Assessment

Assessment is an on-going process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. When it is embedded effectively within larger institutional systems, assessment can help us focus our collective attention, examine our assumptions, and create a shared academic culture dedicated to assuring and improving the quality of higher education.

(Defintion by The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Bulletin, 48 (2), November 1996, pp. 7-9.)

Assessment at UH-Downtown

At UH-Downtown, assessment is conducted through the annual unit planning process. UHD’s Unit Planning is based on a planning and evaluation model developed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to assist universities in improving their institutional effectiveness. The University's mission statement and the UH System's Strategic Planning Principles set forth the basic framework under which plans are developed and establish the criteria against which institutional success is measured. Within the institution, each department develops a mission statement and a set of goals that complement the broader mission and goals of the whole University and designs assessment procedures to determine the units overall effectiveness.

In addition to conducting unit-level evaluations, the University’s academic departments establish learning outcome objectives for each of their academic programs and evaluate the extent to which they are being achieved. After the college dean has determined that a department’s learning outcomes report is acceptable, it is forwarded to the Provost’s Office and posted on the University’s assessment website.

Guidelines for the preparation of both Annual Assessment Reports and the Unit Plan are distributed each fall semester. A  SWOT assessment - an assessment of the University’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – prepared by the University’s Planning Council (UPC) is distributed along with the planning guidelines to help units focus on the most critical issues facing the University.

Each Academic Department conducts an annual assessment of learning outcomes (campus access only) for each of its programs. The reports identify the program’s learning objectives, describes the methods used to determine the extent to which these objectives are being achieved, and then summarizes the findings and how they have been used to improve performance. The results of these annual assessments of learning outcomes along with other program evaluations help departments identify their strengths and weaknesses and serve as a basis for their unit plan.

Progress in meeting the learning outcomes objectives set forth in the University new Quality Enhance Plan, Student Engagement through Active Learning Strategies, will be reported on annually as well. The QEP’s evaluation plan, its target goals and its baseline data are all described in the QEP document.

Regular learning outcomes assessments are also conducted for the General Education program, the library and for other academic support services.

Library Holdings on Assessment
The Academic Assessment Committee along with the Cullen Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning works with the W.I. Dykes in maintaining a collection of materials related to academic assessment in higher education. Suggestions of materials are always welcome.

Web Resources
There is a great deal of useful assessment information available online. The above link connects to a comprehensive list of assessment web resources that was compiled by North Carolina State University.

The University Academic Assessment Committee
The Academic Assessment Committee was created in August 1995 to help guide and coordinate campus assessment efforts. The exact makeup and specific responsibilities of this committee have changed several times since its creation but it continues to be the one group on campus focused exclusively on assessment. The Committee’s current charge is to provide a forum for the exchange of information about assessment techniques among the academic departments and to advise the provost on ways to address assessment needs that cut across unit boundaries.

An Online Collaborative Assessment Work Space
Anyone with assessment ideas or resources they would like to share with their colleagues can now post them on UHD’s assessment wiki. A wiki is a special type of website that allows any visitor to add material themselves without going through any special registration or approval process. UHD’s assessment wiki was established to serve two purposes: 1) as a depository for any useful materials or information that individuals might pick up at conferences they have attended or just from surfing the web on their own, and 2) as a discussion board where various assessment-related topics can be presented and debated.

State and Federal Accountability Measures
Both the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the National Institute for Educational Statistics publish reports that summarize institutional performance measures.

The state’s new Higher Education Accountability System is designed to determine the quality of the education students receive at each of the state’s 35 public institutions. These state measures are used to evaluate the progress Texas is making in reaching the goals established in its Closing the Gaps plan.

Accreditation Standards
Accrediting agencies as well as government oversight bodies are stressing the importance of conducting regular assessments of all academic programs. The following are the main assessment requirements of the Southern Association.

2.5 The institution engages in ongoing, integrated, and institution-wide research-based planning and evaluation processes that incorporate a systematic review of programs and services that (a) results in continuing improvement and (b) demonstrates that the institution is effectively accomplishing its mission.

3.3.1 The institution identifies expected outcomes for its educational programs and its administrative and educational support services; assesses whether it achieves these outcomes; and provides evidence of improvement based on analysis of those results.

3.5.1 The institution identifies college-level competencies within the general education core and provides evidence that graduates have attained those competencies.

The complete listing of SACS requirements can be found in the Principles of Accreditation: Foundations for Quality Enhancement.

Unit Profile Data
The major University data resources include the UHD Fact Book and the Academic Unit Profiles and Administrative Profiles that are distributed at the beginning of each planning cycle. These documents contain a variety of reporting data that units can use along with their own department-based assessments to analyze their needs.