Closing the Loop

This diagram came from Arizona State's assessment website
But, I could have made it myself. You don't have to look very far to realize that colleges and universities across the nation are talking about assessment.

By next Monday each program administrator and I will have reviewed program assessment documents, the ubiquitous ABC forms, for all the programs (22) in Arts and Sciences. As a result of our SACS team's visit on September 11, we are doing some fine tuning to our report and the supporting materials.

At the moment we are tightening our outcomes and the measures we have identified to evaluate them. We are clarifying the language. We are making sure that every measure listed on a C form has a criterion for success. We want to make sure that we know how to determine whether a student has missed, met, or exceeded expectations.

Is this closing the loop? Not yet. As the diagram at the top so clearly demonstrates, we will not close the loop until May when we look back at the data we collected, analyze it, recommend changes based on our analyses, and make the changes. So, we are almost an entire year away from closing the loop.

The same process is happening in the Core Curriculum. Very soon there will be a meeting of all faculty teaching in the Core. The assessment process will be the centerpiece of the meeting. We will show what needs to be collected and what sort of analysis should take place. The conclusions reached in May 2010 will impact content, form policies, and dictate pedagogies for the next academic year.

Assessment is neither meatloaf nor moonbeams--neither comforting nor visionary. However, there can be great satisfaction in doing it well. Embedded in the process is freedom. Knowing the truth from the data we collect gives us the impetus to chart our course for the future. We are actors not victims.

The School of Arts and Sciences has really embraced assessment. We are life-long learners, and we are learning the necessary techniques and entering the discourse community of institutional effectiveness. I have contended all along that anyone who would teach well does assessment through every semester and in every planning cycle. We teachers are always thinking about what worked in a particular class and why. And, furthermore, we make changes in content, methodology, and delivery all the time. We close the loop.