The Fall Faculty Workshop will focus on assessment of student learning. In order to plan a workshop experience which might best meet the interests and needs of the faculty, this brief survey form has been designed to assess the interests and concerns faculty have about the implementation of the institution's assessment plan. The estimated time to complete this form is 5-10 minutes. Please complete this form ASAP before August 29 and return it, along with the reservation postcard, in the enclosed business reply envelope.

Instructions: Please circle the response(s) which best fit your views.

1. How familiar are you with the institution's printed assessment plan (dated April 1997)?

a. Not at all (1)

b. Heard something about it (8)

c. Skimmed it (11)

d. Read it (11)

e. Worked on it (12)

2. For what aspect of the plan do you feel personally responsible?

(check all that apply)

a. None or don't know (4)

b. My courses (24)

c. My discipline (program or unit) (35)

d. General Education (8)

e. Institutional goals (11)

3. Which statements reflect your general views about the assessment plan?

(check all that apply)

a. I understand why it is necessary. (26)

b. I don't understand why it is necessary. (4)

c. I understand the basic approach and agree with it. (17)

d. I do not understand the basic approach. (3)

e. I understand the basic approach and do not agree with it. (6)

f. I have not formed an opinion about any of this. (3)

4. Which statements reflect your questions and concerns about implementation of the plan?

(check all that apply)

a. I do not have any questions or concerns. (7)

b. I do not have time to do this work. (17)

c. I do not know enough about assessment and/or assessment methods. (17)

d. We do not have adequate resources to do this work. (17)

e. My colleagues do not agree enough to proceed with this work. (7)

f. I do not understand my role in assessment. (5)

5. Comments you wish to make about assessment or the institutional plan.

Interested in ways to make it a comfortable part of our roles - seen of value - and not a burden.

Assessment is an asset to student learning, but an inefficient assessment can be a liability.

Often it seems so repetitive when done course by course - in some cases almost trivial. It would seem more appropriate to have at the discipline and institutional levels rather than course by course.

I think we need to agree/state an institutional mission before we can assess whether our discipline/courses agree with that mission.

I hope this can be kept to a minimum.

Assessment has acquired very negative connotations for me. Assessment appears to be documentation required to satisfy the accrediting agency, but otherwise useless. It feeds an existing, hungry bureaucracy. I think UMM should oppose this unnecessary time consuming requirement.

Only time will tell. We need to implement it and let it run for about 4-5 years before we can decide if the plan is a success. The "requirement" by NCA for a review or revision in two years is unreal because we would not have the chance to assess the student learning from students who have been here for four years and moved on to grad school or professional work.

I worry that assessment as currently formulated pushes us to focus on student learning that can be measured after a ten-week course in numerical terms. Unless we broaden our understanding of assessment we will likely produce assessment mechanisms that are at odds with our liberal arts mission.

My colleagues are all too ready to ask that our discipline's assessment committee do everything, and now. I'm for a more measured approach, gradually adding to what we do, to make sure each addition is implemented and carried forward well. Generally my other concerns are in the details.

Assessment has been mandated so we have to do it. I think we already assess in many ways.

More paperwork - will it help??

As of this moment, the larger U has devoted too few resources for this work. I am tired of being told to do more and more, with less and less, for no compensation. In fact, all this work distracts me from teaching and research, the only things that will get me promoted!!

Busy work.

This scheme will not guarantee significant changes except for the worse. Mediocrity will be elevated to an acceptable level.

Writing down this complicated "plan" does not necessarily change anything.

Some clarification needed as to how assessment results will be used internally. Who is the audience? For what purposes?

Higher education should not be treated as if it were a for-profit business, and the move (nationwide) towards assessment is partly in response to that "consumer model" of education. To the extent that our institution's assessment follows a "corporate" rather than a "human development" and "state-of-the-knowledge-in-the-discipline-currently-and-sociohistorically" model, the effort will be destructive in its effects on students, the institution, and, ultimately, upon knowledge and the well-being of society. What are the goals here? Why is this effort being made? And why are we being asked to listen to someone with a "management" Ph.D.? (Higher Education Administration rather than a discipline-based one).

I understand assessment as essential in this political/cultural climate, to educating and assuring the public that higher education is vital, valuable, worth supporting; and that faculty are working hard and students are learning.

It is good to have goals and state how these goals are achieved, but who is going to visit my classroom and evaluate my instruction and see if I'm achieving what needs to be done? Doesn't the whole process start in the classroom?

By graduation, students need to have learned to assess their own work accurately and to assess the institution, so they need to participate actively in assessment at every stage and understand why each technique is used. There is a tendency to impose things on students without their discovering how and why they work. Assessment involves an explicit sharing of the mechanisms of knowledge and learning, thus a sharing of power. It is natural to resist that, and all the more so because being explicit takes time, thought, and energy away from other teaching (i.e., the subject area). The trick is, I think, to install the mechanisms in such a way that they take a minimum of individual effort, yet give results that people find self-rewarding.

I think it is more complex than it needs to be. Most of the forms that we have seen up to now are confusing and do not explain why we are doing the things that we are doing except that NCA wants us to do it.

I would like to know more about the information flow of the assessment plan (i.e., the integration of information from the various units): (a) Is it voluntary? (b) What is the purpose of informing other units? (c) Give an example or model to show the logic of relating information to other units. (d) What is the significance or consequence of relaying assessment methods and techniques?

I have questions about our ability to achieve a balance so that we do not waste time.

I appreciate the grass-roots decentralized nature of the plan. My concern is that NCA's feedback suggests a narrowness of vision, an enthusiasm for particular forms of assessment that could alienate the faculty.

6. Suggestions you have for the workshop on assessment of student learning.

Discussion is an efficient/effective way of assessing student learning.

Talk about different/other means/tools of assessment which may not be very obvious to younger (with respect to experience!) faculty perhaps. Also, different fields have different ways to assess their particular field, and sometimes dialogue between them may be helpful. Some tools of assessment may perhaps be transferable between fields (as) found out with my Bush mentorship this year with someone from a different division.

Be welcoming to new faculty who won't know the history.

Find another topic.

(a) I would prefer Dr. Rice not to dwell on his book too much; I can read it on my own. (b) It would be nice if faculty attending would read his book before the workshopplease make a copy available at the Faculty Center. (c) It is necessary that Dr. Rice read a copy of UMM's assessment plan before he leads the workshop.

Please do give us some hard information, empirically supported, or a process for drawing on and systematizing the considerable experience of the participants. Let's have an intellectually rigorous experience and not the schlock we have so often gotten at these workshops.

I'd like to see examples of assessment techniques that have proved useful at small, liberal arts colleges. I'd also like you to explain the difference between assessment and outcome-based education (OBE) for my colleagues who just can't seem to get it.

How can we make sure our good ideas re assessment actually are measuring student learning? (I almost feel like we should ask students to return after five years for an interview to measure their retention!) I have in mind the fact that the SAT's appear to measure the same thing year after year (i.e., are relatively consistent), but who knows what it is that a SAT score actually measures!

What are other institutions/programs doing?

Find ways or forms to make it very clear what is expected of each institution, of each discipline, of each division, etc.

Make it snappy. The pace is often so slow at the beginning as we all "get to know each other" leaving no time for the substance at the end. We do know each other. Let's move to the meat and skip the appetizers.

Focus on faculty status. Students should learn to adjust to realities of education and disciplined work. Faculty should be given status to be recognized as educated, experienced, concerned, caring persons. Take the focus from immature students who are still trying to discover who they are and place it on the strength of the campus - the faculty.

Turn to something else.

Show ways of doing the absolutely required with minimum of time/work.

A focus which would be helpful would be: (1) emphasis on pedagogy with a solid basis in rigorous research, (2) emphasis on student development during the college experience, again with a basis in rigorous research, and (3) emphasis on faculty governance principles from a sociohistorical, political, and possibly economic point of view. Thanks for asking and listening.

I believe it would be valuable to see how A.S.L. could actually benefit student learning at UMM, rather than considering it an onerous regulation imposed upon us by the regional accrediting agency or UMM administrators or some small group of faculty.

Please be very basic in describing our (UMM's) plan and specific in describing how on earth we, as individuals and disciplines, fit into that.

Tap into the original and ingenious things that UMM faculty already do to assess, not just the learning in a given course but the student's growing ability as an independent learner. Allow people to share their stories and their ideas.

Follow up the workshop, using a specific timetable for people who are willing to do so to change their syllabus, install new elements in the Bulletin descriptions of their major (and the one the Registrar uses), put institutional surveys in place, etc., designating a series of key "pressure points."

Re staying around for dinner at Arrowwood: why not ask the Division Chairs and some senior faculty to invite each new faculty member who attends the workshop to stay for dinner? That way, they would have some other people to eat with; without some effort like that, many people will just go home. A quiet effort to see that everyone has some group to dine with is always useful because otherwise there's a tendency for couples to stay by themselves and for singles to leave.

Bring copies of the plan for faculty to review (especially make them available to new faculty), and provide a brief history/review of UMM's assessment "problems" of the last five years.

Have models of assessment methods available.

Focus on what we could dothe use of concrete, specific assessment tools, how others have used them, and what the benefits were. Also, why should we?

Keep it simple.

Last year the new faculty were not familiar with our Gen Ed requirements and felt left out of the discussion. Make sure that newcomers (as well as old-timers) have enough information about the history of our assessment plan, its goals, and the necessity of keeping it in faculty hands. Assure everyone again that much of the assessment is already taking place, and suggest in what direction we should now be moving. This questionnaire is a good idea, so that sessions can be organized to deal with comments, questions, and suggestions of faculty and others involved in assessment.

Exercises that focus at the course and discipline level will be most helpful at this point.

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