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Assessment at IUS:

• Background & History
• Roles & Responsibilities
• Resources & Support
• Academic Assessment Committee
• Assessment Survey Summary
• Faculty Work in Assessment

Academic Program Assessment:

• Introduction
• Assessment Handbook
• Annual Program Assessment Process
• Program Progress Reports
• Campus Assessment Results
• Assessment Grants
• Glossary

General Education Assessment:

• Overview and Reports

Classroom Assessment:

• Institute for Learning & Teaching Excellence (ILTE)

General Education Assessment

The General Education Committee is responsible for oversight of assessment of student learning in general education at IU Southeast. The committee has established a cycle that insures that student learning in all major goals of general education is assessed every three years. The schedule for assessment in the most recent cycle was:

• 2006-07: Written Communication, Oral Communication, Quantitative Reasoning
• 2007-08: Diversity, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking, and Information Literacy
• 2008-09: Central Ideas and Issues in Arts and Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Natural Sciences; and Information Technology Fluency.

The three-year cycle which begins in the fall semester, 2009, and runs through academic year 2011-12, will be the same as above.

The process the committee uses to carry out assessment is faculty driven. Each goal that is to be assessed is assigned to one or two committee members, who are responsible for working with faculty members from outside the committee who have relevant disciplinary expertise (e.g., someone from the mathematics department for assessment of Quantitative Reasoning). These ad hoc working groups design and carry out assessment projects related to their learning goal with assistance from the Office of Academic Affairs and if desired, the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Each working group submits a report of its results to the committee by the end of the academic year and the committee in turn submits a summary report to the Faculty Senate.

The committee has adopted the following plan for distributing the assessment reports. Those who receive the reports will forward them to the appropriate faculty members to evaluate how outcomes are being achieved and to act on the results in ways that advance student learning and improve educational quality.

The committee adopted the following guidelines for assessment projects in 2006.

• Use authentic student work as the basis for assessment. This generally means using work students have completed for credit in one or more courses.
• Use sampling techniques to make the task manageable.
• If there are too many outcomes to handle at once, select those that seem most important and only assess them.
Build on existing efforts at assessment in programs and/or in general education that are relevant to assessment of your goal and outcomes.
• Assure the anonymity of both instructors and students who provide work that is used in assessment. The purpose is improvement of instruction in the general education program, not evaluation of individual students or instructors.
• Work with the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment from the beginning through the end of your project.
• Recognize that General Education has two major components: (a) the required 100 and 200-level approved courses, and (b) the reinforcement of General Education goals within major programs. During the first year of assessment, it may be necessary to simplify the task by assessing point (a) alone because a good portion of the developing assessment strategies will involve a first-time learning experience for faculty.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Downloads:

2009 General Education Assessment Report (PDF)

2008 General Education Assessment Report (PDF)

2007 General Education Assessment Report (PDF)