New Case Study:

McKendree University

This case study on McKendree University is an update of the original case study from 2016 focused on McKendree’s use of the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), which was important in helping to define and refine institutional outcomes, especially around “diverse perspectives”. As Emily Teitelbaum and Katie Schultz reported in the 2016 case study, McKendree began an ambitious “Assessment 2.0” initiative in 2010, focusing on one of its seven student learning outcomes each year. This updated case, written by Tami Eggleston of McKendree University and a NILOA Coach, begins as Assessment 2.0 was winding down in 2017. Following a careful process of stock taking, exploring what had been done and learned, the institution has now moved into Assessment 2.1. The DQP continues to inform the work, the co-curriculum is a more explicit focus of assessment, students are playing new roles, and, like many other campuses, McKendree continues to explore ways to engage faculty and staff in a process of continuous improvement. Read more…

New Viewpoint:

Getting Faculty on Board: Four Suggestions

Barbara Walvoord, the 2019 Trudy W. Banta Lifetime Achievement recipient, shares four suggestions presented in her keynote address for the faculty development track of the 2019 Assessment Institute in Indianapolis. She argues that while assessment leaders may be tasked with “Getting Faculty on Board,” there is a better way to frame it. Faculty members face many constraints and frustrations. They resist “getting on board” with someone else’s agenda. However, there is much to be learned from positioning assessment as a movement. Following in this sentiment, this Viewpoint advances four suggestions for fostering faculty inspiration and collaboration in assessment. In brief, by taking a sociological stance, leveling with faculty about the assessment mandate, working with the movements already on campus, and infusing assessment activities with the qualities of movements, assessment leaders can encourage faculty inspiration and collaboration, using assessment as a tool for student learning. Read more… 

New Equity Response:

Leveraging Learning Management Systems for Culturally Responsive Assessment Practice

The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2017), has directed assessment practices to serve as critical components in delivering teaching and learning. This is a call for all higher education institutions to make assessment practices ‘responsive’ to equity and issues around privilege in higher education. For this to occur, assessment systems need to be more comprehensive, and less disparate. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte piloted a holistic assessment approach by leveraging the university Learning Management System (LMS), laying important foundations to go beyond assessment for the sake of accreditation, diving deeper into discovering, and correcting implicit bias within assessment practices. This equity response argues, that when leveraged holistically, an LMS can also generate data analytics that show student outcomes beyond a course, connecting learning successes and risks across the academic landscape. This response offers one example of how an LMS can catalyze culturally responsive assessment practice by providing more information about the student learning outcomes across courses, programs, and student demographics. Read more…

New Featured Website:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is NILOA’s first Featured Website of 2020! The mission of OIRA is to “support institutional decision making and the achievement of our vision of becoming the nation’s leading public university” through disseminating timely institutional data and information. In support of this, the OIRA provides assessment resources for academic programs and administrative units; including tips on getting started, relevant professional development opportunities, examples, and additional assessment resources. Additionally, the OIRA website also features various interactive reports accompanied by definitions and footnotes, when applicable, so readers can easily understand the data. For these and numerous other reasons, the OIRA web page is our Featured Website in the categories of Centralized Assessment Repository, Communication, and Creativity. The webpage is also an institutional example for the NILOA Transparency Framework in the Evidence of Student Learning component. Read More…