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Email Dr. Rui Sun (rsun@54zhangmi.com). We may need to update your permission settings in Campus Labs.
If your program is new or newly modified, you may want to submit your assessment plan for review. USLOAC can provide feedback on plans as well as reports!
USLOAC provides feedback on assessment reports based on a checklist for principles of best practices for academic program assessment and we use a rubric for measures of program learning outcomes.
If you are turning in an assessment plan for review, we use a rubric from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges’ Rubric for Assessing the Quality of Academic Program Learning.
The voting members on USLOAC are all faculty members representing each college. Two members are assigned to review each assessment report. Initially, they use an evaluation checklist and their thoughts are shared in discussion with the full USLOAC committee at our bi-monthly meetings.
After the discussion, the primary reviewer enters a commentary report and a rating based on a rubric. All of this information is considered in the feedback letters, which are prepared by the Chair of USLOAC (the Director of Assessment for Academic Affairs).
See Rubrics in Campus Labs announcements and the Evaluation Checklist for detailed criteria.
Please see the USLOAC website: http://1t6.54zhangmi.com/academic-affairs/student-learning/
USLOAC will review your assessment report during the spring semester, and feedback letters are typically sent over the summer or at the beginning of the fall semester. Feedback is provided to help programs improve their assessment processes and can be used for ongoing assessment activities. You may also find previous feedback letters in Campus Labs under the Documents tab.
Continuous academic program assessment is important for many reasons. When you engage in ongoing reflection on your program’s student learning outcomes, it supports a strong culture around the importance of focusing on the students’ experiences of learning and how you can build on your own strengths. When faculty have regular discussions about assessment, they can work toward common goals, unifying your program. Doing regular program assessment is also important for accreditation, which provides credibility to serious academic programs. Since every program comes up for program review, program assessment can be your “friend” helping you to make your case for resources you need and professional development based on evidence. Ultimately, program assessment of student learning outcomes is all about our students and helping them learn as much as they can. Program assessment can help you highlight what your program is doing well.
The role of USLOAC at CSUDH is to provide constructive feedback for all degree granting academic programs to improve assessment and enhance student learning in their programs.
The reason USLOAC asks you to turn your reports into Campus Labs is because it provides a centralized location for collecting, processing, and responding to all assessment activities at our institution. Campus Labs allows us to collect all of the information you provide, refer to it, and also analyze data across years of assessment and also across programs. This information allows us all to refer to the same documents and build assessments that are more meaningful. Campus Labs also facilitates the generation of reports, which are necessary for sharing our success stories and our activities with each other, the public, and our accreditation bodies.
During program review, you will be asked about your assessment work over the review period. The program review committee will expect that you have been engaging in continuous program assessment and that you have turned in assessment reports each year. USLOAC reviews can be your “friend” during this process, helping you provide some data and evidence about what you are doing well and improvements you have made to your program. The process also reflects your deeply held values and dedication to student learning. If you are going through curriculum review for a new program or a program modification, they will ask for your assessment plans and curriculum maps. They may also ask you to consult with members of USLOAC for advice and tips on these planning documents.
It may be helpful to know that you do not have to do the “same old thing” or just “check boxes.” You can take small, feasible steps to deepen and enrich your assessment process. If you are feeling overwhelmed, there may be ways to share the burden by forming an assessment committee or asking USLOAC members for guidance.
Many programs can improve their assessment processes by developing more detailed assessment rubrics for each of their PLOs. Sometimes, programs default to using grades or grading rubrics, but the problem with this is that grades often reflect multiple things or many PLOs at once, so they may not provide meaningful data on specific PLOs. This is why it is important to focus on unique rubrics for each PLO assessment. Developing a meaningful rubric is a major task, and it can lead to very engaging and rewarding conversations amongst the faculty (and students) regarding the goals of student learning and how to assess the outcomes.
This is one reason why we are accepting rubrics for review, as they are very critical tools for assessment. In fact, once you have a meaningful rubric, you can have fun assessment parties that may not take as long as you think.
It may be more feasible to choose to focus in on one PLO if you have a new rubric that year, or you may choose to do a “pilot” assessment of the PLO, testing out the rubric with a smaller sample. Just let USLOAC know that you are doing this. By forming an assessment committee, it will make assessment part of what your faculty regularly does and you can discuss your updates at faculty meetings. We also suggest that you have a plan for “closing the loop”. This means that, based on PLO data, you convene the full department to discuss the results and think about possible ways to improve your program and then assess the improvements moving forward. USLOAC loves to hear about success stories and evidence-based program improvements. This may help ensure a more meaningful process and enhanced student learning in your program.
We are all in this together and we are all on the same side of student learning at CSUDH. Our Institutional Learning Outcomes are a unifying force that brings all of us together toward common goals. While each program has their own PLOs, they can all be linked to ILOs. Linking to an ILO in Campus Labs also helps us generate reports on how our programs are doing as a whole on learning outcomes. This facilitated the sharing of institutional data on student learning and allows us all to reflect on how we are doing in order to improve student learning at CSUDH.
Please visit our website for more information, resources, and tools: http://1t6.54zhangmi.com/academic-affairs/student-learning/
You can also find additional resources in Campus Labs under announcements.
You may also attend a meeting of USLOAC by contacting Dr. Rui Sun and asking to be added to an agenda.