December 10, 2015
Volume 4, Issue 4
The Assessable Roo
Co-Editors
A UMKC Outcomes Assessment Newsletter
Measuring Student Engagement:
to Speak at FaCET Spring Conference
Photo Courtesy of
www.sc.edu
Jillian Kinzie
Courtesy of www1.taskstream.com
practices and the extent to which
students engage in these practices.
The survey was introduced in
1998 as a new approach to acquiring important data on the quality
of collegiate education.
NSSE collects data annually
through its survey and then generates The College Student Report.
From the data, many reports can
be generated by participating four
-year colleges and universities
that offer comparisons between
their students’ responses to experiences and those of their institutional peers.
Information contained in the reports include current student en-
Ruth E. Cain, Director of
Assessment
Dan Stroud, Graduate Assistant for Assessment
Contributors
NSSE Institute Associate Director
On January 12, the Spring
2016 FaCET Conference
will kick off with a very
special guest speaker. Dr.
Jillian Kinzie, Associate
Director of the National
Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Institute, will be on hand to
speak about this instrument. Dr. Kinzie received
her PhD in higher education, with a minor in
women’s studies, from
Indiana University. Her
research interests include
college choice, first year
student development, and
teaching and learning. The
NSSE survey will be given at UMKC in the spring
and Dr. Kinzie will prepare university faculty and
administrators for what
lies ahead. When browsing the NSSE website at
www.nsse.indiana.edu/
html/about.cfm, one learns
that student engagement
includes two important
components that make up
the quality of a student’s
collegiate experience.
The survey measures the
extent to which institutions support high impact
UMKC
gagement trends, as well as
other topical research of importance in a given year. The
focus for the FaCET conference is understanding the
NSSE data and how to use
these data to enhance learning, increase student engagement, and improve undergraduate education. Specifically, the focus will include
differences in student engagement by gender, raceethnicity, and first generation
college status. Additionally,
knowing how to assess the
impact of programs aimed at
improving student success,
such as learning communities, undergraduate research,
and service learning, will be
discussed.
This conference is free and
open to all faculty and graduate teaching students. To ensure there are sufficient
lunches, please register by
January 5, 2016. RSVPs can
be sent to FaCET@umkc.edu
or register online at https://
net3.umkc.edu/intapps/
workshops/
workshopDetail.aspx?id=140.
~ Dan Stroud
Jennifer Friend, Assistant
Dean , School of Graduate
Studies, Associate Professor.
Lara U. Mabry, Instructional
Designer, UMKC Online.
Annie Wofford, Admissions
Coordinator, School of Medicine, Intern for Assessment.
Inside this issue:
FaCET Conference
1
Blackboard Analytics
2-3
Graduate Writing
4-5
About Campus
6
Intern Reflections
6-7
Page 2
Using Analytics to Help Shape Student Learning
As a professor, it is easy to make
assumptions about student learning.
If students have no questions on a
topic, then that means no questions….right? Move to teaching
online and assumptions on student
learning can be compounded due
to the inability to view cues of students’ comprehension or confusion
typically observed in a face-to-face
class. However, with powerful tools
such as learning analytics now available, student experiences can be
assessed via masses of data captured in the online environment.
Learning analytics can be used to
forecast student success by examining how and what students learn.
With more course resources, assessments, and tools moving online, the
amount of data available about the
student interactions with these materials provides opportunities to
design, analyze, and deliver content
that can be used to make predictions about course and program
effectiveness. For instance, the information collected using learning
analytics tools can be compared to
assess achievement of specific
benchmarks set within the program
and/or school.
Analytics can reveal data and information about usage, trends, and
patterns of learning among courses
and programs. This information can
be extremely useful to institutions
of higher education as they make
increasing demands on programs
and courses to evaluate student
learning and retention rates. Historically, student course evaluations
have provided data and information
at the end of the semester to improve course design. These evaluations are sometimes not received by
the instructor until weeks to months
after the semester ends, leaving
limited to no time for improvement
before the next course offering.
Figure 1. Graphs from the Course At-A-Glance Learn Report.
Learning analytics data, however, can
be collected immediately throughout
the semester and can help to identify
students who may be struggling in the
course. The analytics reports can offer
views into how participants are using
the course content in addition to the
students’ levels of participation. Simply stated, analytics provides important
data to help “see” students in the
online classroom, whether they are
across campus, across town, or across
the nation.
The data gathered from analytics tools
can play a significant role in shaping
effective teaching. Faculty are able to
better observe what students are doing
within the online environment, and
what their lectures and course content
are accomplishing in terms of learning
outcomes. In addition, using some of
the data reported, faculty and staff can
provide real-time assistance to keep
students on trajectory and in line for
course, and ultimately, degree completion.
UMKC is entering the final stages in the
implementation process for Blackboard
Analytics for LearnTM. This analytics tool
has the potential to greatly improve access to data related to teaching and
learning practices, which can ultimately
result in better monitoring and evaluation
of learning outcomes for students.
Blackboard Analytics for Learn merges
extensive data from Blackboard Learn
with student and course attributes from
Pathway to offer self-service reporting
options, dashboards, and trend analyses
to gain insight into user activity, student
performance, and course design.
When using Blackboard Analytics for
Learn, faculty can view four Learn Reports integrated directly into courses on
Blackboard: Course At-a-Glance (Figure
1), Activity and Grade Scatter Plot, Activity Matrix, and Course Submission Summary. If allowed by the instructor, students can also monitor their progress and
Continued on Page 3
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Volume 4 Issue 4
Analytics (Continued from Page 2)
easily compare their performance
to other members of the class
using these reports. Advanced
tools are also available through
the Pyramid Analytics platform
including sophisticated reporting,
enhanced visualizations, and interactive dashboards. The reports
show patterns of student interactions and activity useful for making decisions about course design
improvements, learner workload
management, and student retention strategies. Using these reports, students and faculty can
track how frequently students log
into a course on Blackboard, how
much time they spend there, and
how often they engage with the
content of the course. This information is helpful for instructors,
staff, and leadership as they strive
to better understand and improve
academic outcomes.
The power of Blackboard Analytics
is made apparent when people
need quick and easy, but meaningful access to summary data.
For example, an academic program may want to see the different types of assessments included
within courses, or perhaps look at
trends across years, or even drill
down to specializations within the
program. Or, perhaps, a professor
may want to use the information
to better understand the needs of
individual students by finding a
correlation between how often
students log into the Blackboard
course and how successful the
student is within the course using
the Activity and Grade Scatter Plot
(Figure 2).
Once Blackboard Analytics has
been piloted and implemented
university-wide, the next step is to
incorporate institutional, school,
and/or departmental goals direct-
ly into Blackboard. After these learning outcomes are placed into Blackboard, faculty will be able to align
these criteria with their assignments
and course content to easily gather
information for assessment and
benchmarking purposes. The potential
of learning analytics is staggering on
assessing the way students learn. If
you are interested in learning more
about the power of analytics, Dr. John
Whitmer of Blackboard Inc. and Dr. Molly
Mead and Lara Mabry of UMKC Online
will be presenting on the opportunities of
Blackboard Analytics for Learn at the
UMKC Online conference scheduled for
January 11, 2016. In addition, faculty
trainings will be offered starting in February 2016.
~ Lara U. Mabry
Figure 2. The Course Access & Grade Plot available as one of the Learn reports.
Don’t Forget to Register for the January eLearning
Conference, Monday, January 11, 2016.
Dr. John Whitmer will present on “Accelerating
the Shift: eLearning Innovations for the Digital
Age.”
Register online at http://online.umkc.edu/registration-is-open-for-januaryelearning-conference/
Page 4
UMKC’s Graduate Writing Initiative:
Evaluating the First Year
The UMKC School of Graduate
Studies, University Libraries, and the
UMKC Writing Studio are partnering to implement a Graduate Writing
Initiative to pr ovide r esour ces
such as writing workshops and
online tutorials for the more than
5,400 graduate students enrolled in
our degree and certificate programs.
As reported in the June 2014 issue of
The Assessable Roo, survey results
from more than 500 graduate students and 140 faculty members
demonstrated that there was a need
for increased graduate writing support on campus. Using the survey
findings, student and faculty focus
groups further explored ways to enhance graduate student writing.
The Graduate Writing Initiative began in Spring 2015 with the creation
of the Graduate Writing Advisory
Committee (GWAC). The GWAC
holds monthly meetings and is comprised of diverse student and faculty
representatives from graduate programs, the School of Graduate Studies, University Libraries, and the
UMKC Writing Studio. The purpose
of the GWAC is to plan, implement,
and evaluate campus-wide activities
associated with the Graduate Writing
Initiative. Here are four of the activities initiated during the first year,
along with program evaluation results discussed at the most recent
GWAC meeting:
A new Graduate Writing Resources
web page is available on the School
of Graduate Studies (SGS) website
that provides links to online and
campus-based graduate writing resources and development opportunities. Evaluation of this new resource
using Google Analytics showed that
this web page receives approximately 150 page views per month, and
79% of these views are users who
start with the Writing page, then exit the
SGS website. A Blackboard organization site, titled Writing Resources for
Graduate Students, was cr eated with
access for all UMKC graduate students
and graduate faculty members. After
logging in to Blackboard, this site appears in “My Organizations.” (See
screen image of Blackboard Writing
Resources)
The GWAC is continually adding new
content to the Blackboard site, which
includes links to writing resources and
exemplars, video tutorials, content from
writing workshops, and more. If you
have suggestions for the Blackboard
site, please send your ideas via email to
umkcsgs@umkc.edu.
Blackboard Analytics provided data to
examine usage of the site, which had
more than 2,000 unique graduate student
users and approximately 100 graduate
faculty users during the Summer and
Fall 2015 semesters. Some of the most
commonly accessed content included
resources related to citation, attribution,
and avoiding plagiarism, and Pivot research funding opportunities available
for UMKC researchers.
Writing Workshops offer ed thr oughout the Fall 2015 semester provided
opportunities for graduate students to
engage with a variety of facilitators on
topics such as Formatting Theses and
Dissertations, Writing for the Humanities / Sciences, Proofreading Tips and
Techniques, and Grant Writing. Attendance at each of the workshops ranged
from approximately 5 to 50 students.
Students were asked to complete an
Evaluation Form after each workshop,
and the overall results on three Likert
scale questions demonstrated that students learned new information that was
useful to them as graduate students. Students’ open-ended responses shared a
desire for more interaction between participants, opportunities to receive feed-
back on their writing, disciplinespecific writing workshops, and
many suggestions for future writing
workshop topics. A Spring 2016
calendar of Graduate Writing Initiative Workshops will be available on
the SGS website in January, and
graduate students and faculty advisors will receive emails throughout
the semester regarding upcoming
writing workshop opportunities. The
GWAC also plans to expand opportunities for students to participate in
workshops online through Blackboard Collaborate, and to archive
writing workshops on the Blackboard Writing Resources organization site.
Several
Online Tutorials wer e cr eated for
the SGS YouTube Channel, including a series of short videos by Dean
Denis Medeiros titled A voiding Plagiarism and a two-part video series
on Thesis and Dissertation Formatting by Nancy Hoover. These videos
have had more than 200 views, and
plans are in place to add to the library of short video tutorials. These
Graduate Writing Initiative activities
will continue throughout 2016, in
addition to new resources to support
excellence in graduate student writing. The School of Graduate Studies
and Writing Studio plan to hire a
part-time Graduate Writing Specialist to suppor t UMKC’s graduate
writing community through both
facilitating programming and working directly with graduate students.
The GWAC will help to create and
disseminate to program coordinators
and graduate faculty advisors a
guide that can be used for Orientation to UMKC Writing Resources
on campus and online. The creation
of on-campus and online Writing
Groups will pr ovide oppor tunities
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Volume 4, Issue 4
Writing Initiative (Continued from Page 4)
Blackboard organization site: Writing Resources for Graduate Students
for peer writing interaction and
feedback. And last but not least,
Designated Graduate Student
Writing Workstations with
specialized software will be
available through online reservation at the Writing Studio in the
Atterbury Student Success Cen-
ter starting in the Spring 2016 semester.
If you would like to participate in any
of the Graduate Writing Initiative activities, please contact Dr. Jennifer Friend,
Assistant Dean in the School of
Graduate Studies, at friendji@umkc.edu
or 816-235-1196.
~ Jennifer Friend
Assistant Dean, School of
Graduate Studies
UMKC 3-MINUTE THESIS COMPETITION
FEBRUARY 9, 2016 - 1 PM—5 PM
LOCATION: 4TH FLOOR , STUDENT UNION
Support our Master’s and Doctoral Students Sharing Their Research!
Additional information is available in the U Succeed Article at: http://
info.umkc.edu/usucceed/?s=3-minute+thesis&x=0&y=0.
Assessment Down Under
About Campus
As the semester quickly draws to a
close, I would like to express my appreciation for all the good work that
is occurring in the assessment of student learning in academic units and
student affairs services and programs
across UMKC. Special thanks and
recognition to the many Assessment
Coordinators, Program Directors,
Department Chairs, and other faculty
who submitted detailed assessment
reports highlighting both areas in
which students are achieving the
identified learning outcomes at expected levels and areas in which programmatic alterations are planned to
enhance student learning. While
some programs still struggle to implement effective assessment of student
learning, many others are engaging in
meaningful work and in using assessment of student learning to support
and enhance student success. I continue to be impressed by the level of
commitment to and good practices in
assessment that are evident in a number of units across the institution.
The members of the University
Assessment Committee deserve
special recognition for the countless hours they have devoted to
thoughtfully reviewing the 2014-15
assessment reports and providing
insightful, formative feedback to
assist programs to improve assessment methods and the use of assessment results to enhance teaching and learning. The UAC evaluations will be sent to Deans, Department Chairs, Program Directors, and Assessment Coordinators
in early January. Caitlin Horsmon,
the FaCET Faculty Fellow for Assessment, and I will schedule meetings with departments and programs to discuss the UAC feedback
and suggestions for revising assessment methods.
We extend our congratulations to
Ms. Annie Wofford, who will receive her MA in Higher Education
this semester. Annie has served as
an intern in the Assessment Office
since June. She has made a number
of contributions to the work of the office
and leaves with an enthusiasm for continuing work in assessment. (Read Annie’s reflections on her experience in her
article below and on page 7.) We have
enjoyed working with Annie and wish
her well in her future endeavors.
We are also bidding adieu to Dr. Lynda
Plamann, who will retire from UMKC in
January. In addition to her many responsibilities as a faculty member and associate dean in the School of Biological Sciences, Lynda has worked tirelessly to
support the success of students in all
units through her contributions to the
work of the University Assessment Committee and her role as the General Education Program Coordinator. I have greatly
appreciated Lynda’s thoughtfulness and
counsel in our work together on the UAC
and on assessment of the General Education Core. All the best to Lynda and
Mike as they begin their next adventures!
To all, happy holidays and best wishes
for the new year from Ruth and Dan!
~ Ruth Cain
Reflections of an Assessment Intern
I felt out of my element but full
of excitement. It was normal first
day jitters, but in a whole new
environment. I walked into Academic Affairs on a warm June
morning for the start of my internship, and I felt as though I
was starting my first day at
UMKC all over again (mind you,
I started working here 2 ½ years
ago). Dr. Ruth Cain and I had already chatted about how assessment might intersect with my interest in student affairs practices, and
I was ready to engulf myself in a
different perspective of the university.
In my day-to-day life working at
UMKC, I am the Admissions Coordinator for the Graduate Pro-
grams at the School of Medicine. While
completing my Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration, I had the
opportunity to choose an office for my
internship as a culminating learning
experience. The way I see it, internships and capstones are opportunities
for growth (and also a form of direct
Continued on Page 7
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Reflections on Assessment (Continued from Page 6)
assessment, as I learned). I wanted to
gain experience in an area completely
different from what I knew and also in
an area that would give me exposure to
the “ins-and-outs” of working with a
plethora of departments; I wanted to
assist with big-picture items for these
departments, as I hope my career unfolds into one where I am able to have
influence on larger institutional tasks.
The Office of Assessment proved to be
exactly what I needed.
Being that the Office of Assessment is
a small but mighty operation, I was
able to get my feet wet quickly and
jump into the trenches. I have had such
a wide array of experiences in this
office, and all of them have been beneficial for different reasons. With a preexisting interest in “high-impact” practices engaging students outside of the
classroom, I was able to translate this
into research and discussion of outcomes related to community engagement and facilitation of focus groups
for two campus departments to use as
indirect assessment of their performance and success. But, although the
intersection between student affairs
and assessment was my primary objective coming into this experience, I
have gotten so much more than I bargained for.
Student success (which, in the end,
should be the reason all of us work in
the university environment) can be
attributed to innumerable things in the
college environment: academics, activities, mentorships, and resources don’t
even cover the top layer. In expanding
my knowledge and absorbing as much
information as possible about these
areas, I also found myself involved in
tasks such as compiling and reviewing
Annie Wofford
Assessment Intern
program assessment materials inputted to the WeaveOnline system
this fall, attending a meeting regarding the success metrics of Discourse
as a general education core curriculum component, reviewing the ETS
Proficiency Profile report, and attending a session for rubric norming.
Coming from the small section of
UMKC that I see every day on Hospital Hill to these university-wide re-
search and policy discussions was
so eye-opening and rewarding. I feel
more prepared to look at programs
(student or academic affairs related)
with a strategic view, more comfortable looking at nationwide trends
and data, and more prepared to step
into whatever role I serve next in an
impactful way.
If you or anyone you know
(students, staff, etc.) may be interested in learning more about educational data, goals and outcomes, or
evaluation processes, please encourage them to contact Ruth Cain about
having a role in the Office of Assessment. This office is helping to
build a stronger culture of accountability and success at UMKC, and it
was incredible to be a small part of
this process.
A HUGE thanks to Ruth and Dan
Stroud, Graduate Assistant for Assessment, for being fantastic mentors for me during this experience
and allowing me to pick your brains
and truly learn from my time in the
office.
~ Annie Wofford
If you have any students in your
program who might be interested
in an internship in assessment as
part of their program of study,
have them contact Ruth Cain at
ext. 6084 or through email at
cainre@umkc.edu.