During Academic Year 2018-19, the College began implementing a new plan for the assessment of learning outcomes for academic programs (majors, minors, certificates). The initiative, however, was paused while many of us had to focus our energies on other administrative and teaching duties during the pandemic and graduate student strike. It is now time to restart the plan.
College assessment
Assessment reports
Unit administrators and approved staff have may submit reports on behalf of their unit and view previous assessment documents.
Manage my College Assessment ReportsGeneral plan
We will move forward with a modified version of the previous plan, but on a shorter timeline. During AY 2023-24, you will complete the following for each credential offered through your unit:
- Review their learning outcomes, revise them as appropriate, and submit them to the College
- Develop and, if possible, implement a plan to assess student perceptions of the learning outcomes
During AY 2024-25, you will:
- Implement, if you did not do so during AY 23-24, your plan for assessing student perceptions of the learning outcomes
- Develop a plan for the assessment of the learning outcomes and begin implementing the plan
The various tasks are described below. Additional details will be provided at a later date.
Critical dates
Task | Date | Deliverable |
1 | November 10, 2023 | Learning outcomes for all credentials |
2 | March 22, 2024 | Plan for assessment of student perceptions of the learning outcomes |
3 | October 1, 2024 | Report on findings about student perceptions of learning outcomes |
4 | January 31, 2025 (new date; was 1/10) | Plans for assessment of learning outcomes |
5 | May 30, 2025 | Initial report on results of learning outcomes assessment |
Assessment tasks
Review the learning outcomes you have established for each of the credentials you offer at the undergraduate level—this means all degrees/majors (BA, BFA and BS), minors, and certificates. Revise them, as appropriate, in consultation with the faculty in your unit and consistent with your governance procedures. If your unit submitted learning outcomes previously, you can download them via the College Assessment app. Once you have finalized your learning outcomes, you will upload the 2023-24 version in the College Assessment app. Submit one set of outcomes per academic program (credential) managed by your unit.
If you are unsure where to begin with this task, please contact us at ugcurric@indiana.edu.
The College will not be providing feedback on the learning outcomes you submit. If you would like to discuss them, please email us.
With the learning outcomes for your credentials affirmed (Task 1), the next step will be to develop a plan for assessing student perceptions of them. The goal of this task is for you to get meaningful feedback from your students about your learning outcomes and their experience with your academic programs; it is not to get publishable data about them.
For this task, you will create a measuring device/survey or focus group strategy that will help you determine how successful you have been in the minds of your students when it comes to the learning outcomes. Neither the plan nor the survey/focus group need to be long or elaborate.
The only thing required for this task is the drafting of the plan and associated documents (survey, focus group questions, etc.) and the submission of the plan to the College via the College Assessment app. Submit one plan for your unit.
The College will not be providing feedback on your plan. If you would like to discuss it, please email us.
Resources to help:
- IU Qualtrics (includes help resources)
- Qualtrics template (importable file to help you start creating a survey; you should right-click and choose "save as" to download the file and then import the file within your Qualtrics account by going to Create a Survey > From Scratch Survey > Get Started > Import a QSF file)
If you are unsure where to begin with this task, please contact us at ugcurric@indiana.edu.
You will implement your student perceptions assessment plan (Task 2) and submit a brief report on your findings. You will also discuss how your findings have changed or will change your learning outcomes or assessment plan going forward.
We have provided an example report, but yours need not be this elaborate!
Submit your report via the College Assessment app.
Now that you have established learning outcomes and asked your students about the perceptions of your unit’s delivery of those learning outcomes, you will now develop a plan of assessment activities to help you determine the extent to which students who complete your academic program(s) achieve the learning outcomes.
The goal is to directly measure student learning through the evaluation of student work (exam(s), assignment(s), etc.); we are not interested in student perceptions of learning for this plan (we already did this for Deliverable 3), so surveys, course evaluations, etc. are not appropriate methods for this type of assessment. Your work for this task includes the following for each learning outcome (as determined for Deliverable 1):
- Identification of assessment method(s)
- You might identify a course or courses where students should attain a particular outcome and then select an assignment or exam that provides evidence about the relevant student learning
- Your program might have some type of capstone experience through which you can obtain and review deliverables to measure student learning
- You might consider creating some type of standardized assessment that is delivered to students who are at the end of their program
- Describing what success looks like
- Once you’ve selected the methods, where are you drawing the line between “meets expectations” and “does not meet expectations”?
- Do you need to develop rubrics to ensure consistency if multiple types of assessment are used or if multiple people are involved in the evaluation of the learning?
As you draft your plan, it may be helpful to revisit any curriculum mapping your unit did as part of previous assessment activities (2014-2018). Curriculum mapping looks at each learning outcome and identifies where in the curriculum (which requirements/courses) you expect students to achieve or advance it. You can use the map to help you strategize where you might focus your assessment efforts for each learning outcome.
You do not need to measure all your learning outcomes every year. You may find it more manageable to address one or two program learning outcomes each year so that the entire academic program is assessed over a three- or four-year rotation. Your plan, however, must account for the assessment of all learning outcomes.
Please keep in mind that Deliverable 5 will require you to implement the 2024-25 portion of Deliverable 4 and file a report on it.
For Deliverable 4, submit one plan document via the College Assessment for each academic program (credential) managed by your unit.
You will implement your learning outcomes assessment plan (Task 4) and submit a report on your assessment activities and results.
The College will provide details about this task as the deadline nears.