the university posts a glossary of terms, a learning assessment framework document, etc.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

The assessment commons website also has many examples of institutional websites. I’ve provided the specific link to sample websites. below.