Assessing Student Outcomes & Evaluating Academic Programs

Catalog description

Academic program assessment/student outcomes in accountability and accreditation processes. HI ED 840 Assessing Student Outcomes & Evaluating Academic Programs (3) This course pulls together the many threads that add up to educational effectiveness: evaluating academic programs and curricula, assessing student learning outcomes, coping with accountability and performance reporting requirements, responding to the demands of both regional and disciplinary/vocational accreditation bodies. The course acquaints students with strategies and instruments for conducting outcomes studies of programs, students, and alumni alike. Assessment topics include studies of students' basic skills, general education, knowledge in the major, personal growth, and alumni outcomes. Thus, the course is designed for higher education professionals who seek to a fuller understanding of Student Outcomes Assessment, Program Evaluation, and Institutional Effectiveness. The on-line experiences are aimed at applying the readings, obtaining hands-on experience in analyzing data, and developing reporting skills. Each Unit lists supplementary readings and weblinks where you can find additional information to explore the topic in greater depth. The course has linkages to the other courses in the Institutional Research Certificate program. For example, the opening weeks of HI ED 840 expand upon some of the assessment and evaluation readings and materials covered in selected units of the Foundations course (HI ED 801). Both this assessment course and the course on Studying Students and Student Affairs (HI ED 802) draw upon and discuss relevant literature and theories of student outcomes. Persistence models and theories referred to in these courses are relevant also to Enrollment Management and Forecasting (HI ED 860). The Research Design course (HI ED 830), with its emphasis on measurement issues and survey research, provides an analytical foundation for all these other IR courses. HI ED 840 summarizes the best of what we know about assessing student outcomes. Few topics are more complicated than outcomes assessment. The needs of students and the areas of their learning vary highly among institutions and degree programs. Students are diverse and the dimensions of the learning processes in American Higher Education are extremely complex. Likewise, assessing student performance is complex and hence difficult to summarize. Moreover, before we travel into the real content of assessment, we need to place our journey within a context, and within an environment that is heavily shaping what we do. Thus, before we focus on evaluation academic programs and assessing student outcomes, we will examine accountability, accreditation, and performance reporting. In recent years, evidence of student outcomes has become one of the key indicators of institutional effectiveness, especially as it is viewed by accrediting associations and many state higher education governing boards.