Changes in Staffing for the Office of Assessment
The Office of Assessment will have changes in staffing beginning in fall of 2009. In December, 2008, Sarah von Schrader was let go as part of budget cuts for last year and will not be replaced. As a result, the current director Jeanne Butler will move from being half-time CTE Director and half-time Assessment Director to fulltime Director of Assessment. With the accreditation requirements for assessment and the many assessment initiatives going on at UNK, a fulltime director is needed for assessment. Karin Covalt will continue as Administrative Assistant for the Office of Assessment and for the Center for Teaching Excellence.
We would like to thank Jessy Hansen, the graduate assistant for Assessment in 2008-09, for her contributions to the assessment activities at UNK over the last two years. She was Chair of the Student Assessment Committee and the “helpdesk” for WEAVEonline, along with many other projects she completed. She began her internship in School Psychology in the fall, 2009, in Columbus, NE.
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What is Curriculum Mapping?
Curriculum mapping makes it possible to identify where within a curriculum specific learning objectives are being taught. In other words, it provides a means to determine whether your objectives are aligned with the curriculum. The process allows faculty to:
- Link program learning outcomes to the curriculum
- Identify how required courses contribute to achievement of program outcomes
- Help students and faculty see how courses translate into a “curriculum”
- Identify how knowledge and skills develop throughout the curriculum
- Identify curriculum gaps in which objectives are listed but not actually taught
- Identify where interventions/changes are needed
Alignment – the curricula must be systematically aligned with the program objectives. Alignment involves clarifying the relationship between what students do in their courses and what faculty and departments within a discipline expect their graduates to learn. Analyzing the alignment of the curricula with program objectives allows for the identification of gaps which can then lead to curricular changes to improve student learning opportunities.
Approach to determining the alignment of courses with the program objectives – create a map:
Curriculum Map(Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education by Allen 2004)
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Course
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Program Objective 1
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Program Objective 2
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Etc.
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100
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I
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101
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P
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102
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D
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P
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103
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I
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D
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Etc.
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I = introduced, P = practiced, D = demonstrated
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This map indicates which courses provide instruction on each objective. It also shows where the objective is introduced, where it is practiced, and where it is demonstrated. Such a progression is important in developing competency related to any objective.
To get more information about curriculum mapping go to these websites:
http://www.iuk.edu/~koctla/assessment/curriculummap.shtml
http://manoa.hawaii.edu/assessment/howto/mapping.htm
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Curriculum Mapping Pilot Project
The Office of Assessment will be working with 2-3 departments from each college in a pilot project to begin implementation of curriculum mapping as part of the assessment process at UNK. This project is the result of input from the NCA reviewer, Susan Hatfield, from the accreditation visit last spring. She indicated that by 2014, when we have our next accreditation visit, HLC will expect that departments and programs will be using curriculum mapping to support their assessment function. It will be used to verify where learning outcomes are being taught in the curriculum and at what level they are being taught.
The Office of Assessment is providing funding to support the 9 departments across campus that have volunteered to participate in the pilot for 2009-2010. The departments that participate will receive $500 this fiscal year to help in putting things in place to set up the process, and $500 when they have completed the curriculum mapping process next year (by May 2010 or before). At that point there may be additional funding if departments are willing to mentor other departments in the process. For 2010-2011 additional departments will be given the opportunity to participate in the project to ensure that most departments are doing curriculum mapping by 2014. Faculty members from each department who will be responsible for the project will receive a $500 stipend for attending a workshop on curriculum mapping that will be held in May and again in August.
Some departments and faculty at UNK may be familiar with curriculum mapping, but if not--basically it is taking a department's learning outcomes and tracking them to the courses in which they are being taught in the curriculum and at what level (introduced, developed, or evaluated). Bloom's taxonomy is frequently used in the process to ensure that learning outcomes are taught at different levels of learning to introductory students than to seniors.
The departments who are participating this year are those that have their assessment process in place and functioning well, so they have a good base for implementing curriculum mapping. These departments include those that have won awards at the annual Assessment Awards luncheon and those that have received good feedback from the Office of Assessment reports on their annual assessment process.
Currently the following departments will participate in the Curriculum Mapping Pilot Project in 2009-2010.
NSSPolitical Science—Joan Blauwkamp
History—Carol Lilly
Psychology—Theresa Wadkins
FAHModern Languages--Maria Beck and Chris Jochum
Communications—George Lawson
CBTITEC--Jim Toppen, Terry Gibbs, Ron Tuttle and Nate Barry
Business Administration Program—Janet Lear
COECounseling and School Psychology—Max McFarland
HPERLS—Scott Unruh and Kathy English
GENERAL STUDIESDirector--Daren Snider
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The following websites of other universities that are doing curriculum mapping provide additional detail and discuss and how it helps in the departmental/program assessment process.
http://assessment.uconn.edu/mapping1.htm, or http://manoa.hawaii.edu/assessment/howto/mapping.htm.
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Student Preferences for Helpful Teaching Techniques
The Student Assessment Committee developed an online Instructional Preferences Survey that was completed by 840 students at UNK. The survey was administered to determine which types of classroom instructional techniques students found most helpful, to identify differences among students in the techniques they find most helpful, and to determine their preferred “learning style”. The techniques ranged from providing study guides, distributing sample work before an assignment, and providing overviews for a lecture to breaking up lectures with other activities, using small groups in class, and providing real-world examples/experiences.
The survey included a large number of teaching techniques (27) so a factor analysis was done to group the items into related areas for further analysis. The resulting five factors included:
- Instructor Responsiveness (i.e. Returning tests promptly)
- Clarity of Expectations (i.e. Explaining the purpose of assignments)
- Varied Teaching Approaches (i.e. Supplementing lecture with a variety of visuals)
- Providing Aids to Learning (i.e. Providing sample essays)
- Mathematics (i.e. Providing sample math problems)
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.jpg "StudPref Nov09") |
Using these five factors, additional analyses provided significant results for several of the variables. In considering gender differences on the five factors, females found all the teaching techniques to be more useful than males (p <.01). Comparison of results by GPA found that students with lower GPA (<2.5) found teaching aids and additional math help to be more useful than did students with higher GPA (>3.0) (p <.01). Comparison of results by class found that freshman and sophomores found teaching aids and help with math more helpful than did upperclassmen or graduate students (p <.01, p < .001). Graduate students found instructors setting expectations to be more helpful than other techniques (p <.05). Comparisons were also made between international students and students from the U.S. These results indicated that international students found all the teaching techniques to be less helpful than did U.S. students (p <.01, p < .001).
The three learning styles included in the analyses included:
- Seeing it
- Hearing it
- Doing it
Analyses were done on learning style and the variables of gender, GPA, class designation, and international vs. U.S. The only significant results found that male students (p <.001) and students with a lower GPA (p = .05) preferred a hands-on learning style.
For more information you can access the power point presentation, the summary report of the findings and a copy of the survey.
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Upcoming Assessment Conferences
The Office of Assessment sponsors travel stipends for faculty to attend conferences related to assessment of student learning. Funding is competitive, with preference given to faculty who are making a presentation related to assessment or faculty attending a conference or workshop on assessment. Applications should be submitted to the Director of Assessment, prior to the event. Awards will not be made after an event has occurred. Successful applicants will be asked to deliver their conference presentation or a topic related to the conference at a Center for Teaching Excellence seminar.
American Evaluation Association Annual Conference: Context and Evaluation
Monday, November 9 to Saturday, November 14, 2009
Orlando, FloridaHeadquarters Hotel: Rosen Shingle Creek Resort
2009 President: Debra Rog
President's Theme: Context and Evaluation
http://www.eval.org/eval2009/
7th Annual SC Formative Assessment Conference
November 19 - November 20, 2009
Columbia, SC
http://www.scformativeassessment.com
AAC&U Annual Meeting
January 20-23, 2010
Washington, DC
http://www.aacu.org/meetings/annualmeeting/index.cfm
AAC&U Network for Academic Renewal Conference
General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New PrioritiesFebruary 18-20, 2010
Seattle, Washington
http://www.aacu.org/meetings/generaleducation/index.cfm
10th Annual Texas A&M University Assessment Conference
February 21-23, 2010
College Station, Texas
http://assessment.tamu.edu/conference/index.html
2010 NASPA Annual Conference
March 6-10, 2010
Chicago, Illinois
http://www.naspa.org/conference/general/2010.cfm
Higher Learning Commission Annual Meeting
Quality in Higher Education
April 9-13, 2010
Chicago, IL
http://www.ncahlc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=166&Itemid=155
Source: www.assessmentconferences.com
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Online Assessment Resources
Writing Course Objectiveshttp://www.vcu.edu/cte/resources/videos/WritingCourseObjectives/objectivestry4a.html
Understanding and Creating Rubricshttp://www.vcu.edu/cte/resources/videos/Rubrics/Rubrics.html
Creating Rubrics Using Rubistarhttp://www.vcu.edu/cte/resources/videos/Rubistar_tutorial/index.html
Learning Outcomes Checklisthttp://www.unk.edu/academicaffairs/assessment/index.php?id=31168
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