About Assessment Process
Download an overview of great assessment plans.
1. Outcome Statements
What do you care about?
“Students will demonstrate critical thinking skills”
“The department provides effective student workshops”
2. Assessment Methods and Strategies
How do you know how well you’re doing?
“As part of coursework, students will do a presentation. A rubric will be used to determine level of critical thinking skills used.”
“A survey will be given to students after attending the workshop asking for feedback.”
3. Criteria of Excellence
“For each rubric item, 80% of students will score 8 or better out of 10”
“For each item related to workshop effectiveness, 80% of students will ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree'”
Not meeting the criteria means you have identified what to improve!
Assessment Reports
Download an overview of great assessment reports.
4. Results
What do the data say about how well you’re doing?
These results should be directly linked to the criteria for excellence. For example, if the criterion for excellence indicates a percent of students will answer a question correctly, the results should give that percent of students rather than the average score.
“On the Argument Analysis rubric item, only 64% of students scored 8 or better out of 10”
“Only 60% of students ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that they could apply what they learned in the workshop”
5. Use of Results
What do the data tell you that you can improve?
The use of results provides a description of the modifications made to the program or unit due to data collected.
“We know that we need to focus on how to analyze arguments in our course”
“We know that we need to talk more about how students can apply what they learned in this workshop.”
Go to Example Assessment Plans
Don’t forget we have a new page of answers to frequently asked questions.
List of downloadable resources on this page
- Great Assessment Plans – PDF File
- Great Assessment Reports – PDF File
- Assessment Plan Worksheet – PDF File
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