Pre-Institute Workshops
All Pre-Institute Workshops will be held on Sunday, October 22nd. You may sign up and pay for any of the Pre-Institute Workshops when completing the on-line registration form (available in May). Fees for workshops are in addition to Institute registration fees.
October 22, 2017
Full-Day Workshops - 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. ($160.00 ea.)
01A - Assessment 101
This practical hands-on workshop is useful for large or small institutions, community college, undergraduate, graduate, or professional programs. The workshop has been updated to reflect recent developments in assessment and continuous improvement. Participants will use the Assessment 101 workbook to develop an assessment plan for one academic program, plan data collection and analysis, and anticipate ways to use results to improve student learning and drive budget/planning decisions. The workshop is designed to help new or experienced assessment practitioners or faculty to conduct their own program assessment or to train colleagues at their institutions. Supports institutional/general education assessment and accreditation efforts.
Wanda K. Baker, Council Oak Assessment
01B - Making it Meaningful: How to Engage Faculty in Lasting Assessment Reform, From Idea Generation to Supported Implementation
Assessment professionals are often tasked with the wholesale reform of assessment processes at their institutions. Lack of faculty engagement can doom such work to failure, even when in the hands of the most capable leader. This workshop looks at building the capacity of your faculty and staff to lead and implement assessment reform. We focus on 4 specific techniques in the morning: appealing to higher ideals, creating a visual communication message, thinking politically and creating microleadership opportunities—all of which support generating ideas and garnering support for assessment reform. In the afternoon, we look more deeply at a form of microleaderhip, assessment coaching, as an effective model for moving from ideas about assessment reform to implementing a sustainable, high quality assessment process led by faculty for faculty.
Debora Ortloff and Jacob Amidon, Finger Lakes Community College
Half-Day Workshops - 9:00 a.m. - Noon ($80.00 ea.)
01C - Transparency Across the Curriculum: Assignments, Alignments, and Learning Outcomes
Many campuses today are looking for ways to embed assessment in the on-going work of teaching and learning where it is most likely to fuel improvements that matter for students. This approach has shaped NILOA's work on the design of assignments that are intentionally aligned with institutional learning outcomes [http://www.assignmentlibrary.org], and the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT) project [https://www.unlv.edu/provost/teachingand learning], which focuses on the features that make assignments powerful catalysts for student learning. Drawing on both of these initiatives, this workshop will explore the power of “transparency”--for students and among campus colleagues--about the purposes, tasks, and criteria for assessment that shape students' learning experiences as they move through the curriculum.
We will begin with a focus on classroom assignments, and then move to the course, program and institutional levels, looking at the meaning and importance of transparency in each of these contexts. Participants will work through a series of steps aimed at connecting these levels, and strategize about how this multi-level approach to transparency can adapted for their own campus. We will also point to resources from TiLT and from NILOA's Assignment Library and toolkit that can support effective assessment, learning, and teaching.
Pat Hutchings, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA); Jillian Kinzie, Indiana University and National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA); and Mary-Ann Winkelmes, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
01D - Jump Start Assessment of Global Learning on Your Campus
Today, most colleges and universities mission statements include an imperative for global learning—a clear indication that these institutions value internationalization. Yet, if it’s important enough to be in these mission statements, it is equally, if not more important, to assess whether students are learning what is necessary to become effective global citizens by the time they graduate. With the growing trend to internationalize curricular and co-curricular programs, assessment professionals, program directors, faculty and staff are likely to be called upon to develop and implement assessment plans and activities. This session will provide guidance on how to approach internationalization assessment on your campus.
Chris T. Cartwright, Intercultural Communication Institute; Iris Berdrow, Bentley University; Donna Evans and Martha Petrone, Miami University; and Chris Hightower, Texas Christian University
01E - Designing and Implementing a Sustainable Assessment Process: Practical Strategies for Balancing Accountability and Improvement
While the principal purpose of assessment is continuous improvement of student learning, assessment in most institutions of higher education is traditionally viewed as a means to address accountability/compliance demands. This practice (aka “assessment for accountability”), is quite common in institutions where development and Implementation of a systematic assessment process aimed primarily at promoting continuous improvement of student learning can be a major challenge. This presentation provides practical strategies for developing, implementing and sustaining a systematic institutional assessment processes aimed at cultivating a culture of continuous improvement of student learning, while at the same time, addressing accountability or compliance needs.
Felix Wao, University of Oklahoma
01F - Making Feedback More Effective and Efficient to Make Assessment More Valuable
Assessment that doesn't provide feedback that's valued and well used is probably not worth doing. We all know that meaningful, evidence-based feedback to students, faculty and administrators is critical to their learning, improvement, and success. But most of us also know from experience just how time-consuming, difficult, and frustrating the feedback process can be – particularly when students and colleagues fail to make use of our well-intentioned feedback. This highly interactive workshop will present useful, sometimes counter-intuitive research findings on effective feedback, along with simple, practical, time-saving strategies for improving the odds that our assessment-based feedback is read/heard, understood, valued, and used in the classroom and beyond. By the workshop's end, participants will be ready to adapt and apply to their own assessment and feedback practice at least three new: research-based guidelines; practical strategies and techniques; core references and resources for follow-up; and, techniques for sharing workshop information with their colleagues.
Thomas A. Angelo, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
01G - Jumpstarting General Education Program Review: A Systems Thinking Approach to the Self-Study
Often overlooked in the discussion of a general education program development and assessment is the issue of general education program review. The Association for General and Liberal Studies (AGLS) offers a “Guide to Assessment and Program Review” intended to shake up an outdated program and help the self-study hum with collaborative discussion. At the heart of the “Guide” is a set of twenty systems analysis questions aimed at improving program quality and learning, whether the review goal is program renewal or program refresher. This workshop focuses on the initial stage of the self-study and will give attendees an opportunity to “test-drive” the tool and practice some basic general education program evaluation steps.
John G.M. Frederick, Christine Robinson, and Harriet Hobbs, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and Jody DeKorte, Kaplan University
Half-Day Workshops - 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. ($80.00 ea.)
01H - Using ePortfolio to Document and Enhance the Dispositional Learning Impact of HIPs
The widespread adoption of High Impact Practices (HIPs) is based in large part on the evidence that participation in these kinds of activities is positively related to such dimensions of student success as persistence, completion, satisfaction, and various desired outcomes. As efforts to scale HIPs grow, so does the need for additional assessment data. One key but less frequently measured subset of outcomes associated with HIPS is what is often called dispositional learning representing a range of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies that are essential for successful performance during and following college. Interpersonal competencies involve expressing information to others as well as interpreting others’ messages and responding appropriately. Intrapersonal competencies involve self-management and the ability to regulate one’s behavior and emotion to reach goals.
We begin the workshop with a brief overview of the HIPs movement, the pedagogical power of effective ePortfolio practice, and the growing recognition of the value of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies to lifelong learning and many other aspects of exceptional performance. Then, employing a variation of NILOA’s popular assignment design charrette, each participant will (a) bring an assessment tool or approach they are currently using or planning to use to document one or more inter- or intrapersonal outcomes associated with participation in a HIP, (b) briefly describe the HIP and the outcome(s) to be assessed (e.g., appropriate elements of LEAP ELOs or DQP proficiencies), and (c) outline the process or tools to be used to document acquisition of the intended outcomes. Other participants will offer advice for how to strengthen the intentional design of the HIP that will help students attain the outcome and improve the assessment approach. The final segment will be devoted to describing how the ePortfolio framework can enrich and integrate interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies into a holistic, demonstrable, portable, and cumulative record of accomplishment.
George D. Kuh, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA); Ken O'Donnell, California State University, Dominguez Hills; Laura M. Gambino, Guttman Community College; and Marilee Bresciani Ludvik, San Diego State University
01I - Harnessing the Power of Formative Assessment and Feedback for Instruction, Learning, and Motivation
Assessment is treated primarily as a means to evaluate competence. The learning benefits of assessment are often overlooked or under-utilized. Formative assessment in the form of quizzes, tests, and exams has been shown to be one of the most powerful strategies to ensure that students do well on summative assessments and that retention rates increase. This interactive workshop clarifies the concepts of formative assessment, summative assessment, and competency and shows how outcome based assessment can be used for a prior learning measure, a strategy for teaching and learning content, and for motivation, and includes how the brain works when learning.
Ronald S. Carriveau, University of North Texas
01J - Academic, Administrative, and Student Affairs Assessment: Internally Valued and Driven
Promoting the internal value of assessment, regardless of any external pressure, is essential for institutions to sustain continuous efforts to enhance the quality of their programs and services. Our comprehensive, coordinated assessment processes and tools designed to maximize student learning and effectiveness will be shared. Guided by “learning organization” literature (Shön and Senge), we will show how we have used our assessment results and plans to promote increased value of assessment for programs, units, and individuals. Participants will draft plans for cultivating outcomes at their institutions to promote deeper understanding of, value toward, and engagement in the assessment process.
Teresa L. Flateby and Cynthia Groover, Georgia Southern University
01K - Meta-Assessment: Evaluating and Improving Academic Program Assessment to Better Inform Improvement Efforts
Assessment is increasingly practiced in higher education. Less common are high expectations for the quality of assessment work. By quality, we mean assessment that answers important questions, produces results that are trustworthy, and leads to logical interventions to improve programs. From this perspective, James Madison University developed a meta-assessment process to evaluate program-level assessment reports and provide specific feedback to academic programs. These reports are evaluated using a behaviorally anchored rubric. Participants will be introduced to this rubric, which is perhaps the most comprehensive in higher education, and learn to apply these skills to assessment reports at their own institutions.
Nicholas A. Curtis and Chi Hang Au, James Madison University
01L - Assessing the Institution: Using Mission-Based Learning Outcomes to Guide Institutional Planning
This session is designed for advanced practitioners who want to work with other institutional leaders on their own campuses to better gather data at the institutional level. Participants in this workshop will define and develop models to use that allow for a better understanding of campus-wide learning outcomes and initiatives. These can include general education programs, but also programs focused on ethical behavior and critical thinking that cross disciplinary, curricular, and co-curricular “borders.” Sponsored by Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE).
Catherine M. Wehlburg, Texas Christian University