2012 State Assessment Meeting - Valencia College, June 7 and 8
Attendee Synopsis
Attended: Jesse Coraggio, Daniel Gardner, Cynthia Grey, Carla Rossiter, Janice Thiel, Maggie Tymms,
Carol Weideman
The Role of Professional Development (especially Faculty Development) in program assessment by
Steven Sheeley, Vice President SACS-COC.
Key take away: Do not overlook the value of faculty professional judgment in the assessment of
the teaching learning process. Posed the question, “if you are the assessments person, are you checking
with faculty as to why they are assessing as they are and asking for feedback on the quantifiable
data….looking for reasons ‘why’? ” There is a perceived notion that quality of curriculum + quality of
instruction = good student learning. This is not necessarily quantifiable but is accepted, supports the
statement of including faculty professional judgment in the assessment process. Someone on campus
needs to listen to faculty to identify problems and work to remedy. How do you capture the well of data
that lies in your faculty’s professional judgment? Experience counts; you can identify a problem with
student success based upon your experience. Get faculty on board to look at the data. Do not just
inundate with numbers, provide trends. Ask faculty what their experience tells them might be a reason
for the trend and based upon their experience, is there a solution. Ask faculty what the most important
areas to look at when trends are identified. There should be a partnership between quantitative and
qualitative data. We need to move away from mechanizing our assessments. Include faculty in
assessment evaluation of data and include their professional judgment. Use focus groups as part of
qualitative research.
Assessment should have a linear quality:
1. Gather appropriate data (observable).
2. Evaluate data for importance (not just for validity and reliability)
Fallacy: Assessors claim that the faculty’s professional judgment is not value unless using
something quantifiable, i.e. test assessment. Faculty observations of student assessments are
valid, i.e. student papers over time).
Set appropriate standards for student achievement; tell students how we will be grading them.
Faculty and college should made decision on content presented in the classroom.
Maybe there should be a change in the process, measure student achievement and change our
behaviors…looking ‘I’ (or the institution) can do to change the outcome.
Assessment process is trial and error. Course grades do not usually provide data you can act upon, but
faculty observations and professional judgment does.
Assessment should be a sustained effort. Do not get bogged down in the process, instead of RESULTS.
Misconception: If there is a problem with the product, it must be the process. If every student were the
same, then we could always tweak the process.
Assessments should not be done just for SACS. Course level may be important but SACS is looking for
program outcomes. Do not measure every course level outcome every year. Program level outcomes are
vital signs and need to be monitored continually.
FAILURE TO LAUNCH
1.
2.
3.
4.
Constantly returning to process and assessment of instruction for problem solving
Statement, ‘no further action required.’
Program survival rather than program improvement.
Focus on ‘it’s all about stats’ but not including ‘but what does it mean.’
5. Lake Wobegone syndrome - the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the
children are above average. It is okay to trust professional judgment. Stats can be helpful
but can mask the true picture.
6. Concept that no one can describe a successful student – A description of the successful student
should precede the curriculum.
7. Just ignore it and it will go away.
8. Don’t gather data just for the sake of collecting data. Data needs to be used.
9. Quality assurance, not assessments.
Recent Changes in SACS Standards, Interpretations, and the Resource Manual by Steven Sheeley, Vice
President SACS-COC.
Resource Manual: Last update was May 2012. SACS will be updating the manually
continually. There was a failure by SACS in the past to update the manual.
2.7.3.1 General Education: They will be looking at General education even if offsite
committee said the college was in compliance. They will be reviewing if your public document
offers the students a reasonable expectation of understanding your general education
requirements. If the committee cannot understand the public document, your students cannot
understand it. General education requirements vary by state. Be sure that the committee knows
what the requirements are in your state because no one on the committee will be from Florida.
Provide them with this information. General Education courses cannot be program based , i.e.
nursing specific general education classes or Algebra Everyone on campus must be able to
take the course and for the course material to be general enough for every student to be able
to make use of that knowledge outside the classroom (general knowledge everyone should
have) for Engineers. Question that has not been answered is if a specific class is open to all, will
it still be acceptable. The general thought at the moment is to avoid this. SACS’s concern is
trying to determine how much is the course content being influenced by the specific program
General Education classes cannot be completely skills based. For instance, if you
require 6 hours of English, 3 hours can be skills based (i.e. Comp. I) but you cannot require Comp
II (skills based) for the remaining 3 hours. You must offer something think Lit I.
SACS sets the minimum requirements. Florida sets 30 as the max.
Policies and Procedures: Demonstrate how you administer ALL policies and
procedures. Preamble applies across the board all the time.
QEP: Must be focused on student learning. You must make the connection. Must have
student learning outcomes associated with the QEP. What is going to be enhanced?
GENERAL STATEMENTS: Anything written in the future tense will already place us out of
compliance. SACS is looking for the constant move forward but you also need to reflect. A
continuous cycle must be presented.
Parts I and II Intensive Workshop on Developing and Assessing Program Learning Outcomes by Wendi
Dew and Laura Blasi
Key take away: (Janice) Valencia employs a professional development model when it comes to
involving faculty in program outcome assessment. This session was conducted in partnership with their
lead faculty development person and assessment person. They recognize that not all faculty are
motivated by college-wide goals like improving graduation rates. Valencia has had better success
working with faculty at the course level to employ basic instructional design principles such as
determining learning objectives, designing learning activities, and aligning assessment strategies. They
credit their success to institutional commitment and critical partnerships.
http://valenciacollege.edu/instassess/