Campus Assessment Network
Notes from meeting of
February 23, 2007
Announcements
Franklin shared a paper from NASPA (National Association of Student Personnel
Administrators) entitled Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-Wide Focus on the Student
Experience. The paper advocates for a holistic approach to education as a transformative
experience, taking a new look at various aspects of the student experience as inseparable
from the whole. It emphasizes the role of student affairs as a partner in the broader
campus curriculum and how student affairs affects student outcomes. A link to the paper
is available at http://www.naspa.org/membership/leader_ex_pdf/lr_long.pdf . Further
resources for implementing these recommendations are available in Learning
Reconsidered 2: Implementing a Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience,
available for purchase at http://207.97.193.139/index.asp?pageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=23
Franklin also shared that a website is now available that gives information about
upcoming assessment conferences; it can be viewed at http://www.assessmentconferences.com .
Douglass announced that Dr. Stephen Zerwas will return on March 23rd and present his
workshop Looking at Learning Objectively, which focuses on developing student learning
objectives at the course and program level. The workshop is free to all faculty and staff.
Further information and online registration is available on the Faculty Development and
Instructional Design Center website at http://www.facdev.niu.edu/facdev/programs/03232007.shtml . The
registration deadline is March 9th. Panel members are invited to join Dr. Zerwas for lunch
on March 22nd, if you are interested please contact Carolinda Douglass at cdoug@niu.edu .
Presentation of Exit Surveys Administered by UOTC
Carrie Zack from the University Office of Teacher Certification presented on the
implementation of exit surveys for program assessment.
The design of their survey was influenced by NCATE accreditation requirements for
assessment data in three specific areas (knowledge, skills, and dispositions), and by
assessing the outcomes for key areas of the programs own conceptual framework
(knowledge, practice, reflection).
The survey is administered at the end of the student teaching semester prior to candidates
seeking teacher certification. Responses are collected from students (self report), NIU
supervisors, and cooperating teachers.
Questions ask how well students are prepared to teach (covers knowledge, skills,
practice, reflection), and also are based on the Illinois Teaching and Learning Standards.
The survey was administered online, using Survey Monkey ( www.surveymonkey.com )
to create and manage the survey. It is a subscription service that allows flexibility in
appearance, question type (variety of multiple choice, rating, open ended, etc.), and
allows for skip patterns and division into separate pages, as well as an option to disallow
multiple responses from a single computer. A different survey version was created for
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each respondent type.
Zack reports that administering the survey was easy. The site collects responses and
results can be tallied and displayed in graphs on the site, or data can be downloaded into
Excel.
The survey has indicated overall positive results for the program, but an assessment of
the areas rated comparatively lower has helped programs to focus on specific areas for
program improvement. Some examples of how different teaching programs used the
survey results to identify areas for improvement and then implemented changes are:
-adding more emphasis on management & discipline strategies in courses and clinicals
-more focus on lesson planning
-developing new activities in the areas of technology and working with diverse students
-implementing a portfolio system to focus on areas of weakness
-developing an interdisciplinary course on reading with the Literacy Department
If you would like to view the presentation handouts or survey questions please contact
Karyn Higgs at 753-8659 or email at khiggs@niu.edu .
The fourth meeting of the Campus Assessment Network closed at 12:50 pm. The next
meeting will be planned for April 2007.
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