Connecting
Course Goals,
Assignments,
and Assessment
Faculty Development for Student
Success
at
Prince George’s Community College
William Peirce
wpeirce@pgcc.edu
Started with General
Education
1999 Attempted to assess general
education by collecting and scoring
course-embedded assignments from
13 heavily enrolled general education
courses
2000 Added six more courses
2001 Added six more courses
2002 Dropped this method for
assessing general education. Began
using Academic Profile test.
Assessing Course Outcomes
2000-01 All departments revised their course master
syllabi in half their courses to ensure that
• course objectives are stated as assessable learning
outcomes in behavioral terms:
("After successfully completing this course, students
will be able to . . .")
• Assignments, projects, and test questions addressed
learning outcomes and are assessed by criteria
Revised master syllabi were reviewed by the faculty
Academic Outcomes Assessment Committee (AOAC).
2001-02 All departments did the same for the remaining
half of their courses.
Department Course
Assessment Plans
2002-03 Departments designed a five-year schedule for
assessing priority courses and designed a threesemester plan for the first course to be assessed.
Departments’ assessment plans have three components:
– A process to ensure that all instructors, including adjunct
faculty, are assessing all the course outcomes
– A systematic, valid assessment of at least 60% of the
course outcomes by assignments, projects, and/or tests
given in all sections of the course or a representative ¼
sample in large multi-section courses
– An analysis of the assessment results and a discussion
by the faculty of how to improve student learning
The Year of Critical
Thinking
2004 The year of critical
thinking is launched
Course assessment plans must
now include an assessment
of higher order thinking
outcomes
Where Are We Now?
2005 - until the end of time
Departments continue their schedule of
assessing priority courses, revisiting
previous courses as appropriate.
As of fall 2005:
• 434 course syllabi were rewritten with assessable outcomes
and approved by the AOAC.
• 58 course assessments were finished. All departments have
said that some component of the assessment process was
useful in improving the course.
• 46 course assessments are in progress.
• Proposed new courses must include higher order thinking
among their outcomes and design ways of assessing them.
Principles Guiding the Development
of Outcomes Assessment
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The primary purpose of assessment is to
provide valid and reliable data to improve
student learning.
Faculty design and carry out the
assessment process.
Assessment is based on courseembedded tests and assignments,
although additional measures may be
used.
Assessment is not linked in any way to
evaluating individual faculty members.
Assessment results are analyzed each
semester by department faculty to improve
student learning.
Assessment at PGCC is an evolving
process, improving each year.
Challenges We Face(d)
1. Syllabi listed objectives as topics to
cover; faculty didn't know how to
write assessable outcomes.
2. Some courses listed only factual
recall outcomes, no higher order
thinking.
3. "Course outcomes assessment is
too much work and not worth the
effort."
4. Faculty knew how to do only class
assessment, and had no experience
with course assessment.
Challenges We Face(d)
- Continued
5. Test items did not match the
outcomes on the syllabus.
6. Test items asked for only factual
recall, not higher order thinking.
7. Faculty did a poor job of assessment:
essays written on different topics
under different conditions; faculty
scoring essays did not norm
themselves.
8. “Common assessment is a violation of
individual academic freedom.”
Inevitable Tensions in the
Outcomes Assessment Process
Educational
research data
vs.
Assessment for
accountability vs.
Action research
data
Primacy of the
assessment
process vs.
Primacy of
instructor autonomy
Primacy of the
assessment
process vs.
Need for faculty
cooperation and
acceptance
Assessment for
improvement of
student learning
Workshops to Assist
Faculty
1999 Virginia Anderson workshop for department chairs
and 60-70 faculty; 20 copies of Walvoord and
Anderson, Effective Grading (1998) purchased.
2000-present Workshops by various faculty members
every semester on some aspect of assessment or
teaching thinking during fall and spring kick-off
week before classes start.
2003 Two-day workshop for chairs and faculty in May on
how to conduct a course assessment. PGCC
Assessment handbook prepared; available online.
2005 Workshop on designing rubrics to assess higher
order thinking.
Audio conference by Linda Suskie on teaching and
assessing thinking skills.