Broadening Participation in the Assessment of Student Communication SkillsJoan HawthorneUniversity of North Dakota

Today’s AgendaIntroduction and overviewAssessment purposes and

participationBreakSharing ownership

◦Engaging faculty◦Building partnerships◦Student contributions

Conclusions and evaluations

Questions to consider

What do we mean by assessment?

What are we trying to accomplish when we do assessment?

Who are we doing assessment for?

Assessment at NIU: A method for analyzing and describing student learning outcomes or program achievement of objectives.

Assessment and the HLC: Organizations assess student learning in meaningful, useful, and workable ways to evaluate how they are achieving their commitments and to act on the results in ways that advance student learning and improve educational quality.

My own definition: Assessment usually means the systematic collection of information about achievement of desired student learning outcomes across a group of students.

Where are the tensions at NIU?

Assessment vs. program evaluation?

Assessment vs. grading?Other?

TO CONSIDER: What do you want to get out of the work you put into assessment? What is motivating your current assessment work? Who’s using the findings? What would you like to motivate any new assessment efforts?

Possible purposes?ImprovementStudent-centerednessDecrease insularity, inertiaAccountabilityBecause we want “students to get the best possible education” (Suskie)

Other?

So, focusing on written communication…1. What do you mean?2. What will you accomplish?3. Who wants this information?THUS: What kinds of processes should be used? And who helps?

How can this assessment be conducted so that it does NOT fulfill the negative stereotypes about assessment?

What do faculty want?

Good assessments will “…reveal common values, provide opportunities for inquiry and debate about unsettled issues….”

CCCC Statement

“Who helps?” with assessment is an ownership question. Who will own this process? Who will own the findings?

What is the across-the-institution ROLE and RESPONSIBILITY of faculty?

Who could be involved?FacultyStudentsAdministratorsProfessional staffStakeholders from “outside”Other?

TO DISCUSS: What are the intrinsic motivations for involvement in assessment of writing upon which you could build? What roles might participants take?* consider for faculty* consider for students* consider for others

FacultyAs contributors

of student workAs participants in

planningAs participants in

scoringAs participants in

analysisAs participants in

loop-closing

To answer questions

Because they’ve contributed student work

Because they value the learning

Because they own the program

Because they’ll learn things about teaching

StudentsAs learnersAs contributorsAs criteria-

generatorsAs scorersAs participants in

analysisAs participants in

loop-closing

To accrue a portfolio

To get feedbackTo learn

“perspective” To take learning

seriouslyTo help with

accountabilityTo get a great

education

“Bringing students more actively into the processes of assessment may well be the most powerful route to greater faculty engagement.”

Pat Hutchings

What tools or strategies would motivate your faculty to be involved?What tools or strategies would motivate your students to be involved?What about other participants?

As Lee Shulman, educator and author, wrote, “We are limited in our recounting by the instruments we use to count.” He’s right. And assessment which doesn’t provide useful answers to real questions about teaching and learning is assessment that wastes our time.

Who owns writing at NIU?

Partnerships require sharing ownership.

“OK, I admit it: I like assessment. I like it because it encourages faculty members to think more carefully about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it that way. I like it because it helps raise questions about how our teaching strategies affect learning outcomes. And I like it because in the process we discover more about how our teaching fits with programs and curricula beyond our own courses.”

Theodore Wagenaar