We Mean Business
One of the hot areas in the academic world is "assessment." This page provides resources for our new assessment community of practice at Mott Community College. If we start with why, then the what and the how becomes a lot easier to understand.
I'm not going to go into detailed explanations here. I'll do a short presentation when we meet. But if you're a member of our community of practice, I ask that you carefully read what I set forth below, as well as the short articles I link to. First, the Higher Learning Commission accreditation agency lays out its criteria for what it looks for in a college's assessment program. 4.B. The institution engages in ongoing assessment of student learning as part of its commitment to the educational outcomes of its students.
To satisfy that requirement, MCC makes several claims on its General Education Assessment page. That page is pretty dense for the uninitiated, but faculty should concentrate on the three levels assessment and their corresponding approaches.
The assessment world is filled with jargon. Here's a good summary from Carnegie Mellon University that I found extremely helpful. Each of their four links will help faculty to understand the theory of assessment and how it can lead to practical actions. Take a look at all four links CMU has on that page as that's much easier than what can best be called an immersive approach that many CASL members take to learning this stuff. By "immersive," I mean tossed in the deep end. Here's a detailed article on Getting Assessment Right from the Chronicle of Higher Education. This article takes many of the ideas from the CMU page and applies them to the new digital education age. The article is from April 2018, but it's one that I think is even more useful now in the COVID age. If you find cynicism creeping into your soul, check out this Insider's Take on Assessment. Professor Gilbert addresses many of the objections and criticisms of the assessment world. It's pretty cynical, but it's what you'd expect from a guy who runs a site called www.badassessment.org. There's a lot to learn there. I hope you'll find it helpful as we look to dive into some of the formal research literature. You can refer back here if you encounter jargon or concepts that seem unfamiliar.
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Christopher J. EngeEducator. Entrepreneur. Attorney. Author Archives
January 2022
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