Assurance of Student Learning Future

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Follow up/Future Assessment

As we work hard to improve our assessment practices and make them more meaningful and effective, it’s important each program craft a plan for the following year’s assessment – this process assists in “closing the loop.”  You made a plan for how you’ll improve achievement of the SLOs as part of the report (Actions/Closing the Loop), but you also need to explain, based on the current data, how you might shift your assessment practice the following year. For example, you may decide to work on the same learning outcome, but collect a more appropriate artifact.  Or, you may need to shift to a different learning outcome because you’ve exceeded your target.  Or, you might see the need to reconstruct your curriculum map. Or, you’ve found that the sequencing of classes might need to be adjusted. Whatever you plan is, provide a narrative, in future tense, that indicates how you will approach future assessments.

In addition, a good assessment plan should be detailed before the artifacts are collected, so you should include information like the following:

• A timeline for follow-up
• Course or other source for collecting artifact/data for outcome(s)
• Timeline for collecting data/artifacts
• Timeline for Analyzing
• Timeline for submission of Assessment
• Individual(s) responsible for ensuring assessment occurs
  
  

Note: Record Keeping

It’s important that programs keep good records of the annual processes—artifacts, rubrics, scoring sheets, and minutes of meetings should be preserved in a central location.  Some departments have created Blackboard spaces for this purpose, others have used shared drives, and others have central repositories of paper files.  Whatever you select, you may need to access your records quickly when SACSCOC makes it’s visit.

Certificates

One of the issues SACSCOC expressed concerns about on their last visit was a slim assessment of certificate programs.  Consequently, it’s very important that programs develop clear SLOs for their programs and follow the same basic practices as for a major or graduate program. Departments will not need to assess minors.