Spring 2000 * Volume 2 * Number 2

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AND ASSESSMENT

By Dr. Leslie Wessman and members of the Education Department

Student learning and assessment, as well as curriculum coherence and development, are at the core of our discipline. The current faculty in the Education Department have been in substantive conversation about our uses of assessment since the summer of 1994. With the help of a faculty summer grant, four of us attended workshops at Alverno College focusing on outcomes and assessment. We returned to campus to work together for two weeks clarifying our departmental purpose for using assessment. As a result of that summer grant project, six department Professional Abilities were articulated: Effective Communicator, Professional Collaborator, Curriculum Developer, Problem Solver, Decision Maker and Scholarly Educator. We were using a variety of instructional assessment practices in our individual classes and the Abilities provided us with a framework to provide on-going experiences which help students self-assess and self-adjust their knowledge and skills. Students report that this framework offered more coherence across courses. In addition, we were able to begin relating our program assessments-surveys, student teaching evaluations, certification tests, and employment date-to the Professional Abilities. Much has been accomplished over the past six years through intra-departmental collaboration. However, we recognize that this attention to departmental assessment practices is a work in progress-we will never be done.

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HOPE'S ENGINEERING PROGRAM

By Dr. Darryl Thelan and Dr. John Krupczak

The Engineering Program formalized and further developed its methods of assessment during the 1998-99 academic year. The assessment plan involves monitoring achievement of objectives in engineering courses, outside evaluation of senior design projects, extensive surveying and interviewing of seniors and alumni, and evaluation of student performance on nationally standardized exams. These assessments serve as the basis for evaluating how well the departmental objectives and desired student outcomes are being achieved. In addition to the assessment methods, a professional advisory board, consisting of representatives of graduate schools and engineering, is used to evaluate the departmental objectives and overall program direction on a regular basis.

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