Response to the Spring 2017 Report

Margaret (Peggy) Bloom

margaret.bloom@marquette.edu, (414) 540-0478

HLC Scholar

Jan Smith

jsmith@pittstate.edu

The team members should give themselves a gold star!  Perhaps the most important strength of this project I note is the persistence of the project team through the inevitable ups and downs of essentially building student learning assessment from scratch at MIU. Your report documents the team’s thoughtfulness and high levels of effort this past year to “make assessment happen” particularly at the program level.  Actions by the team completed this year which will strengthen all Maharishi assessment practices include the full Faculty Senate training on assessment step by step, personal visits to each academic department to give feedback and interact on their specific assessment plans, and working teams on 3 institutional outcomes (ELOs).  Other strengths include the plan for a regular assessment cycle, assessment and learning are now a part of the New Program Approval forms and processes and approval for a full-time Director of Evaluation. These last actions are evidence of the commitment of your senior administration to assessment.  Finally, as I noted in my response last year, the project team members are positive learners, seeking feedback and using suggestions in a non-defensive manner.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

I fully agree with Peggy’s observations. I am especially impressed with your ability to continue to advance in your project even with significant change in senior leadership. This suggests the presence of solid infrastructure to continue your assessment efforts. I also commend you for working with co-curricular areas, as this will allow you to have a more complete picture of student learning at your institution.

I found the report quite informative but project work particular to assessing the Essential Learning Outcomes is not as clear and progressing slower.  This is due to the nature of institutional learning outcomes, which can have less faculty and program chair investment than for the more tangible program learning outcomes.

1. Is there a specific assessment plan for the ELO’s? You mention you will have baseline levels of student proficiency this spring for the Essential Learning Outcomes of Development of Consciousness, Critical Thinking, and Communication, but I’m unclear how you are organized to gather assessment data? You mention a rubric for two of these but does the ELO work group know what learning product the rubric will be used with and by what means students produce it and who will obtain the learning product? Plus who will use the rubric and specify a rating  (i.e., course assignments, course instructors, assessment team)? Plus how and by who will the data be aggregated and then analyzed, etc.? If you have these answers you are good to go. If not, how about a pilot version to begin to meet this goal?

2. You mention that the ELO’s are now in their 13^th Revision!!! When will “enough be enough”? What does the average faculty member think about so many different versions? Does it make her/him skeptical of the process? Is it becoming detrimental to your goals to not have learning outcomes you can begin to assess? How about setting a firm deadline for ELO statements Version 1, a version you will live by for at least 2 years so you can start to assess and learn more about each?  I like your idea of examining all program learning outcomes to see if the ELO’s are indeed embedded.  This might be a validation process to guide the faculty on getting some closure on the ELO’s.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

Thank you for a thorough update. Peggy’s questions about impact of so many revisions is critical. At some point you will need to go with what you have as there becomes a point of diminishing returns. What is the reason for continued revisions and does it indicate any underlying issue? Also, what is the nature of support being provided to co-curricular areas?

The project is entering a rather tenuous period that you must do assessment given your institutional culture of assessment starts and fizzles and at this stage a need for faculty and administration to not just talk and plan but to actually do assessment.  Otherwise, if you slow down or stall, you have just reinforced that the well-known higher ed faculty strategy of stalling and delaying action until administration changes plans, drops it, etc.  The project team needs to take positive actions to have some visible success in the next 6 months which is meaningful to faculty and students and results in  improvement.  In my response 2 last time,  I worried about drifting and loss of focus in year two and that did not happen because the team made strong efforts. Now the team needs to have a few early successes and firm up the infrastructure for assessment.

A project plan to completion: You point this need out in your report under challenges. Remember a plan can be revised but without a plan that details specific goals, the actions to meet the goals, who is responsible for each action and the deadline for the action the team can easily be drawn to other competing responsibilities and the project drifts. Once your Provost agrees with your plan (approved it) share this plan with the faculty and other administrators with updates and accomplishments each semester

Some other critical efforts to consider:

1. Finish the ELO’s and create the Assessment Plan for them: I discussed this in my questions above.

2. Expand visibility through communication processes:  Continue to use e-mails for announcements but now you have enough assessment work done to create a information hub for assessment on the web and/or a printed annual report.  This increases visibility and announces assessment is a lasting part of the university. You plan to post the learning outcomes for each program on the web. How about posting the assessment plans using a template similar to the one you liked used by Northern Colorado? Use it also as a location for those assessment resources you plan to develop within the next six months. You also mentioned the UNC “Assessment Fair” that you might use to showcase program work in assessment. That could be a nice all faculty program to kick off the next academic year. How can the President/Provost speaking about personal experiences with and commitment to assessment? How will you communicate with students? With staff?

3. Find and/or create some Successes: Celebrate all programs having program learning outcomes!! Maybe select/ask for volunteer programs to be pioneer programs that you support next year through a full assessment cycle?

4. Involve Students and Cocurricular staff:  See comments in previous response 2 on this.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

Again, Peggy makes some great points that are very much on target. In addition, I would like to follow up on your self-identified challenge of department chairs doing the work without involving program faculty. In my opinion, this is a very astute observation, as without involvement of faculty, your assessment work becomes a meaningless exercise in compliance. Think about ways to ensure faculty will be involved in the process.

I haven’t added any this time. At this point try out some of the instruments and models you have already collected to see what works at your institution.

Reviewed by Jan Smith (HLC Scholar):

Yes, you have the tools you need at this point in your project to move forward.