Collaborative Assessment:
A Strategy to Relate, Reflect,
and React
Leah Barrett, Assistant Vice President, Student Affairs
Matt Barone, Assistant Director, Campus Life
Josh Fegley, Assistant Director, Health Promotion & Prevention Services
Sara Kelly, Assistant Director, Residential Life/Learning Communities
Session Outcomes
What do you hope to learn today?
 Participants will identify elements that contribute to the development
and maintenance of a collaborative “culture of assessment.”
 Participants will describe a model for “mapping” student learning
within individual departments and throughout a division, including the
development of a divisional assessment team.
 Participants will describe the cycle of assessment and how results are
used to enhance student learning and development.
A Culture of Evidence
Defining a Culture of Evidence
“A culture wherein indicators of performance are
regularly developed and data collected to inform
decision-making, planning, and improvement.”
National Higher Education Benchmarking Institute
How do you know you are
working within a Culture of
Evidence?
A Culture of Evidence
Defining a Evidence
Institutional
Commitment
Stakeholder
Involvement
Focus on
Student
Success
Continuous
Process
Cumulative
&
Collaborative
“Closing
the Loop”
Culture
of
Evidence
A Culture of Evidence
Characteristics of Good Evidence
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Relevant
Verifiable
Representative
Cumulative
Actionable
Collaborative!
A Culture of Evidence
Principles of Good Assessment (Astin & Banta)
• The assessment of student learning begins with
educational values
• Assessment is most effective when it reflects an
understanding of learning as multidimensional,
integrated, and occurring over time.
A Culture of Evidence
Student Learning
Social Context
Academic
Context
STUDENT
Behavior
Meaning Making
Cognition/Emotion
INTEGRATED
OUTCOMES
Construction of knowledge
Construction of meaning
Construction of self in society
Institutional
Context
Interconnectedness of Student Learning
Learning Reconsidered, 2004
A Culture of Evidence
Principles of Good Assessment (Astin & Banta)
 Assessment works best when the programs it
seeks to improve have clearly stated purposes.
 Assessment requires attention to outcomes but
also and equally to the experiences that lead to
those outcomes.
 Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not
episodic.
A Culture of Evidence
Principles of Good Assessment (Astin & Banta)
 Assessment fosters wider improvement when representatives from
across the educational community are involved.
 Assessment makes a difference when it begins with issues of use
and illuminates questions that people really care about.
 Assessment is most likely to lead to improvement when it is part of
a larger set of conditions that promote change.
 Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students
and to the public.
A Culture of Evidence
Defining a Evidence
Institutional
Commitment
Stakeholder
Involvement
Focus on
Student
Success
Continuous
Process
Cumulative
&
Collaborative
“Closing
the Loop”
Culture
of
Evidence
Brockport’s Assessment Revolution
• 2007
– VPSA – What are we doing with assessment?
• 2009
– First Workshop on SLOs
– 1st version of EAT
– Learning Reconsidered
• 2010 - 2012
– 2nd version of EAT & Steering Committee
Creating Buy-In
• Leadership from the top
• Attend national conferences
– NASPA Assessment & Persistence Conference
– Assessment Institute
• Read, attend workshops, discuss & repeat
• Involvement by each department
• Accountability – performance planning
Foundational Structure
Enrollment Management & Student Affairs Assessment Team
– Guiding literature
• Learning Reconsidered
• Assessment Reconsidered
• Student Success in College by Kuh
• Various scholarly articles
– Structure & Functions
• Professional Development & Training
• Outreach
• Marketing & Communication
• Data Analysis
• TK20
Engaging Every Department
• Positively persistent approach to meaningful, inclusive assessment
• A journey, not a destination
• Programmatic and learning outcomes process
• Improvement oriented approach
• EMSA Assessment Website
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Strategic plan example
Learning outcomes for different departments and programs
Briefing Book
Closing the loop
Professional development schedule
Departmental Assessment
Programs
• Campus Life
• Health Promotions/Prevention Services
• Residential Life/Learning Communities
A cycle of assessment
Adapted from The Center for Assessment and Research
Studies at James Madison University.
Reflect and React
• What: Explain the outcomes of the program and the
ways in which you collected the data.
• So What: Discuss results with your team to determine
what the data is telling you.
• Now What: Explain how you will use this
information in the future.
• Closing the Loop Documents
Lessons Learned &
Accomplishments
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EAT Website
Training and development is continuous
Programmatic learning outcomes
Departmental learning outcomes
Trained students in focus group facilitation
Shared data across the division
Administered more surveys, documented more observations,
analyzed more results
Stopped using some survey tools
Closing the loop documents
Middle States Accreditation
Proposals for conferences…telling our story
Discussion
• Where are you in your process?
• What challenges exist?
• Who is involved in your program/assessment
processes for your division/department?
• What assessment tools do you use?
• How do you use and share assessment data?
• Anything you’d like to discuss!
Wicked Awesome Ideas!
• How will what you have learned during this session
contribute to your personal development, professional
development, or both?
• As a result of your attendance at this educational
session, what question(s) do you have that is important
for the profession to further examine?
• Please identify one “wicked awesome idea” that you will
take with you and try to implement immediately in your
jobs or to further discuss with colleagues
at your home institution.
Questions/Comments
Leah Barrett, lbarrett@brockport.edu
Matt Barone, mbarone@brockport.edu
Josh Fegley, jfegley@brockport.edu
Sara Kelly, skelly@brockport.edu
Upcoming Opportunities
• Western New York Enrollment
Management & Student Affairs
Assessment Consortium, June 18th at
Rochester Institute of Technology
• NASPA Assessment & Persistence
Conference, June 7-9 in Tampa
• Assessment Institute in Indianapolis
October 28 - 30, 2012