Assessment at Baruch
How to create an Assessment
- Develop an assessment inventory checklist
What
assessment efforts have already been conducted or are currently
underway? Explore your current mission, goals and objectives, intended
educational outcomes that are most important to your program and
existing practices for evaluating program effectiveness.
- Determine
your outcome assessment needs
What
needs to assessed (majors, programs, writing and computer competency,
graduate programs etc.) what needs to be known about students (competency
skills, critical thinking skills, writing skills, attitudes) and
what instruments are available to measure achievement (courses grades,
standardized test scores, surveys etc). In addition, the needs assessment
should indicate who will use the data (accrediting bodies, curriculum
committees, deans and administrators), and how often the data will
be collected.
- Develop
an assessment plan
- Identify
goals - Define educational/programmatic/service goals
and objectives based on your mission. Goals are what the department/program/service
intends to accomplish for the target population. Even though
they are written in broad terms they are measurable and observable:
for example ,To prepare students to obtain prestigious professional
opportunities upon graduation from college. To prepare students
to analyze visual images in business, advertising, art, museums,
cinema and elsewhere in the business world, to assist first-year
students with instruction in writing term papers.
- Identify
objectives - They are written for each goal and indicate
in very specific terms how each goal will be reached. Your
objectives are statements of the intended outcome of your
program, course or service. An objective is what you expect
the student to know and/or be able to do after completing
the course, program, or receiving the service or what faculty
know or are able to do after professional development or training.
You may
want to specify levels or standards of achievement. For example
you may want 100% of your students to have achieved proficiency
or you may feel that 80 percent or 75 percent is more realistic.
In other cases you may just want to find out what proportion
of your students achieve at a certain level or were satisfied
with the service(s) received. There may also be more than
one objective for each goal.
- Develop
instruments for assessing each objective - there
are various kinds of instruments you can use to determine
whether your program has met its objectives or not: questionnaires,
subject tests, capstone courses, senior projects, major projects,
research projects, case study, group project competency tests,
critical thinking tests surveys, pre-post tests, portfolios
of student work, standardized tests, activity logs and attendance
rosters. Many institutions are using what is termed ‘embedded
course assessment’ in which regular work that students
produce in class is used to evaluate program objectives for
example a set of questions is embedded in a final exam. In
this way no special tests or assignments or term papers are
needed to assess the effectiveness of the program.
- Identify
performance indicators for each objective - indicators
tell you whether you have met the objectives for program,
department, course, service, or workshop has met its objective.
For example, the number of students who passed pre-calculus,
the number or percent of freshmen who acquired an internship
during the semester, number or percent of students who completed
a term paper by the end of the semester.
- Develop
a timetable for accomplishing the previous steps.
