June 4, 2014
TO:
FROM:
RE:
Department chairs and program directors
Marci Sortor and the Curriculum Committee
Program-Level Assessment Action Projects in 2014-15
Thank you as always for the work you and your colleagues have been doing to gather evidence of
student learning in your programs over the past few years. During the 2014-15 academic year, we will
be in the fourth year of our cycle of program-level assessment activity. As you probably recall, the cycle
(recommended by the Curriculum Committee and affirmed by Dean’s Council and the Dean of the
College) sequences our program-level assessment activities as follows:
Year 1 – General Education assessment (2011-12)
Year 2 – Assessment of academic majors (2012-13)
Year 3 – Assessment of concentrations, conversations, and other academic programs (2013-14)
Year 4 – Assessment Action Projects (2014-15)
Our “action project” year is a distinctive feature of St. Olaf’s nationally-recognized assessment program.
Many institutions require assessment in every academic program every year; St. Olaf has made a
deliberate decision not to do this, in recognition of two important realities : (1) Most faculty members
work in more than one program, offering courses not only in a major, but also in a concentration, a
Conversation, or General Education. The cycle allows faculty to focus their efforts on one program at a
time. (2) Departments and programs need time to reflect on the evidence they have gathered,
synthesize it with other assessment evidence from college-wide projects, and plan and implement a
response. Without this second step, the time and energy committed to gathering the evidence in the
first place is not time well spent. The Curriculum Committee wanted to preserve time not only for
structured reflection, but for action as well.
Consequently, the goal for this Assessment Action Project year is for each academic department and
program to work on a curricular or pedagogical improvement project inspired or informed by
assessment findings. The project may involve developing or launching a new initiative, or enhancing an
initiative that is already underway. The findings may be from your own program’s assessment work,
from our campus-wide assessment of General Education, or from any institutional-level assessment
report, whether findings from a specific instrument (e.g., National Survey of Student Engagement,
Research Practices Survey, St. Olaf Learning Goals Questionnaire, Collegiate Learning Assessment, etc.)
or from a topical report synthesizing evidence from a variety of sources. Even if you choose to focus on
evidence from your own program’s assessment work, you are encouraged to consider relevant evidence
from GE and institutional-level assessment as well; IR&E can assist you in finding complementary data.
Improvement projects may address any aspect of your work with students and may be far-reaching or
more modest in scope. Your project need not be fully implemented during 2014-15; some projects may
require more than one academic year, depending on the nature and scope of the anticipated activities.
Examples of past and potential projects include:
 Developing a new required course for the major
 Revising an existing course to include an academic civic engagement component
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Integrating oral communication instruction across a sequence of courses
Extending a pedagogical practice from one course into other courses
Revising lab manuals or course handouts
Developing new instructional “scaffolding” to better prepare students for advanced work
Using “backward design” to develop or revise capstone assignments
The Office of Institutional Research can provide small grants of up to $500 to support expenses
associated with developing or implementing an Assessment Action Project. Such expenses might
include a planning retreat to discuss the data and begin developing the project, pedagogical workshops,
new curriculum materials, assessment administration fees, or other materials or activities that will help
you launch your project.
In your 2014-15 annual department/program report, you will be asked to describe briefly the action
project your department undertook and the assessment evidence you consulted in developing it. Your
final Assessment Action Project Report will be due to your Associate Dean, with a copy to ir-eoffice@stolaf.edu, in mid-October 2015. IR&E will summarize the project reports for consideration by
the Assessment Subcommittee, the Dean’s Council, and the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board.
If the 2014-15 academic year is not an optimal time frame for your department or program to undertake
or continue an improvement project, please confer with your Associate Dean.
This request for Assessment Action Projects differs from previous assessment requests to departments
and programs in two ways: first, it asks programs to describe what they actually did in response to
evidence of student learning (rather than what they plan to do); and second, it invites consideration of
evidence from General Education and institutional-level assessment projects as well as program-level
assessment. IR&E staff welcome requests for assistance or information about assessment data relevant
to your program’s interests.
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Assessment Action Project Report
Please submit to your Associate Dean and to ir-e-office@stolaf.edu by Friday, October 16, 2015
If your department/program offers more than one program of study and you undertook different
projects for each program, please submit separate reports for each program.
Type of program:
Major
Concentration
Conversation
Other
Name of program:
Report submitted by:
1. Which intended learning outcomes were the focus of your improvement project? Your project may
have focused on outcomes specific to your academic program, outcomes for one or more General
Education requirements, or one or more of the college-wide STOGoals.
2. What specific assessment findings did you consider in the process of selecting and/or designing
your improvement project? Please describe briefly what these findings suggest about student
learning in your program. The evidence may have been drawn from your own program’s
assessment work, from our campus-wide assessment of General Education, or from any
institutional-level assessment report, whether findings from a specific instrument (e.g., National
Survey of Student Engagement, Research Practices Survey, St. Olaf Learning Goals Questionnaire,
Collegiate Learning Assessment, etc.) or from a topical report synthesizing evidence from a variety
of sources.
3. What did you initiate, pilot, modify, or revamp in response to this evidence? Please describe the
action project you undertook and the goals you hoped to achieve in undertaking it.
4. What are your next steps? Please indicate where you are in the development and implementation
of your action project, describe any needs you may have, and discuss what you plan to do next in
order to realize the goals you described above. (Your “next steps” might be simply that you will
continue to offer the course, use the pedagogical strategy, require the assignment, etc.)
5. In light of your experience, what suggestions do you have for the next time departments and
programs are asked to conduct Assessment Action Projects?