Assessment Tools for the College of Arts and Sciences

General Education Learning Goals are currently being assessed through the coordinated efforts of the Office of Research and Assessment and the University Assessment Committee. The tools being utilized to assess are defined by those entities. The results inform the General Education Committee’s deliberations on General Education course requirements.

Assessment efforts being undertaken by individual departments within the College will use various assessment tools to measure program defined outcomes. Assessment tools will provide data comparisons over time and will be informed by evolving theory and practice. Tools are intended to provide data that can be measured, described and analyzed on a cohort basis at the College-wide or department level. Assessment activities that have been used and are being refined to determine student learning include the following (please note that this is not an exhaustive or prescriptive list of assessment tools and not all of the tools are being or will be used by every program):

• Successful completion of a capstone course where the capstone is required of all students in the major and is designed to incorporate the stated learning goals and is assessed by a method that is applied across all sections of the course.
• Pre and Post examinations.
• Student portfolio reviews.
• Annual student juries (performing and visual arts).
• Internship host supervisor evaluations of student interns.
• Documented alumni accomplishments.
• Externally juried student competitions.
• Entry, mid-point and completion of program examinations of required skills and basic content knowledge providing comparison points of results at the three levels.
• Department-wide or multi-section course exams and/or assignments based on stated learning objectives in program assessment plans or multi-section course syllabi.
• Documented student employment success upon graduation.
• Student academic achievement–grade distribution comparisons in key courses or course areas at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels.
• Success in transition to graduate programs and employment rates.

Individual departments may use these or other tools that provide the most appropriate measures (direct and indirect) of their defined learning goals and expected outcomes.